10 Secret Reasons Why You Lose Clients
Posted November 21, 2010 in Managing Clients
Have you ever lost a client and then wondered why?
Of course, you can always ask your client what went wrong, but many will not tell you. They may be afraid of hurting your feelings or they may just want to avoid a potentially unpleasant confrontation with you.
Since I use freelancers once in a while that puts me in the unique position of being a freelancer and also an occasional client of freelancers. So, today I put my client hat on for a change and listed all the things that I could think of that would keep me from rehiring a freelancer.
Things That You Did Wrong
Sometimes, when you lose a client it IS because of something that you did. Here are five things that would cause me not to rehire a freelancer:
- You didn’t listen. Clients like it when freelancers pay attention to what they need. They expect that freelancers will follow their instructions and ask questions if they don’t understand or have a problem with what they are being asked to do.
- You were late. Admittedly, some deadlines are arbitrary, but others are not. While everyone can have an emergency once in a while, continually missing a due date is a major problem. If the project is tied to a launch or deliverable, being late might even cost your client money.
- You were rude/disrespectful. There’s really no excuse for being rude or disrespectful to a client. Even if you understand what the client needs better than they do themselves, you should still be courteous to your client. No one wants to be treated badly.
- You have a bad reputation. It’s really important to monitor your online reputation. Believe me, most of your clients know enough to search on your name or your business name to find out what others are saying about you. Do you know your online reputation?
- I expected more. Like any consumer, clients want to get a good value for their money. However, sometimes your writing may fail to excite them or your design may fail to dazzle them. When this happens, they move on to a freelancer who can deliver something more to their taste.
Of course, sometimes you lose a client due to other factors.
It’s Not You, It’s Me
It may sound like a cliché, but sometimes when you lose a client it has NOTHING to do with you. Here are some of those instances:
- I can’t afford your services. Many clients are actually small businesses themselves or even start ups. Their budget is limited. If your experience puts you at the top of the price range for your field, it’s possible that they truly can’t afford to hire you, even if they would like to.
- I only need your type of services every once in a while. Some clients only need the services of a freelancer infrequently. If your client falls in this category they may indeed contact you again, but you shouldn’t rely on them for regular gigs.
- I’ve changed my business direction and no longer need you. Just like a freelancer, a client can change their business direction. Sometimes that changed direction means that their business no longer needs the services of a freelancer. When this happens just remember it is not personal.
- I found someone else. Yes, it’s true. Some clients are just plain fickle. They liked you once, but now they have a new favorite. You didn’t do anything wrong, the client just wants to try a new freelancer out and a few clients even flit from freelancer to freelancer.
- I forgot about you. This is one of the saddest reasons to lose a client. The client may have been perfectly happy with your work and may even wish to rehire you, but they have lost your contact information. Unless you get back in touch, they won’t be able to use your services again.
More About Managing Clients
Managing clients is a tricky, but important freelancing skill. Here are some more posts on Freelance Folder that might help:
- How to Keep a Mistake from Losing You a Client
- Why You Are Losing Clients and How to Stop
- The Art of Mastering Client Relations
Your Turn
Can you think of other reasons that might cause a client to stop using a freelancer?
Share your ideas in the comments.
Image by Orin Zebest
Related posts:
- The Secret to Landing Clients Nearly 100% of the Time
- 7 Reasons to Consider Small Clients
- Seven Reasons Not to Meet with Prospective Clients
- Give Your Clients Good Enough Reasons To Do Business With You Again
- Biting The Bullet: 5 Reasons Why Arguing With Unruly Clients Will Get You Nowhere
About the author: Laura Spencer is a freelance writer from North Central Texas with over 20 years of professional business writing experience. If you liked this post, then you may also enjoy Laura’s blog about her freelance writing experiences, WritingThoughts. Laura is also on Google+.
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32 Comments
Chris @ SyracuseCS
November 21st, 2010 at 9:05 amLaura, great post! Luckily the the only way I lose clients is that they go out of business. With the state of the economy over the past two years and still now, there have been a few that have, unfortunately, gone out of business. There have been the occasional client that has left for whatever reason, but most of the time they were a trouble client anyways. Others might have only wanted me for a one-time project/task, so I didn’t even really count them in my client base. I have some tips to help you to make sure that you are protected from losing clients:
1. Communicate everything – Be prompt and detailed in your responses. If you have a question about some work, give them a call or shoot out an email. It’s better to ask “too many” questions then to do a job wrong and look bad.
