FIRING CUSTOMERS

I know this may sound strange. Perhaps it sounds counterintuitive. It may not make a whole lot of sense to you, especially if you’re in the very beginning stages of starting a business. But sometimes, and I’m serious as a heart attack here, sometimes you just got to pull the trigger and “FIRE A CUSTOMER!” Have you ever FIRED A CUSTOMER?

FIRING CUSTOMERS may sound like a paradox, or an oxymoron. You know what that is, right? Two contradictory words used together!? Like ACT NATURALLY, JUMBO SHRIMP, PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE, RANDON ORDER, SMALL CROWD, and WALKING DEAD. Yogi Berra once said: “No one goes to that restaurant any more. It’s always too crowded!”

So FIRING CUSTOMERS sounds like a contradiction. Something you would NEVER want to do when you’re in business and need more customers, want more customers, and spend money to attract more customers. Most customers are, for the most part, good customers! BUT, there are those rare cases when FIRING A CUSTOMER is completely justified. 

Why would ever want to FIRE a CUSTOMER? I’ll give you five things customers do that may justify giving them their walking papers.

1)     They have DEMANDS that are too HIGH

Some customers just expect too much. In our business, it’s common for them to want us to come out and clean before we’re able to get there. We have customers that are already scheduled, and it may mean they need to wait a week or longer before we’re able to get there. Perhaps you have a customer who wouldn’t mind being delayed, and that’s fine. But you just want to be careful and make sure you don’t lose a good customer over the unrealistic demands of a bad one! They might also have unrealistic expectations about how clean the surface is going to end up, or whether we’re able to completely remove a certain stain. 

2)      They want EVERYTHING for NOTHING

Negotiating is certainly a big part of our business, whether the estimate is $150 and they counter with $125, or the estimate is a full week project that’s $47,000 and they counter with $38,000. Every customer, even the best customers, want to get the best possible deal they can. And, the larger the project estimate, the more tendency there will be for NEGOTIATING! 

But if a customer is overly pushy and overly emotional about pricing from the very start, it’s almost like strike one or a red flag right off the bat. They probably grumble over every invoice, ask for extra work outside of what was agreed to, and in general just do not properly value professional work.  

As long as your pricing is fair and your work is high quality, then you shouldn’t worry about losing customers who just want the cheapest service they can get. Let them go get it, and then they’ll be frustrated with the results, and will most likely call you back and ask you to come make it right. We’ve seen it hundreds of times in my business. I remember this one time when a customer in a brand new neighborhood went the cheap route to remove fertilizer rust stain from the sidewalk. They didn't remove it, they just spread it out wider throughout the brand new sidewalk. It ruined the cream in the process. Then, they called us to fix it!

3)      They are SLOW to make PAYMENT

When customers are slow to make payment, it disrupts cash flow and hurts your business. Sometimes it’s intentional, and they hope the delay turns into your forgetting and they end up not paying at all. Obviously, you’ll never work for a customer again that still has an outstanding balance. 

But sometimes it’s not intentional. It’s just that that they’re too busy or too disorganized or maybe they wish the payment method was easier and quicker. Nowadays, people are paying bills and many other things with their phones. This begs the question, is it easy for your customers to make payment?

It’s always recommended to have two to three months of “safety funds” so that slow clients don’t affect your ability to meet your obligations on time. Perhaps there is a good reason for the delay such as medical emergency, a death in the family, or they lost their job. But if one particular customer is always paying late or always needs multiple reminders, perhaps it’s time to consider giving them a pink slip.    

4)     They TALK more than they LISTEN

Listen carefully! YOU ARE THE PROFESSIONAL IN YOUR INDUSTRY! Not them!  It never ceases to amaze me when customers want to put up their few hours of internet research up against my 30 years of experience! There are always those customers who won’t listen to you because they think they know better. In fact, they’re gonna try to give you an education. On the one hand, they have hired you for your expertise and experience in the field. Yet, on the other hand, they are ready to edit and revise your work, make suggestions for improvements. They will LITERALLY tell you how to do your job. 

Customers who talk more than they listen sometimes pay well, maybe even very well. But working with them is a HEAD ACHE that Tylenol won’t touch! It means you have to deal with a lot of stress, there’s no job satisfaction, and what are you going to do when you have to fix the end result because you did it the way they requested rather than the way you knew was best? You’ll have to really evaluate whether the “better pay” for “more talk” is really worth it in the end.  

5)     They don’t SHOW adequate RESPECT

What do you when you have an appointment with a customer for an estimate, but then they don’t show up? What about when they are rude to you or your crew? In cases like this, customers lack basic manners. It’s not just you, this is how they treat everyone. From their own kids to the restaurant server to people they work with daily, they’re just difficult people. They eat up your valuable time and they drain your organization emotionally. They are morale killers everywhere they go, and they put a damper on your business. We all know that sometimes there are legitimate emergencies, but usually it’s no emergency. They just put their own business before yours. Sometimes it’s personal business, sometimes it’s their professional business.   

But THIS IS WHY BASIC RESPECT is so important in our industry! Maybe you send a $25 invoice for no show estimate appointments? It’s very common for Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers, and many others to charge for no show appointments. Listen, your time is just a valuable as theirs! And if they don’t show basic respect for you, your organization and your time, then let’s not lose any more capital on them than you’ve already spent. Time to dismiss them, right? Time to let them go! They're FIRED!

Let me close with this. In a book called “LIFESTORMING” (by Marshall Goldsmith and Alan Weiss), they recommend firing the bottom 10%-15% of your customer base every two years. For those of you who are gardeners (and for Christians the Bible uses this concept in the gospel of John chapter 15), you know the importance of PRUNING. In a garden, you have to PRUNE the plants, that is, cut back some of the bad wood and branches that are dead or dying to make more room for healthy branches and open up more room so that more fruit can grow in. It’s called PRUNING! That’s what you’re doing with dead wood, unprofitable customers. You’re pruning them to make more room for good ones to grow into your business. 

Now no customer is perfect, and there are certainly times when you have to overcome challenges and solve problems that customers create. But if a customer complains constantly about trivial things and just seems to always have a problem, FIRE THAT CUSTOMER! If they’re mean and abusive to your employees, or when they ask you to engage in illegal or unethical practices, just say Mr CUSTOMER, YOU’RE FIRED! 

Now as with any time you have to fire someone, you want to do it right! Do it respectfully! Do it in such a way that you won’t regret how you handled it the next day! Be appreciative and positive and thank them for the opportunity to have served them. Something like “Hey, we really appreciate you giving us a try…” goes a long way to ease tensions and leave things with good vibes. In no way shape or form do you want to in any way attack the customer on a personal level. Just state from a professional perspective (and perhaps even shoulder the blame here) that our prices were too high and we couldn’t perform the work profitably. Or perhaps the quality of our work just wasn’t up to your standards. 

If there is a way for you to extend goodwill by not collecting payment for the most recent service or providing a partial refund, go for it! You want to end it as positively as possible because you still want a fired customer to have good things to say about your company! And if you can handle it, if you’re pride can stand it, apologize! I know I know, they owe YOU an apology. I get that!  But there’ll be no resentment if you shoulder responsibility. How does this sound: “We’d like to think we’re a good fit for everyone, but not necessarily this time, and we apologize for that!” Finally, perhaps recommend a competitor. Maybe a smaller organization would be a better fit, perhaps a company that’s more local or that might be a little cheaper or provide the kind of service they need. You want to end it as positively as you can!