Evolution #4 - No Dickheads Allowed...

Customers Are Where the Problems Start for Most...

Which brings me back to that Saturday morning and this dickhead customer. You see, three days earlier – and against my better judgement – I agreed to help. And let’s be clear this help was outside of our contract, outside of our agreement and outside of our time allocated.

In other words, I was helping an existing customer, for free. Because he’d asked, and because I was being nice. This phone call was a direct result of him not being happy with the “FREE” help my business had provided.

My diagnosis?

If You Give Them an Inch, They Will Take a Mile...

Which is why, in my opinion, some customers are dumb, stupid and should be avoided at all costs!

Chances are if you’ve ever seen a customer’s name flash up on email, on the phone, or in a message and thought, “fuck… them again,” then I suspect you already know first-hand exactly what I’m talking about.

Which begs the question, why do we always place the customer as the King Of The Hill?

Because here’s the problem when you do.

It Puts Them in Control...

And it empowers them, NOT you. And here’s what most don’t realise about the practical implications of that power transfer:

• You lose your respect.

• You lose your loyalty.

• You lose your peace of mind.

The funny thing is, this shift is subtle yet the consequences for you and your control can be catastrophic. Which is why when it comes to customers you want to look out for any that are:

• Demanding you give free help.

• Demanding you pick up the phone when it rings.

• Demanding you reply to an email as soon as it pings.

• Demanding you do anything and everything for them, at the drop of a hat, even out-of-hours and at the weekend.

Because truth be told, in the cold, hard light of day...

If Not Controlled, Good Money Can – and Will – Always Turn Bad...

The all-too-familiar situation of a cash cow becoming a poisoned chalice. Sometimes it’s a week, sometimes it’s a month, sometimes it’s a year or even more, but it’s never a matter of IF it’s ALWAYS a matter of WHEN.

And when that tipping point is reached, you must take that customer out to the field and deliver a swift bullet to the head. No matter how long they’ve been with your business and no matter how much money they’ve passed your way.

Tenure and Monetary Value Is No Excuse for Being a Dick...

The point you need to understand is that just because they are an existing customer, you don’t have to keep taking their money.

In fact, unless you are contractually obliged, I’ll have you consider:

• You don’t have to answer their calls.

• You don’t have to reply to their emails.

• You don’t have to obey their demands.

Because you, my friend, have the power to choose to totally ignore their noise.

Stopping the ensuing stress, fatigue and panic that they bring – dead in its tracks. Meaning you can choose to continue enjoying your evenings, your weekends and your day-to-day life by refusing to respond when the bell rings. Or better still:

You Must Sack All Toxic and Dickhead Customers...

I remember being sat across the table from the great Dan Kennedy who muttered these fateful words to the room:

“A sacked toxic customer will always be quickly replaced by someone better...”

A very real phenomenon I have witnessed and experienced over and over and over again. It’s why every quarter I urge you to run a PURGE to eradicate any and all blood-sucking leeches from your business.

The Purge 
verb 
A process for customer control, where the poor, the time-intensive, and annoying are weeded out for the benefit of the high-paying, fun to work with, and profitable... so you no longer have to sacrifice time (or money) to keep dickhead customers happy or onboard.

In other words, it’s a process to regularly sack customers that have gone bad. Because life is too short. Especially when there are other people that should be allowed to demand more of your time than is currently on offer.

Now, here’s a good rule of thumb to determine which customers should go and which customers should stay.

Start asking yourself this question: How do you feel when you see their name pop up on your phone?

If the answer is: “Oh shit, it’s them – again!”

Then, my friend, it’s time to sack them and eradicate them from your business immediately.

Sacking Customers Will Actually Make You Money...

Take Steve Timmis, the man at the helm of an accounting practice. Now Steve was on a slippery slope. The occasional late night at the office had fast become a daily ritual of not setting foot back in the house much before 8 p.m., 9 p.m., and more often than not 11 p.m. in the evening – after a 6 a.m. start.

Unfortunately, his home life wasn’t the only thing that was suffering at the hands of this “successful” growth. Over the last six months Steve had begun noticing that not only was he personally hitting Overstretch, but members of his eleven-strong team were too.

Leaving a toxic atmosphere of back-biting and undermining starting to take control inside of the office. It was at that moment that Steve started running the numbers. Interestingly he found that 20% of his clients were requiring 80% of his time. Made worse by the fact that it was this same 20% that were paying the least AND demanding the most.

Which Just Goes to Show the Dickhead Demands Must Stop...

It’s why Steve decided that the 20% must go, and be SACKED in one giant client cull. A BIG gamble, especially when you consider that this immediately wiped a huge chunk off the bottom line of his business, at a time when he had 11 people expecting a paycheque at the end of the month.

The upshot being that Steve and his business could finally focus on serving his higher-paying customers that were more deserving of the time, the energy and the attention. Something in turn that allowed them to start creating more opportunities, to sell more services, to more existing clients.

Empowering Steve to focus on starting to attract more of the RIGHT kind of customers to fill the void.

The funny thing was, it only took Steve and his team 31 days to replace the customers that had been sacked.

The good news about this is that all of the new clients were hand-picked and scored against Steve’s NEW Rules Of Engagement – meaning they were more profitable and less work. Twelve months on and Steve has doubled his business, and done so without sacrificing control at home or work to any dickhead customers.

THE REVELATION FROM THE LAW

The self-made man understands that there is REAL POWER in choosing with whom you do business.

The good news is that when you do:

• You stop panicking when the phone rings.

• You stop being held to ransom to dickhead demands.

• You stop the relentless pressure of being bent over a barrel in the evenings and at the weekends, and you can finally start taking back control.

I have sacked no fewer than 10 customers over the last five years and have not regretted a single one. Some I personally liked. Some I still personally call friends. BUT all demanded that I sacrificed my control, for them. So they had to go. In every instance:

• It increases respect.

• It increases loyalty.

• It increases freedom.