2. Handle objections/questions before they even come up – Most freelancers have a process they go through when they do work, tell your client about this so they know what is happening. Most clients have no idea how much time some things take, an educated client is a happy one. For example, I do a lot of web maintenance for clients. When I get a new potential client that is interested in that service. I tell them my price for the work, and the process: Most simple text/image changes are done within 2 business days, programming changes can take up to 5 business days. If it’s something I think will be more than 5 business days, I will let you know in advance. Once the work has been done, I will notify you so that you can double check to make sure everything is done correctly.
By doing this it sets the stage for your clients’ expectations. Sometimes clients think it will take “5 minutes” to make a change because it seems simple. While this might be the case, you cannot put down other current work just to make their change. Give yourself ample time to finish the work. If you are continually bouncing around doing different clients’ work, you will never get anything done. Schedule it and let them know it will be done.
3. Stay in touch – As you stated above, some people just forget about you. It’s not that you did a bad job, your clients just don’t think of you on a daily basis. If you haven’t heard from a client in a while, just send them a quick email asking how business is. You would be amazed with the response you get. Some people want your services again, but it’s just not always a top priority for them. A little poke might be what they need to get the ball rolling. I send out emails, letters, personal notes, newsletters, and cards around the holidays. If you keep in touch with your clients your business will flourish.
I hope that helped!
-Chris
Sponsi
November 21st, 2010 at 10:28 amI have a proposition for an article: Do you cherish your clients before holidays like Christmas, Easter, etc? I’m thinking about sending some postcards to people I know and have done things for but I don’t know if it’s something only companies do or freelancers may do as well. I want to write something different from the usual text like “Happy this and that…”. What do you think?
paul
November 21st, 2010 at 11:10 aminteresting insight, thanks. The last one is quite easily avoided by keeping a mailing list of all prospects and past clients. Then you can regularly send them a newsletter or quick email about your latest blog post or maybe a new offering to remind them of you.
Melissa
November 21st, 2010 at 11:42 am@Sponsi: I’m a freelancer and I’m sending out cards this year to all the clients I’ve done work for in the last two years. I’m keeping them strictly about celebrating the holidays and not actively soliciting work from my clients. I’m a designer so I designed them myself – which was a fun way for me to really get creative and still keep in touch with them without being too in their face.
Bjarte Edvardsen
November 21st, 2010 at 2:16 pmAnother reason could be “I didn’t enjoy working with you”, which could be because of “You were rude/disrespectful”, but not necessarily.
Having a smooth way of communicating, being super-positive no matter what, wearing such and such clothes etc. seems to be factors that often adds to the whole, unfortunately, when it comes to more direct collaboration and work that requires a lot of offline contact.
daba
November 21st, 2010 at 3:44 pmI left my freelancer because she didn’t keep up with industry standards. She still uses html tables.
If your a freelancer, it will greatly help you if you keep up with canges and learn some html5, CSS3 and jQuery.
Laura Spencer
November 21st, 2010 at 5:51 pmGreat feedback on this post!
Chris @ SyracuseCS–It sounds like you understand how to hang on to clients. :) Thanks for the additional tips.
Sponsi, We’ll be dealing with holiday issues later this week. Stay tuned!
paul–You’re exactly right. Sadly, not every freelancer keeps a client list.
Bjarte Edvardsen, Communication skills are crucial to business.
daba–Thanks for sharing that. It’s important to keep skills current.
Jody
November 21st, 2010 at 6:43 pmThanks for the great post. I like that it’s titled “secret reasons” because often the reasons are unknown to you – or even intentionally kept from you. Here are some more I’ve encountered:
One of the most common “secret reasons” for many issues with clients is simply that the client doesn’t have a great understanding of their needs. They thought you’d be the answer to their problems, but they really needed something else entirely. It’s like they scheduled an appointment with a dentist to get help fixing their plumbing, and they get frustrated when the dentist they’re paying can’t plug their leaking pipes.
Sometimes the client’s boss overrides the decision to use your services. The client may have never even had permission from their boss to hire you in the first place. Decisions are often made by people higher in the food chain, and your contact may not share that information with you.
The client’s priorities may have changed. The day they hired you was they day they were getting chewed out by their boss for not having this back-logged project done yet. A week later, their boss is chewing them out over a different project, so you get put on the back burner while they put out other fires.
The client may have had wildly unrealistic expectations. They were banking on your ability to move mountains for peanuts. They wanted to cruise off the lot in the luxury and class of a Mercedes-Benz for the price of a Hyundai.
