Customer Red Flags - Identifying and Disconnecting

Business Brain the Show for entrepreneurs episode 449 for Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Greetings folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take all kinds of things in our lives and apply our business brains to them, run them through the Business Brain filter so that we, we get a different perspective and hopefully more value out of any of these things. Sponsors for this episode include found.com brain, which is business banking that tracks your expenses, even helps you save the taxes that you need to do, and thinkific.com businessbrain, where you can get one month of Thinkific plus for free. We'll talk more about those in depth in a little bit here. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And for now, in California, I'm Shannon Jean. I like that Brain Filter imagery. That would be a good T shirt on there for Business Brain. I've been thinking of thinking, you know, some kind of filter or framework of using your business brain for. We were just talking about on previous, before we started recording the show today, about a situation and I made the comment, I said, well, I think we, you could use that in your everyday life as well. So it's, I think that's the big thing that pushed us into changing the name of the show is coming up with ways that impact you 247 all around. So the Brain Filter thing is interesting.

Yeah. Your business brain gets to stay on even though it's not sometime between the hours of 9:00am and 5:00pm, right. Like, yeah. In fact, we can't turn them off. It's sort of how it works.

It's impossible.

It's impossible.

Yeah, but that's, it's a, it's a feature, not a bug. Right? Well, if you, if you use it correctly, that's it.

That's right, yeah. Use it as a tool. Yeah, exactly. So, all right, so Joe has a question for us that hopefully we can apply our business brains to all. I'll share the question, then we can ponder a little bit and then maybe share some, some reactions and some thoughts. Joe says. In fact, it's Joe from the Command Control Power podcast, one that I've been on. It's a great show, he says, as you know from, from doing our show, we've been doing it for almost 10 years and posted more than 500 episodes talking about our Apple consulting, our Apple technology consulting businesses. We often delve into the business side of things, especially on some of our shows. And recently he says we talked about red flags when fielding a request from a potential new client and I wanted to get your take on it. When starting a business, we all might be hungry for work, so we often learn to say yes to every incoming request until it becomes a reflex. The yes reflex. This is something that also is a good tool but can work against you, he said. It can be a hard lesson to learn when you say no when to say no to a potential client when either the project or the client isn't a good fit. I've been working on this over the past few years, he says. And and can and getting better at noticing some of the signs and signals that can indicate when something isn't right. For example, when thinking about a potential client's impending email reply recently, I noticed a feeling of anxiety in my belly. And then I realized that if I was already feeling this signal before engaging with the client in a consulting relationship, I probably needed to cancel the engagement before it began and before wasting any more time or energy on it. I and he says that was a big win for him. The key was first noticing the feeling and then realizing it was a red flag. So with that is the foundation, he says. I wanted to ask for your help and thoughts. Do you have any advice about red flags or signals to look for before we take on new work or engage with a new client? Maybe some examples of things you wish you knew or a few questions that we could ask ourselves or ask the client? Ah, right. Litmus test to help us decide if it's a good fit. So he says thank you both for the good business conversations and advice and I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this. All right, look, no one starts their own business because they're dying to do paperwork, right? No, no one's dream is to just send and track invoices all day. All that paperwork adds up, though, and it keeps you from the stuff you really want to be doing. And that's where I think our sponsor Found could change the game for us as small business owners. Found is all in one business banking that makes all your finances so easy. All the stuff that you put off doing Found does it for you. Here's how it works with Found. You have a business checking account. 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Remember, head to found.com brain or use promo code Brain to try found today. Listen, you know customer education isn't just nice to have for growing our businesses. It's essential and there are only so many hours in the day for you and your team to personally onboard and address the needs of your growing number of customers. That's why you need our sponsor, thinkific. Thinkific provides businesses like yours with a powerful, easy to use educational platform to keep your vendors, partners and customers informed, engaged and coming back with Thinkific plus, you can create memorable interactive content with their live lessons, communities, assignments, engagement surveys and more. You can generate monthly recurring revenue through membership programs and course subscriptions. And you can transform those leads into brand advocates by offering high value education at every stage of the customer journey. Thinkific plus will help your business grow too. Don't wait. Sign up today for Thinkific Plus. Right now, as a listener of Business Brain, you get a free month of Thinkific plus when you go to our special URL. Go to thinkific.com businessbrain start your free month today at thinkific.com businessbrain thinkific.com businessbrain and our thanks to Thinkific plus for doing what they do and for sponsoring this episode. All right, look, while I got you here, hey, I'm sure you've thought about writing a book, right? But do you want to publish a book that's just a nice thing to put on your shelf? Or do you want to publish one that makes you an authority and helps transform your business? If your answer's the latter, we've got a podcast to tell you about. It's called On Good Authority and it's hosted by New York Times best selling author Anna David. The show, which has been named one of the best publishing podcasts by LA Weekly and Feedspot, among others, features interviews with top entrepreneurs and authors on how they've launched books that have made them into the thought leaders in their industries. Guests have included everyone from 48 laws of power author Robert Greene and Never split the Differences, Chris Voss to Jay Abraham Lincoln, Lori Gottlieb, and more. You can find all the episodes in show notes at www.ongoodauthoritypod.com or wherever you get your podcasts. And our thanks to Anna for doing this swap with us. All right, so how do we find and then use these red flags?

