Do have customers that you wish you didn’t? Ones that flip-flop what they need halfway thru the project. Or worse, at the end. The revenue seems hardly worth the effort.
We had one recent client who said that we were complying with their safety rules for the equipment we were building. Until suddenly we weren’t complying. “This needs to be resolved now”, etc. Ugh!
Well Sean De’Sousa of Psychotactics.com made this suggestion in his recent newsletter titled How To Get Rid of Cancer Clients: The Riot Act:
“‘Ms. Client, we have a clause, called the Riot Act. We’ll do everything in our power to do all of the above. And you in turn should do all in your power to help us do our job. The moment you run into issues with us, you have the right to fire us. The moment we run into issues with you, we have the right to fire you. Is that fair?’
Watch for the client’s eyes to pop.
Watch as her jaw drops.
Watch as the pencil tumbles in slow motion to the floor.”
Sean may have more flexibility to fire a services client than we can, because we are building something physical as a one-time project. But his point should be valid: the terms of the relationship need to be more explicit than seems necessary at the beginning.
Quotations, fine print, and unseen ‘policies’ are often used as CYA tools after the fact. But is there a step in your business process that outlines what you will and won’t do?
I think it could be as easy as the salesperson highlighting lines in the quote prior to taking the order. I’ve felt better when salespeople I am buying from warn me about what will or won’t happen ‘back at the office’. At least I know where I stand.
But fear of losing a sale may cause them to keep their mouth shut. Then you are stuck with the ‘cancer client’. That’s why adding the ‘riot act’ as an explicit step makes sense. Maybe its smarter to have it come after the order, and from the ‘home office’, to squelch whatever the salesperson may have implied or promised, and to establish a tone of control. (Just don’t sound evil when you do it, as I think that’s a real risk.)