When does a client cease be worth the effort?

Dealing with a difficult customer can be a challenging and frustrating problem and there is a very fine line between being firm, forthright and being rude to your client or appearing to be dismissive of their views. If you have been in and around business long enough you will have met a few awkward customers along the way and it will often have felt like you are banging your head against a brick wall.

My business is entered around giving clients business and marketing advice and I have a team of highly experienced and talented people around me to ensure that our clients benefit from a diverse range of skills, experience and opinion. We are not a cheap option for a business to engage with but we are very good at what we do and only ask our clients to pay if they are satisfied.

That said, it is of constant annoyance to me that I have clients who use our services only to then find a reason to disagree with every piece of advice we offer, to table a "better" marketing solution than our recommendation or to rewrite the copy of a press release we have sent for their approval. We are an open-minded business and love it when a client gets heavily involved with our work but there is no point in us working with a client who believes they can do the job better than we can and if they feel that then they really should never have engaged us in the first place!

The other annoyance is from clients who make repeated promises about what they will do for us to assist us to deliver on their brief but consistently fails to deliver anything. Typically they will not reply to calls or emails as they are too busy and then, when our project finally hits their radar they complain at the lack of progress - these clients are possibly the most difficult to deal with as they simply cannot ever see any fault in their own actions and look to appoint blame anywhere but with them.

There are some members of my team that will do anything to keep a client happy and will always be completely respectful of the client regardless of of how deserving the client is of that respect. I have a different opinion to most of my team - that no client will be allowed to continue to use our services if they are a pain in the ***! 

To me, it is simply not worth the hassle. Clients like this bring the morale of my team down, they take up a vast amount of time to keep vaguely happy and are never complimentary or remotely happy with anything we do. They will not pay their bills on time and when they finally pay they will look for discounts or reasons to reduce the amount billed. For me these are the clients that I will happily walk away from. 

It is with this approach that I can focus on the clients that want to get the very best from my team, that want to engage and that take an open-minded approach to new ideas and concepts. We are not always right, we will sometimes misunderstand a brief and a client will need to tell us our work is not in keeping with their expectations - and this is absolutely fine, in fact it is refreshing when it is communicated constructively and positively.

My team are positive, creative and passionate people and I have observed with interest how their talents become eroded when clients become unnecessarily difficult or obstructive and because of human nature that negativity can be carried into the work of other clients and that is what I simply cannot allow to occur.

So to all clients out there; be nice, be constructive and play fair because if you do then you will get the very best from my team, you will get their passion, their energy and they will share your pride when our work impacts on your bottom line and if you can't play nice or play fair then you will very soon be playing on your own!!

Hands up, who actually likes networking meetings?

Many of us attend networking sessions and an awful lot of us hate it but I have met a few over the years who have claimed to like it. In my experience those that enjoy networking gatherings do not do much networking but they chat to old friends and associates and generally use the event as a social occasion.

I'll admit that networking can be fun when you are familiar with some others in attendance but I do firmly think that to call this networking is being rather generous! I like a beer or a glass of wine with my business mates just like anyone does but we'll deride one of our crowd who dares to attempt to talk about work - let alone try to sell something.

Then there is the networking event that you agree to attend only because some random contact you last saw in a Travelodge three years ago managed to convince you over LinkedIn it would be a good idea. You arrive and know nobody, you have added your name to a card and slotted it into the plastic sleeve you then have to wear on a lanyard. As you walk into the main room there are a few too many shiny suits and an overpowering smell combination of aftershaves and perfumes. It is at this point that the "host" will come beaming up to you with a big fat smile and a metal name badge to display his significance over anyone else. With a chuckle he reads your name from your badge out loud and instantly becomes adhered to your side like a heavyweight limpet for the next ten minutes. "You must meet Marjorie" he will suggest enthusiastically (Marjorie will normally be free and talking to nobody because all those in the know already avoid her like the plague as she has all the charisma of a meatball) "Marjorie runs a VERY successful business selling egg cups made from recycled garden hose" exclaims the host with enough volume to ensure Marjorie has heard this compliment.

Marjorie is harmless enough, she looks like something between Hyacinth Bucket and Pat Butcher. She tells me how she came up with this "wonderful idea" after her husband Cedric died and she realised that he had far too much garden hose. Her very successful enterprise has online shops on eBay and Amazon but she has not yet reached double figure monthly sales - she just needs one of the big boys like John Lewis to stock her product and then she will be preparing for the call from the producers of Dragons Den.

Marjorie never asks about you or your business and the conversation inevitably falls into an uncomfortable silence. "Excuse me, I must just pop to the loo" gives you the break you need and Marjorie is left alone until the next newbie arrives.