The client may be a diva who wants a “yes-man.” When some people pay for a service, they seem to think that they’re also buying the right to treat the person providing the service like a sub-human servant. You may provide world-class service and interact with the client in the most professional and courteous manner possible, but the fact that you don’t throw rose petals at their feet and jump to satisfy their every whim makes them believe you are a sub-standard service provider.
As morbid as it may sound, you may have been set up to fail. The client may have screwed up or waited too long to tackle a problem, and you are a convenient scapegoat. Sometimes they’ll even turn their short-sightedness around on you, saying something like “I thought it would be a breeze for a so-called expert like you to whip out this miracle.”
As freelancers, we are sometimes blissfully ignorant of how office politics work, which can make us easy targets for snakes who are slithering just to hold on to their jobs. As employees, we trade the illusion of “job security” for these types of headaches in the workplace. As freelancers, our livelihood depends on our ability to spot situations like these and navigate them successfully – or avoid them altogether. That’s why managing expectations may be the number one skill that contributes the most to our success.
Erkan Yilmaz
November 21st, 2010 at 7:02 pmHi Laura,
It’s a great post … but I’ve a question.
I just started as freelancer … I love to design and do it with passion. But when I visit the portfolio of other freelancers and I must say that their work isn’t up-to-date. I’m very sorry to say that but there are some designers … they don’t deserve the title “designer”. They don’t have any ( or too little ) knowledge about html, php, css or scripting.
I don’t want to be disrespectfully for their work but … may I or can I offer better services or design to the owner of the site ? How do you think about it ?
Stephanie
November 21st, 2010 at 7:40 pmGreat post Laura! Being dishonest with your work and your agreement/contract is another way to lose a client and vice versa. Since freelance work is usually remote, it’s difficult to trust someone you’ve never met personally because of the many risks like non-payment or low quality work. The best way to avoid and prevent is to be honest and reliable to yourself and to the people you work with.
TLC
November 21st, 2010 at 11:26 pmPut mine under “missed deadline.” Just talked to my partner about a Web site that is supposed to be ready tomorrow & won’t be. Apparently he and his programmer think that a deadline is a target to aim for and if you miss it, oh well. . . I could lose $10,000 to $20,000 in income over this, not to mention what it will do to my reputation. And now I’m supposed to take my laptop with me on my holiday vacation so I can be sure I’m available for the programmer in case he decides to work!!! Call this a nightmare as well as a tough lesson learned.
John White
November 22nd, 2010 at 11:51 amAssuming you’re a reasonably conscientious businessperson, “I forgot about you” is the one to watch most carefully. It’s also the one over which you have the most control.
Try this: Every time you make a deliverable – a page, a program, a speech, an interview with an editor – suggest the next one.
Odd story: When my dad died and I had to phone his clients to let them know I was going to tie things up for him, the first thing his longest-standing client said was, “Bob always kept me on my toes, reminding me about trade shows, editorial calendars and placement ideas.”
Jacob
November 22nd, 2010 at 4:24 pmagreed especially with being late, and not listening.
Thanks for posting this,
-Jake, @Clombings and @elliottdesign
Ajeva
November 23rd, 2010 at 4:31 pmInteresting list you’ve got there. I guess, many seasoned freelancers are used to these reasons already, especially those they can’t control themselves. I don’t like to be grim here but another reason I can think of is that your client become terminally ill or suddenly met death in the face — and you lose a project. Worse, you don’t even know it happened and you were left wondering what’s wrong after more than a week of zero communication. I hope clients will be responsible enough to leave some instructions to their loved ones when this happens ( I’m crossing my fingers ).
Vivek Parmar
November 23rd, 2010 at 4:35 pma nice post for freelancers. only tell people in which you’re good and don’t go beyond to it and never aim of all of the things to be done by you.
listening to client and the work completion on or before time is must. if you want to remain in freelancing industry.
Jack
November 25th, 2010 at 9:45 pmHello Ms Laura.
I agree with all your 10 points above. Most often, I get hit by point # 7 & #8. One reason for this is that im just a newbie.
But there is one thing more common that is not in your list ( i think). Its BEING TOO NAIVE. And because of these, clients get to abuse or over exploit a freelancer. I’ve heard a lot of these cases from my friends (flash programmers). As a noob, it’s one of the scariest thing to me.
- Jack -
Anatoly Gilderman
November 29th, 2010 at 6:23 pmHey Laura, You post is really interesting. Before building my own ecommerce templates development, I’ve been a freelancer for two years. As a freelancer we should learn this secrets..Thanks for this nice post!
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