A few months ago, I interviewed with and was hired by a home owner who wanted to sell and then buy a new home. We'll call this client Beverly. Let's see if you've ever had a Beverly?
From the very beginning, I noticed some red flags with Beverly. Like most of us though, I chose to ignore many of those red flags, and I told myself that I could truly help her and that the feeling I would get by helping and of course, the commission would be well worth the difficulty of dealing with Beverly. After 15 years in this industry, I should know better though. Have you ever spotted red flags and ignored them?
As the relationship wore on, I became more and more worn down by Beverly. It became so bad that I had less time for prospecting and I was less engaged with my best clients. There were many reasons that I should have walked from the relationship but again the hope of a large payday lingered in the back of my mind.
In the end, there were several reasons not to work with a client like Beverly, too many reasons... I want to tell you the 1 reason that I fired Beverly, and let you know that it should be the 1 reason you fire a client too.
The simple reason I let Beverly, and the promise of 2 large commissions, go was because Beverly refused to respect my time and communication boundaries. Is anyone disrespecting your time and communication boundaries?
Beverly would call me 3 to 5 times each and every day. Her conversations were no shorter than 30 minutes long, and she would frequently call me late in the evening. The times that I would not take her calls, would send her into such a rage that I was constantly on egg shells. If I didn't answer immediately she would follow it with a text like; "It is imperative that you call me immediately. I don't know why you refuse to communicate with me when I need you."
I've dealt with difficult clients and I imagine many of you have as well. Even though we do our best to establish expectation of boundaries, there are some clients that absolutely refuse to honor those boundaries. There are times that a lack of boundaries are your fault as the agent, and there are times these are the clients fault and become a fire-able offense. If you are in a place where letting your relationship go is the only answer, you need these 3 simple scripts (Freebie) that will make a firing easier for you.
One bad client can cost you countless hours and many tens of thousands of dollars of future generated income. If you have a Beverly, who refuses to honor your time and communication boundaries, I encourage you to consider letting the relationship go. First, make sure a simple boundaries conversation isn't a fix, but if it isn't... LET THEM GO. It will be worth it.
Firing a client is hard. If you need to fire a client, but don't know how to do it or what to say, grab my freebie below and follow one of the 3 detailed techniques I give. They can make the task much easier.
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