"Ladies and gentleman, please gather around" booms a voice. It's the host again and he is about to launch proceedings. You gather into a crowd in front of him and avoid going anywhere near the front. He waffles on for five minutes or so about how nice it is to see everyone and then it comes...the words we all dread..."can we all now form a circle and tell everybody a little about you and what you do." Everybody shuffles around, those that hang back hoping to escape this ritual are ushered in like a queuing pig at the abattoir. "Who would like to start?" Silence. Everybody is avoiding eye contact and waiting for some poor sod to be volunteered to kick things off. Norman eventually starts, he is an Accountant from Norman & Borem Partners, next up is Kylie, she is a spray tan specialist from Southend. Now it's Deano's turn; he is the International Business Development Director for Plat'num Motors behind the B&Q in Billericay - they deal in "Beemers, Merks and Owdeez but can get 'old of anyfing." 

Now it's your turn, you attempt to recite the same spiel you used at the last 49 of these events and you just about pull it off - not that anyone listened or can remember your name ten seconds after it was said.

Now onto the mini Scotch Eggs and cocktail sausages from a paper plate with someone's homemade relish that tastes like feet.

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? It could all be so much easier! Have two big tables; one for the boys and one for the girls. Put some booze on the table and let things happen naturally. As the session progresses people will swap tables and mix with those they feel an infinity too - that is how business is done. None of you buy anything of someone you don't like or think is an idiot so why on earth do we think there is a great business opportunity to be had by forcing a group of people upon each other in such an unnatural and uncomfortable way?

If you put people together they will find the like-minded others, they will connect and they may do some business. We do not need handholding or to be forced into these embarrassing circles of hell so please stop bloody doing it!!!

It's people that matter!!

It never ceases to amaze me the number of small business owners that want to project an image of being a much bigger entity than they are. Do they really believe that being a small business is a bad thing? Does it make them less committed? Does it make them less reliable or trustworthy?  Of course not, quite the opposite I would say.

A small business owner is much more likely to care, much more likely to need you to pass his details on to others and will be much more grateful when you do. Running a small business can be a tough job, money can often be tight as prices get squeezed by the big boys and there are certainly not thousands or millions of pounds set aside for expensive marketing campaigns. 

So the small business needs are support. No big deal, we've known that for years and many of us try to support the small business when we make buying decisions which can only be a positive. I'm certainly happy to spend more to give my business to small independent businesses.

So why oh why are so many of these businesses launching glossy websites claiming to be a sizeable business offering an extensive range of services, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week??? If I need a tradesman I'm going to look for a small business so please don't hide behind a big frontage as I'm much less likely to call you!

If you're a plumber called Bob Smith who's been in the trade for twenty years then you are the guy for me. If you as Bob Smith call yourself Delta European Plumbing Solutions "plumbing and water flow engineering specialists" I really am not going to call.

Keep it small, keep it honest and keep it local, it really is what so many of us want.

Suited and booted

The chosen attire of a salesperson has been a contentious point of discussion for years. It seems to typically come down to one key issue - should salespeople only wear formal business clothing such as suits?

It is certainly the case with the majority of sales roles that the suit is the popular choice but there are a number of cases when there are valid arguments for not wearing the standard salesperson uniform. Indeed there have been numerous occasions when I have decided against looking too formal and have gone for a more casual look.

Arriving on a building site in an expensive suit will often leave you open to ridicule and covered in mud - here there is certainly an argument for dressing in clothing that will allow the customer to relate to you and also navigate the obstacles on a site in development. It can be a very uncomfortable experience sitting in a Portacabin in a suit whilst surrounded by tradesmen. I have always found it much easier to arrive in a pair of jeans and join them in a mug of tea with three spoons of sugar!

Back in 2000 I attended a sales conference in Phoenix, Arizona where there were over 500 salespeople from the telecoms and IT industry. Not one of the American salespeople wore a suit during their working day - it was very much branded polo shirts and chino's and they introduced themselves as Sales Engineers. For them, they would never consider walking into a customer meeting wearing a suit as they felt that instantly devalued their experience and technical ability.

I have generally left salespeople to choose their own attire and make their own judgements. There will of course be times when they get it wrong but that is how they learn best. The most common time this is an issue is when there are two people from a business attending a meeting together in different clothing choices - this presents a very contradictory message.

These days I never wear a suit. I am sometimes smart, sometimes smart casual and sometimes casual and it has had nothing but a positive effect on the way I'm perceived. Whilst it may seem presumptuous of me, I expect my clients to judge me based on what I deliver and not my attire choice of the day. In most instances it seems to relax my clients who see me as more of a person than a businessman and it is actually extremely rare for any client of mine to wear a suit.

In reality there is no right or wrong. Some people will expect polished shoes, a well-tailored suit and will refuse to accept anyone who does not meet their expectations and others will really not mind. 

Personally I'm not sure it matters!