Alleviating - and Even Avoiding - the Toll of High-Maintenance Clients

Alleviating - and Even Avoiding - the Toll of High-Maintenance Clients

Entrepreneurs are hardworking and conscientious - you wouldn’t be successful in business if that were not the case. No matter how diligent you are at your work, however, there will always be those clients who make you feel like a slacker; like nothing you do is up to their standards. The result is that you feel the relationship is strained and that it’s harder than it has to be to serve this client.

You know the type of clients to whom I’m referring... the ones who:

• Want you (or even expect you) to drop everything when they need something from you
• Don’t respect your professional boundaries regarding business hours, schedule, the advance notice you require
• Drop the ball or are tardy with deliverables necessary for you to do the work, yet expect, miraculously, that there will be no delays and that you’re obligated to work overtime in order to complete their project
• Fail to respect your time by frequently missing meetings, rescheduling or being late
• Micromanage your tasks or oversee you so closely that you feel they might as well spend the time doing the work themselves
• Don’t do you the courtesy of providing regular feedback so you go down wrong paths, wasting your time trying to complete their project
• Are always running into sudden deadlines, without giving adequate time for you to respond
• In general, you sense a lack of basic respect on their part; as if you are subservient to them

These scenarios are unacceptable in a business relationship. No matter how much revenue you pull in from a client, any of the above situations indicate disrespect for your professionalism, ability and experience. It’s of paramount importance that you take action to alleviate these conditions from your existing working relationships - and better yet, avoid them from the beginning. Some actions you can take to ensure that such "high maintenance" clients are set straight (or that guidelines are set forth from the beginning so as to avoid any bad habits or unreasonable expectations from taking root) include:

Cut and dried guidelines that protect your interests and encourage respectful treatment from your clients - Consider and make a list of the things that drain your energy when working with difficult clients like:

• poor time management on their part
• failure to or slow to provide feedback or deliver on promises
• requiring seemingly endless revisions; never satisfied or complete
• pushy, intrusive, disrespectful disregard for your time and boundaries
• pointless involvement with minutia rather than the big picture

Taking the time to proactively self-advocate will go a long way toward helping you avoid the stress and potential burnout those challenging clients can cause.

Once you have a list of guidelines to work from, craft some policies that include:

Client requirements with consequences/penalties for failure to comply - Write up an agreement that addresses these issues, their negative effect on your workflow and job satisfaction, and what the consequences of violating those guidelines will be. For example, put in writing the total number of revisions you are willing to do on the project. Offer extra rounds at additional cost so there will be ramifications for failing to provide clear expectations/guidelines as the project progressed.

Clear, yet friendly. communication of said guidelines - Devising guidelines is all well and good but they must be articulated to clients in such a way that they don’t sound defensive or overly restrictive. This is a great time to establish mutual expectations such as a statement like this: "I may occasionally send an email past regular business hours. However, I do not expect a response until the next day at your convenience. If an email is urgent, I will indicate such. Please afford me the same courtesy with regard to work-related issues during non-business hours.

Ideally, you arm yourself with a set of empowering guidelines from the get-go so every client will know what you need in order to feel professionally respected and heard. If, however, you’re already doing the dance of "not-enoughness" with some of your clients, it’s not too late to take action on your own behalf. Explain how the disrespectful behavior negatively affects you; there is a possibility they don’t realize that they are causing an issue for you. Suggest an alternative, e.g., "I know you are dedicated to the quality of the project - as am I. I do my best work when I'm free of the distractions of your frequent oversight; I think you'll be pleased with the results if you give me more autonomy." If efforts to ameliorate the challenges posed by the client diplomatically, you may - for the sake of your own professional satisfaction - need to sever ties with them. You don't have to work under those conditions - it's another boon to entrepreneurship.

How do you deal with "high maintenance" clients?