If your business is reliant on providing work for clients, you’ll probably have plenty of experience of dealing with some of the more difficult clients. Whether they’re demanding, difficult to please or outright rude; finding ways to deal with those kinds of clients is something you’ll definitely need to work on. As much as we’d all like to only work with the easy customers/clients, it’s just a fact of life that sometimes we have to deal with difficult people. Here are some tips for how to deal with difficult clients better.

Word Things Carefully and Precisely

When you’re speaking with clients who are very difficult to manage, you need to be clear and precise. That way, you can ensure they’re understanding what you’re trying to get across. The very last thing you need when you’re already dealing with someone who’s quite difficult to manage is miscommunications and misunderstandings. Those kinds of things just make tricky situations even worse and even more difficult to deal with.

Stick to Business

It’s important that you stick to business when you’re dealing with clients that you maybe don’t get on with all too well. Remember, this is a business relationship and you don’t need to be best friends with your clients. In truth, you don’t even need to like them at all. As long as you both stay focused on business and don’t let other issues make the working relationship even messier, it’ll benefit you both.

Try to Meet in Person When Possible

Trying to meet in person is something that will help a lot when you’re managing tricky clients. As we mentioned above, you want communication to be as clear as it can possibly be when you’re managing difficult clients. And meeting in person makes that easier. Face to face communication offers security and clarity, and there are less misunderstandings compared to if you communicated only via email or on the phone. Even in the COVID world we live in, it’s helpful to meet on camera via Zoom or Google Hangouts. That face to face communication can help improve the relationship and transaction.

Make it Clear Delayed Payments Won’t be Tolerated

As a business owner, there’s nothing at all wrong with making it perfectly clear to your clients that delayed and missed payments of owed money won’t be tolerated. It’s best to be clear about this from the outset so that everyone knows where they stand. Mrs. Money and I did this as landlords, we made it abundantly clear in the lease and would send emails early on when we thought a payment would be late. Using a debt collection service that’s particular to your industry niche, such as a cannabis collection agency, is usually a good idea.

If You Need to End the Working Relationship, That’s Okay Too

There’s nothing wrong with coming to the conclusion that the working relationship simply needs to end. Sometimes, companies and their clients are simply not suited to one another, and that’s alright. Going your separate ways and letting them find a team who’ll be able to meet their needs better will ultimately be beneficial to everyone involved. Sometimes, you just need to let go.

Summary

As you can see, there are lots of things you can do to improve the way in which you deal with your most difficult and challenging clients. Each situation is unique, so only you can decide which way forward is going to be the best one for you. Ultimately, it all comes down to what’s best for your business.

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