How to Handle Conflict Between Your Clients and Your Team

Welcome back to another episode of Inbound Sales Journey. I am Ryan, joined by Gray, and we are on episode 113.

That's right, 113. As we probably talked about 100 episodes ago, my favorite number being 13. I feel a special connection in this episode.

I'm sure everyone remembers that.

I would imagine those loyal listeners who stayed with us for two plus years that, that, that probably meant something. And I'll probably get a couple. Couple notes here congratulating me on episode number 113. Not that I'm pleading and begging for them, but hey, if they come, I won't block them. I won't send them to spam. I'll help your sender score. So if for no other reason, send me an email.

Higher sender score.

Just kidding.

All right, sorry to interrupt.

Carry on.

This episode is not about your sender score. It is, in fact about your team and your clients prospects.

Dun, dun dun. Team versus prospects.

So here's the situation. We have gone through this ourselves. We've had a lot of agencies who have also told us that they've gone through this. So we felt like it would be good to address. And that is the issue of really, I think, Gray, of disrespect. And that is it comes up whether it's sometimes, sometimes it's during the sales process, which baffles me. Like, we talked a little bit about aggressive prospects a few episodes before this, but didn't get too deep into it. But certainly bad clients who are being disrespectful for the team and just how to handle that, how to deal with that and what to do there. So we had a situation with a client that was pretty disrespectful to some internal team members. And I won't steal your thunder grail at you, maybe lay that out a little bit, but maybe I guess just trying to help provide some helpful nuggets for you guys on how to approach this and how to think about this. So we'll, we'll get into that in the end, but maybe story time for us. Graham?

Well, yeah, we talked about, I mean, we kind of talked about some of this stuff earlier this season when we talked about bringing back a salesperson or having a salesperson be involved and what it looks like to fire clients and some of that stuff. But you do have a decision to make. So in this situation, specifically a client who just kept demanding more and more stuff and nothing was good enough. Blog posts were getting sent back for all these revisions and there were some things this was pretty early on with us at Guavabox, where there were things that weren't covered in the contract, like, how many revisions of a blog post do we do? And. And it was stupid little stuff like, hey, can we add this link in here? So I think, I mean, ultimately, this got really frustrating. Just took it and dealt with it for a little while and then realized, listen, we have a choice to make here. We can either step up to the plate and say, this is not the way that this is going to go down and kind of go to bat for our team members and lay out some ground rules, and if those can be played by then we'll keep doing business together. Or on the flip side, things could fall apart. And so if we make that choice, you're risking, at that point a pretty substantial monthly retainer and a decent chunk of our recurring revenue. So you're. You're putting some of the, you know, you're putting some business on the table if you. If you do that and taking a risk. But the flip side is, are we going to say instead that our client matters more than our internal team members and just keep letting them have to deal with this and be unhappy and be dissatisfied and risk turnover or low morale, or things just kind of go into pieces and building a culture where team members don't think that we have their back when things aren't going well? So, as you might have guessed, I think just by the way that I framed that, obviously the right decision is go to bat for your team members. Maybe that's not even obvious, actually, that, you know, in hindsight, that seems obvious. The business succeeded and kept going and growing. But at the time, that was a risk and that was a decision to be made that may have led, if we couldn't replace that revenue, to somebody needing to be let go or multiple team members needing to be let go? Obviously, what I'm going to advocate for is you got to stick up for your team internally. So I think that. I think most people would agree, yeah, you need to stick up for your team. I think that where this kind of breaks down or where people have trouble with this is what are the things? When is the right time to stick up for your team? How do you stick up for your team? How do you set ground rules and. And convey this stuff proactively to clients about what's acceptable and what's not acceptable? So I've got some thoughts there, Ryan. Is there anything kind of to kick us off that you have in terms of what you've seen either go well or Go poorly or what you'd recommend in terms of protecting your team while also protecting clients. And obviously the client base and revenue base, that's the. That's the lifeblood of your agency.

I think that it's pretty easy to be blinded by money in a lot of ways and have that kind of be the thing that is most valuable to you and really make you hesitant where in a normal case, if someone was speaking to your team member that way and money wasn't an option or it wasn't like the big thing weighing over you, it would be very obvious what the decision is, which is like, this is unacceptable and can't happen. But then you start to think as an owner or someone looking at profit and think, well, we'll just throw random numbers out there. But, okay, this is a $10,000 a month retainer, and this person makes $5,000 a month. So this is a really big loss. If we end up losing it, especially we're pretty small. When that happened with guava box.

Yep.

And like you said, that was a pretty substantial amount of our retainer. And then it really becomes an issue of, can I pay this person I'm protecting if we don't have this revenue?

Yeah. Am I really protecting them or not protecting them?

Right. So I think it's very easy to rationalize. Well, they can either be treated kind of poorly by the client and have a job, or I can let them go and we might not be able to find a quick entertainer. Then I have to fire them. So really I'm protecting them by letting them get walked over. Which. That's purely a rationalization on your part to say, like, to say that. And I think that respect and, like, decency should. Should rise above that. But I know it's, like, hard. It's really hard when it comes down to, like, personal finances and stuff and, well, company finances. So.

