Now before anyone decides to have a melt down, at no point in this blog will I suggest carrying out actual bodily harm on anyone. That part of things is entirely up to you – if you feel you do actually need to push a customer under a bus, then you have bigger problems than I can solve and will need reliable legal support to boot. No, when I talk about pushing under a bus, it’s a turn of phrase/a euphemism not an instruction – OK? Good. Now let’s get started.
When I first started out in business a very, very long time ago, like many of us, I simply was grateful for anyone who would buy from me. Anyone. At all. To make a sale & justify all the time & effort I was putting in to trying to get things off the ground was satisfying, quantifying & I won’t lie, looking at money coming in to my bank account rather than just going out was satisfying too.
And then time moves on, your business grows, your offering changes, and you effectively move your business into second, third & fourth gear, and before you know it, you’ve flipped the overdrive switch (google that) and you are cruising in the outside lane & it’s happy days.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (If you really think running a business works like that, then you really do need to talk to me)
The reality is less simple. The reality is that your business moves on, your business grows in fits & starts, sometimes taking one step forward for every two backwards/to the side/in a circle, missing a gear change and occasionally stalling all together. All of this is OK. All of this is fixable if you want it to be.
But your toxic customers aren’t. They won’t fix themselves - that’s down to you, and the thing is – you might not want to.
Shocker I know.
So what is a ‘toxic customer’ for your business? There is no simple off the cuff answer to this really as everyone's business is different, but to try and simplify it as much as I can, they are the ones that make you miserable.
- The ones that make you groan out loud when you see their number pop up on your phone.
- The ones that make you drop your head in your hands when you see their email pop in your inbox.
- The ones that simply drain all the joy out of your day when they contact you.
- They are the ones you want to push under a bus (remember the earlier comment).
They are, in fact, your personal business dementors.
And you need to get rid of them.
Now I know that sounds scary – really I do – I mean, what kind of business coach am I if I’m telling you to sack your clients??! One who has been there, done that, and knows it works – that’s who.
A few years ago, I had a very high maintenance client who was paying me a lot of money, but equally driving me insane with their lack of boundaries. They would contact me 24/7, send an email and then immediately follow it up with a text/phone call/whatsapp (not one of these – all of these) to demand an instant reply, repeat this if I didn’t respond and would do this up to 20 times a day. Every day.
After a while, it meant I felt all of the things I mention above. I dreaded contact from them. It made me feel anxious as their communication was always confrontational, annoyed that there was a lack of professional respect that I simply couldn’t seem to change, angry at myself about it and generally made me not a very nice person to be around.
So I needed a plan.
And I came up with one.
And now I am sharing it with you in my Customer Audit Mini Course. This is my 4 step plan that I came up with to help get me out of the toxic client situation, and I’ve been using it ever since – because it works.
So if you have clients who make you feel like all the joy has been sucked out of your world when they contact you, you need this.
Grab yours now – you can find it HERE.