The Art of Business: How to Lose and Prosper
Advertising legend Jay Chiat once said, “You start losing a client the moment you get it.”
Not a sunny thought, but it’s painfully accurate as anyone who’s been in business for a length of time can testify. The fall out from the loss of a client can run the gamut from emotionally devastating to economically ruinous.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, not if you plan for the loss before it happens. Here are a few tips for keeping clients as long as possible and surviving the loss when they say goodbye.
Choose your clients as carefully as they choose you. As human beings, we’re inclined to accept anyone who accepts us. But chemistry with a client is often just as important as good design when it comes to determining the health and length of relations. If you find that you have major concerns or objections about a client during the courting phase, or if you clearly anticipate a clash of cultures before you even begin to work with each other, save yourself the heartbreak later and walk before you invest the initial time and effort necessary to keep the relationship going. Discretion is the hallmark of the true professional.
Keep your client portfolio balanced. It’s far easier to advocate for a balanced client portfolio than to maintain one. After all, who in their right mind is going to decline a major account in the name of client balance? The most apparent risk, of course, it that the loss of a large client will leave you in a financial lurch. But the loss of a large client can have organizational repercussions as well; big clients and complex projects often require big teams and lots of organization, while smaller clients need small, responsive teams. So as your balance changes, so must the character of your organization. If you thrive primarily on large or small accounts, you’ll want to stay focused that way. If you’re truly talented, try setting up your organization to handle all sizes, but plan on some managerial wizardry should a major client leave you.
Keep your client portfolio diversified. As many creative professionals painfully discovered during the dot-com crash, industries can topple. The antidote is to keep your fingers in a number of industries, so if a recession hits one you’ve got steady work in others. One good way to diversify is to stake out emerging and growing markets in which to get in on the ground floor.
Diversify your services. Stay with your expertise, but don’t be afraid to dabble in new areas. If you’re a master of corporate identity, try trade show and annual report work. If you’re a Web designer, extend your trade to include PDF creation and workflow.
Stay flexible. If you lose a client, be ruthless in cutting costs quickly. This may mean painful layoffs or moving into less expensive office space. Keep all your options open and take whatever action is necessary to keep your company afloat. As we’ve stated often in this column, poor cash flow is the number one killer of small businesses.
Market aggressively. Nothing soothes the wound of client loss better than the salve of a new client. Go ahead, spend a day mourning the loss, then get back up and do what’s necessary to find a replacement.
Reevaluate your company. Not every client loss, obviously, is your fault. Clients leave for all sorts of reasons. But every loss is a fine opportunity to reevaluate how you might have managed the relationship differently or at least seen the warning signs coming. Could you have made financial or service adjustments? Could you have improved client relations? Take the opportunity to ask your client what you could have done differently.
Keep lines of communications open. Today your client might not need your services, but one day that very same client might be awash with cash or find themselves in a new position with a company that actually has money to spend. If you want to be on the top of the list, remain in touch during the interim. Drop an e-mail or, better yet, send a stamped hand-written note every once in a while. If you need a reason to make contact, include a tidbit of valuable information — inside news about a competitor, a newspaper clipping on a subject of interest, or a hyperlink to some related site. Today’s pink slip can be tomorrow’s paycheck.
Avoid foolish deals. In dating it’s the dreaded rebound relationship, and the same dynamic happens in business. When you lose a client, it’s easy to get desperate. As always, you’ll have your share of clients propositioning you with deals to work for cut rates or (greatly) delayed payments. But even when you need to fill a void fast, try not to take a job that is unprofitable or doesn’t provide some tangible value to you, such as an entrée into a hard-to-crack market.
Don’t let it get you down. Rejection hurts, but don’t let it stop you from maintaining a healthy self-respect, a positive attitude, and a professional demeanor. Pick yourself up and keep going because the alternative is simply not acceptable.
This article was last modified on December 14, 2022
This article was first published on April 14, 2003
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