Shannon?

Right. Like, Joe identified a great one, literally trusting his gut, right. He felt anxious about dealing with this client before he ever even heard back from them. And he knew that that meant, you know, his. His body, his brain and his body were processing something that he noticed without even noticing it. Right. And. And there's. There's a lot to be said for trusting your gut. So I think that might even be the first one on the list.

Yeah. And I think it is. It's two parts here. It's, what are the red flags? But also, as you mentioned, how do you manage getting out of that relationship.

Right.

In such a way that you're, you know, you're courteous and professional, but, you know, oh, I don't want to deal with that customer. So let's talk about some red flags, and then we can talk about a few different ways to.

I like it.

You know?

Yep.

Ease your way out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my big ones that I always, you know, recognize is what I call repeated failure. When they tell you, well, I tried company A, I tried company B, then I tried company C, and no one's any good.

They're all terrible. It's not me, it's them to own this problem.

And, yeah, I think that's a big one to go. Oh, oh, no, we're not going to do business with this company or this person because you're going to fall into that same trap, I guarantee it.

Yeah, Yeah. I suppose an extension of that is the presumed failure by the customer. Right? Like, and. But they won't communicate it that way, right? They'll communicate it in the way you just described. Or, you know, we. We represent podcasters, Right. Some of them, not all of them, for their advertising needs. And I've had initial, you know, sort of discovery conversations with podcast with lots of different podcasters and the ones that say, well, yeah, I'd be curious to see how you could do for my show. Like, I don't. I don't. I don't know how. If you could do better than I could, it's like, okay, like, I don't need. I always say I need to be the biggest a hole in the company. I don't need to bring people in who are bigger a holes than me. But, but like, maybe that's. The litmus test is like, okay, if you're going to, if you're coming in with that attitude, this isn't going to be fun to work with you. It might be productive. We might be able to make some money together. But am I going to enjoy it or am I going to have to deal with that every way, shape and form you can think to put it together? And yeah, I like that.

That am I going to enjoy this experience? I think that's a good one too, because, yes, you may have to. I mean, you're not going to fall in love with every client. You're going to take on some projects and things because the money makes sense. But are you going to enjoy either solving the problem, yes. Or, you know, working with the people. Maybe you don't enjoy that, but you're like, look, I know we can fix this and that'll be great. I'll get a good sense of accomplishment and it'll help our business.

Yeah, I guess that's true. Because I was going to say, am I going to enjoy working with this customer? Is similar to what I. And I know you've called it this too, what I would call the beer test. Like, would I want to go have a beer with this person? And that doesn't. They don't necessarily have to pass the beer test just to be a customer that I enjoy working with. Right. Like I might enjoy working with the company. And like you said, I get a sense of accomplishment about solving whatever the issue is. But I. We don't. We're not going to get a beer. Although the beer test is another litmus test to use. Right. Like it is.

Yeah, it is good. And that kind of repeated failure thing to me also leads into one that it's like a customer that's just not willing to take any accountability for a problem. It could be they, they need to update their hardware, but they don't want to hear that or the software or, you know, perhaps their, their systems or lack of systems or lack of procedures are causing those issues. And you quickly find, you know, they don't, they don't. I guess what I'm trying to say, they don't value what you're telling them. And I think that's a huge red flag. And you, you could wind up just beating your head up against the wall and you should extricate yourself as soon as possible from those kinds of relationships.

Right away. That's right. Well, and, and to that end, you know, we talk about the working agreement being a great way to vet potential partners. The quote, with your, you know, with, with the, the customer, you're going to put together a proposal or a quote or something like there's, there's going to be some agreement that you're coming together. We can call it a different flavor of the working agreement if you want. It's not going to be the same, but it, you know, that process of negotiating how you're going to work together, explaining your rate to them, how you're going to bill them, at them, getting their reaction on that, getting, you know, getting their buy in that process is something to, as best you can, pay attention to how that interaction goes. And it's not necessarily just about them. Watch how you react and are interacting with them, because that will tell you, oh, is, is this something that's going to, like, is this good for both of us to interact this way? And if the answer is no, if it's, you know, slightly antagonistic, walk away. You know, nobody needs the work. We've got a. We've got a plumber working at our house right now. Great plumber, amazing plumber, like, completely dedicated to doing exactly the, you know, the best work he can. And what we've gotten out of him is fantastic. Dealing with the way he wants to run his business and how he puts quotes together for us with no details and very nebulous. And it almost seems like he's hiding things in the quotes. Not a good fit, right?

So, yeah, but, you know, exactly, but.