Yep. Yeah. Well. So I think in terms of how you address this, number one is not necessarily the very first time that anything comes up. And this was a case too, where there were some cultural differences with an international client. And so you need to be aware of the way that business might get done in different places or the attitude that people have. But beyond that, regardless of that, you still have a team who's in whatever culture you're in or whatever cultures you're in. And hopefully you have an internal team culture where some of these things and values, I guess some of the values and norms are defined. And I think communicating that, whether that is on that first, you know, now one of the ways that gets addressed is. Gets addressed in a project kickoff call. That doesn't usually, at least what I'm about to get into, doesn't usually come up during the sales process. But typically a project kickoff call with your team and their team, you go over how do we communicate about things, kind of review, hopefully during the sales process, you've reviewed from the contract what happens in these situations, but you're going to go through some of that stuff. In a project kickoff call, depending on what project or what piece is happening, you go through this. But what communication is acceptable? What are the ways that we take communication, that we take feedback, how many revisions are included, what happens if something isn't up to snuff, who to contact for what, what mediums are used, that type of thing. That stuff's all going to get included now in a project kickoff call. Where it wasn't before. It was like, hey, Gray's gonna be the person for you to talk to for this, and here's his email. So by addressing some of that now, you've started to set some ground rules without having to be aggressive or confrontational, but just putting that out there, kind of letting him know, here's what works and what doesn't. Not necessarily the first time. Sometimes the first time, if it's egregious, if it's not egregious, then it might have just been cultural difference or just someone having a rough day and something minor comes up where they get a little bit upset, a little bit aggressive. That'll happen especially in business, especially when people are under a time crunch on certain projects, that kind of stuff will happen. But either at that point or the second point, we'll try and make it a point not in the moment to approach that when somebody's emotions might be high, but approach that after the fact, whether with a phone call, typically the more direct the better. But just say, hey, that here's kind of what. Here's what our team felt from that. Give the person the opportunity to explain what happened if. If needed. But basically just kind of a gentle reminder of, hey, that's not the way that we do things here at our business. So I think the more that you do that along the way, typically that's going to take care of 90 plus percent of issues that would come up where somebody might get a little bit out of line or just say something they didn't mean to say. You address it quickly, it gets resolved, and you move forward from there. In a case where that continues having an escalation Plan where I don't really want, as much as I love my team members to take ownership of everything. I don't really want someone who's an intern or isn't necessarily like a chief client strategist or account strategist or anything making the call on when to blow things up and escalate things with a client. So I think just having an escalation plan of, hey, if this happens, keep me clued in. We're going to have consistent check ins with the team members and if any of this stuff happens, let me know, I'll call them up and I'll have that conversation. But I'm the person who's ultimately responsible as the agency owner, so let me be involved in making those decisions as much as possible. I think for, especially for a relatively small team, that works really well and it allows you to get involved and typically that's going to solve another subset of problems. When an agency owner comes back and gets involved in the situation and tells the client what's going on, typically that will signal to the client that this is also pretty serious. So having that plan and then at the end of the day the call in that situation was made, this is not going to work out. Some things to keep in mind, tell the client completely honestly, be honest, be upfront with them and let them know, don't beat around the bush and say, well, we're not delivering the results we thought we could deliver or you don't seem happy so we think we should just call this quits. If you present it like that, you're certainly giving the client the opportunity to try and come up with a response to that about why things should keep going and whatever it was. And instead you just want to say this isn't working out for us for these reasons and it's gone far enough now, we've given you these warnings or whatever. It's gone far enough now that at the end of this month the contract is we're going to terminate the contract. This is your 30 day warning or whatever and then we'll move on from here. So you want to go in firm once you've made that decision and it makes sure you don't leave clients in a lurch. Do whatever you can to end the relationship on a positive note and ultimately protect your team members. Clue them into the decision making, process the conversation, keep them updated on what's going on and obviously go back and figure out what you could have done better as a team earlier in the process and learn from those experiences. But you have to protect your team. So that's the long winded story and some points along the way, but ultimately that's what it boils down to, is take care of the. Take care of the team.

Keep in mind that your team's always watching what you're doing as well, Whether it's talked about after, right away or not. I think your character really comes through and how you stand for your team. You know, you hired these people, they are your responsibility. And obviously financial is part of that, which is why I gave the example of when it's tough, you know, if, you know, financially this could really hurt the agency if the agency is small, but ultimately character, super important. And, you know, you hire these people and you have an obligation to them to. To protect their best interests as well and make sure that they're not, you know, if there's something blatant going on, obviously, that's. That's one.

Yeah, well, that's definitely true that people are always watching and you never want to throw any of your team members under the bus, even if they were the ones who. I think that's part of projecting your team too, is even if they're the ones who make the mistake. You don't say, well, my developer just built that wrong. Sorry about that. Like, I'll talk to him and he won't do that again. I've heard people talk about whether that's the right or wrong way to do it. I personally am not a big fan of that. So even if somebody recently, like if a copywriter misspells somebody's name or somebody's company name that they interviewed, you can't go back and just say.