My client Jerry was threatening to sue. Worse, my programmer was dragging his feet and didn’t see the seriousness of Jerry’s threats. I was on the phone with Jerry for hours at a time.

The custom ordering system we designed for Jerry’s web site needed some small changes that really weren’t affecting the performance of his site. Jerry kept saying that the whole system was flawed and that it needed to be completely redone. However, he already had more than 600 sales adding up to more than $100,000. What to do?

We eventually got all the problems fixed up but Jerry ended up having the site and ordering system redone by another company so Jerry was now out of my hair. Was this a good thing or a bad thing?

Customer retention is crucial in all businesses and handling ticked off customers is a part of growing great long-term relationships. Sometimes you choose not to retain a customer even if they are happy with the work you’re doing. The time and energy they cost you isn’t worth the money you make from them.

High and Fire Clients Judiciously Reflecting on the situation with Jerry, I probably shouldn’t have ever taken him as a client because he smelled of trouble from the outset. The first time I came into Jerry’s shop he was arguing with a customer while I waited. He was unbending and wasn’t willing to make concessions.

Malcolm Gladwell writes of this in his book, “Blink”. We need to be aware of when something doesn’t feel right and do something about it before getting in too deep. I should have just walked. Advertising guru David Ogilvy proudly admitted that he fired more clients than fired him.

It takes bravado and diplomacy to drop a client, especially if they are a big source of income. You have to weigh the headaches they cause with the checks that are deposited in your bank account. Are they worth it?

Setting Expectations Early and Realistically I lost another client around the same time because I did not set expectations. Daniel and I had more of a friendship than a client/vendor relationship. He looked and smelled like a good client, but I realized later that he was a problem. He took a lot of my time and had too high of expectations for the work we were doing for the price he was paying.

If you have a friendship with a client, you still have to set strong boundaries with them. You communicate your expectations and bill them accordingly for the work you do. It’s easy not to bill for your time if someone is a friend. You have to set the expectation that you will be billing them for all the work that you are doing for them.

Don’t Let Problems Fester Daniel and I had a blow up when he misunderstood something that I had written in one of my blogs. He wrote me a strong email that I reacted to in kind by email. If he had read the blog or clicked on the link in the posting he would have seen I had great intentions. And the blog wasn’t even about him—there was just a link on the side of the page pointing to his site.

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