Not a good fit. And I should be clear. For us, there might be other clients that are like, yeah, that sounds great. Like, like, I don't care. I just want you to solve it. I don't need to know. Okay, great. And, and like, just like, we're paying attention to that as the customers in that particular scenario. If I were the plumber in that scenario, I would be paying attention to that. If I find that every time I'm talking to a client about quoting a project, it becomes an animated, you know, a little bit heated conversation. Move on, man. Like, find somebody else.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another one for me is if. If they're constantly complaining about one of two things, quality or price. And, you know, the quality issue is, okay, yeah, we've got a problem. We want to take a look at it, see what's going on, and then if you fix those issues and okay, okay. But it's a constant issue that they're just looking for something to find something wrong. And I had this happen with school districts, and when we were doing iPad repair, and, you know, we had a great school district, I really liked working with the people, but it was just a constant battle of rejecting, you know, certain types of repairs, and we'd get them back and, like, look, these are, you know, as good as it's going to get, other than buying a brand new iPad, you know, that kind of thing.

Right, right.

And eventually I just said, hey, you know, it just doesn't sound like we've got a fit here because you're not happy. And at that point, they would always say, no, no, no, no, we love you guys. But it just dragged on and on and on until eventually I really, you know, I fired them as. As a customer. And the same with price. If you're constantly getting hammered on your price, that's not going to end. It's just going to accelerate as you work. So you have to decide, do I want to fight this battle all the time or is like, okay, hey, I get it. You don't value our experience or expertise or whatever. That's a customer. I think you need to let go. That's a big red flag.

So we've talked about some red flags. Hopefully that not only gives you some information to go with, but maybe triggers some red flags of your own. We want to know what those are. Feedbackusbrain show. Now, we still have a few more minutes left.

How do we run away?

How do you run away? Like, how do you politely get out of this, you know, in the best way possible?

Yeah, I think I asked the question.

So you have to answer it. No.

Yeah, Yeah. I think it's unique in every situation, and I think that sometimes you can. You can say, look, like I. Like, with that iPad customer I mentioned, you could say, look, we just don't. We can't meet your needs. You know, it's that breakup thing where you say, look, it's not you, it's me. I always find it's better to just do that. Just take the hit. Say, oh, you know what? We're just not able to meet those specifications. You're not happy. So, hey, you know, we're going to. We're going to wind things down. If you haven't started.

Yeah, it's one way. If you haven't started, like, Joe, I think the right answer is, hey, I was looking at my calendar. I know we've been having this conversation. I realized I don't have. As we've dug into this, I realize you need more time than I predicted, and. And that's more time than I have. But if you'd like, I might be able to give you some names. And. And this second part is only if you actually have people you want to refer, because.

The referral of death.

Yeah. When I was doing the kind of consulting that Joe was doing, I had another consultant who was a friend of mine. Great guy, really talented consultant. All of my clients would have vehemently objected working with this guy, and all of his clients would have vehemently objected working with me. He had his own style. I had my own style, and we served exactly the opposite types of clients. It was great. And he was good at customer service, just not in the way I do customer service. So there were times where it was like, oh, like, this is the wrong person for me, but it's perfect for Ed. And so I would just give Ed the client, and I would talk to him about it beforehand. But, you know, like, not every time I wanted to run screaming from a client would it be, oh, but Ed would be great. But sometimes it would. So, you know, having that, but otherwise saying, yeah, I'm the wrong guy. And I reached out to a couple people to see if they have time, and they don't. I'm sorry, I wish I had a recommendation for you, but I don't. You know, like, either way. But. But the. The. I don't have time is the.

Yeah, that's. That's a good one. And I think that it would. It's very helpful to use a. Whatever system you're using to keep his historical communications with customers very, very important, because if you give them that answer, some people won't accept that, and they just want to keep coming back, Coming back. And you go, oh, you know, hey, I see back on, you know, May 6, May 16, I, you know, let you know, this is kind of still in the same way. We just don't. We don't have a. A window to help you out at this time.

Oh, yeah. Yes. Log your excuses. Yeah, that's.

Yeah, you want to do the same thing. And whether you use, like, Help Scout or. Yeah, if you're doing it manually, you know, and using some. Something. But you want to archive filemaker. So when those. Yeah, filemaker. When those customers come up, you want to be able to look back and go, oh, no, we did. The problem, I find, is you. Sometimes you wind up owning this particular problem with the customer. And even if you've just escaped and given them all their money back, they will still just keep coming back to you. And you have to have some way to document for other people in your customer service department or sales department. Hey, this is what happened with this customer. We're not servicing them. This is how we wound things down so they can look it up before they go out and go, hey, we're going to have a new customer because it's a new salesperson. You don't know. Oh, no. Stay away from that nightmare customer.

Right, right.

The. The band list.

Yeah, the band. Yeah, the band. Right. No, we definitely, we've been known to make those lists at some of my companies over the years, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, share your red flags. We'd love to hear about them. Feedback at BusinessBrain show. There's a lot out there and, you know, I'm sure it's a very long list, so I'd love to hear from you.

Yeah, no, this is, we've only, you know, scratched the surface here. So, yeah, feedback at BusinessBrain show is what he said. And like, Joe, if your email is featured in an episode, you'll be entered to win a MacBook Air here in 2023. So fun stuff. Send them in. Feedback. BusinessBrain show. Keep living that charm life. See you next time.