Mudwrestling With Clients

If you can get through an entire career without mudwrestling with a client, consider yourself very lucky. There’s very little that can compare with the economic, reputational, and emotional cost of an ugly dispute with a client, or more accurately, former client.

How bad? In a best case scenario you can cut your losses and move on rapidly. In a worst case, you can go months, even years, crippled in your practice, walk away from huge receivables and work in progress, and sometimes even have to shell out a settlement payment just to make it go away. Think of it this way: $20,000 lost in 2006, if well invested with reinvested dividends would be worth about $80,000 today.

But “win” or lose (you never actually win), the wound never goes away. The aspersions about your professional competence and personal integrity sit forever on the soul. You know you were right, and righteous, but the poison never leaves your system.

Like all professional and business disasters, these are better prevented than solved. If you don’t want to be eaten by the tiger, stay out of the jungle. Smart practice and client management will go a long way to prevent client engagements from turning into nightmares.

Even when you’re new in the business, select your clients wisely. I’ve written about this before, here (https://mailchi.mp/0fabf774be26/resolution-for-15051613?e=[UNIQID]) , and here (https://mailchi.mp/c165091d8f48/resolution-for-15051621?e=[UNIQID]) . Any mismatch between why you’re here and the client is here will invariably lead to some level of grief. Just don’t go there.

Client engagement and management need to be the tightest area of your practice. Do it in a friendly, open fashion, but do it well. All possible questions of who will do what, when, and for how much need to be signed off by the professional and the client. My rule has always been simple: what documents would I want in the file if this all “goes south”?

One of the most frequent causes of discord between clients and professionals is a failure of communication. Having systems in place for reporting and for check-in goes a long way toward lubricating the relationship. Follow up communication setting out, for example, what you believe was covered in a client meeting, is the surest way to ensure you’re not headed southeast when the client thinks you’re headed southwest.

Money is routinely a chief cause of upset. Let’s face it, if you hate a price shock, why wouldn’t your client? Far better to have a client decide not to proceed than to do ten thousand dollars worth of work, get into a huge fight, settle for three thousand (or nothing, or even shell out). If you and the client are not eye to eye on how this is going to work financially, don’t start. And if you haven’t taken reasonable steps to ensure you’re going to get paid (an evergreen retainer is a marvellous thing).

Unrealistic promises and unrealistic expectations are certain trouble waiting to happen. If the file is beyond your scope or present capacity, don’t take it on, and if the client thinks you’re going to build them a castle in Spain, bring them back down to earth or send them away.

Finally, manage continuously. If you get so much as a whiff of a hint of a possibility that you and the client are not on the same line of the same page, call a time out and get things sorted. It does not have to be confrontational, and if done early and diplomatically, seems like a minor course adjustment.

One last note: if the horse does get out of the barn, don’t try to catch it alone. Get help, get advice. Run it by a colleague (with full candor) and if professional help is or may be needed, get that sooner than later.

Prevention is always less costly than repair, and an early repair is always better than a total loss. Your reputation, your finances, and your sanity are all you have.