How to Work & Handle Problematic Clients?

It’s always that one client who knows just how to ruin your day.

You see their name on your phone when it rings or in your inbox and the dread pools in your stomach. “Maybe it’s not that bad,” you tell yourself. Maybe they just have a question.

But sure enough, it’s a doozy. Your recent work is performing like garbage, or they really can’t make their payments this month, or they have “just a few little changes” that are neither few nor little.

You know the client I’m talking about.

Every agency or consultant who’s been in the industry longer than a day has worked with problem clients.

Sometimes they show their bad side right away, and sometimes they wait until you’re halfway through a 6-month contract. Either way, it can be bad enough to make you seriously consider if this business is worth all the hassle.

But just because everyone has to deal with problem clients at some point doesn’t mean you need to just “deal with it.” You deserve to enjoy your work, to open your inbox without fear, to put out your best and know it’s appreciated.

This is entirely achievable with just a few small shifts to how you run your business. And we collected them all here for you today with the help of some of our best and brightest DM Certified Partners. So here are a few tricks for how to navigate working with problem clients.

You Don’t NEED to Work with Problem Clients

The first thing you need to understand is that you absolutely do not need to work with these kinds of clients. It doesn’t matter how cash strapped you feel or “under qualified” you think you are.

Keeping clients who stir up trouble and make you hate your job will always do your business more harm than good. So if someone is a bad egg, you should feel empowered to turn the away.

But every agency will have a few bad ones crop up, and it’s not uncommon to go through a phase where it feels like you are only getting problem clients. Luckily, there are a few things you can do that will set you up to prevent these kinds of clients from either grinding your job satisfaction into the dirt or tanking your close rate.

Discover how to you should be handling irritating clients and how to navigate working with them on a day-to-day basis.

Read more here.