Do you ever find yourself groaning and admitting your clients are actually getting in the way of you getting stuff done?
Having this problem is actually a sign of success as you only achieve this state of frustration if you have successfully secured numerous clients, so give yourself a good pat on the back.
It’s also a great indicator that you need to change the way you interact with your clients, otherwise it’ll hamper your efforts to grow your business.
It’s easier to do than you think. Here’s my 4 top tips to turning this around
1. Realise that the issue lies with you and not with your clients
Your clients are behaving this way because you have let them think it’s OK to constantly contact you and check on things or change their requirements. They think it’s ok to do that because you have never let them know it isn’t.
Let’s draw an analogy with children. How frustrating is it when a child keeps interrupting you when you are talking? As a parent I know it can be hugely annoying. But, I wouldn’t expect my children to know that unless I had explained that to them.
So why is it we expect our clients to understand how annoying it is when they do it?
It can be hard to change client behaviour for those clients you already have but it’s easy for new ones that come on board. (Look out for my blog on How to on-board clients successfully for more advice on that).
2. Gently show them the new way
Let’s take a specific example of irritating client behaviour…how about clients that phone/email in the evening and want a quick response.
How often do you have a moan about them contacting you and then you reply to them straight away?
By replying to them out of hours you are driving their behaviour to keep doing it as you haven’t shown it’s an issue.
In the vast majority of cases you can easily wait until the next working day to return that email/phone call as the world will not have stopped turning in the meantime.
Do this on consecutive occasions and the client will soon realise that you don’t reply out of hours.
I did this from the outset with one particular client as I felt he would always want quick out of hour responses and it worked beautifully and didn’t damage our relationship at all, plus it helped me keep my sanity!
3. What is it that they don’t know?
If you sit down and analyse why your clients are contacting you, it’ll be for 1 of 3 main reasons
- They want you to do something new. This is good! So we don’t need to change that behaviour!
- They want to change the scope of something they have already talked to you about. This can be good news if you manage it correctly so again that’s fine as long as you put boundaries around it (take a look at this blog to see how best to manage this)
- They want an update. This one you can change. Have a think about what info they consistently ask for and how you could give them it in a way that impacts you the least. In my experience clients will pick up the phone when they haven’t heard anything for a while. Pre-empting that by sending them a brief update will save you from their interruption and will also win you brownie points too as they will think you are a great supplier.
4. You decide when to answer your phone/that email
The worse thing about phone calls and emails is that they can really break up your flow and make your time incredibly inefficient.
The answer is to build into your day set times when you will return emails and messages.
I know this can feel horrible as you feel like you are ignoring your clients but you wouldn’t reply if you were in a meeting so why reply when you are delivering work?
That time is probably more precious than when you are in a meeting so value it!
So the secret to preventing your clients from messing up your day is to make some simple changes and watch your productivity soar. Why not implement these four steps and change the way you react and communicate with your clients and customers? You’ll be amazed how much more time you’ll have.
More time could mean getting the things done that really matter to you and your business.
Good luck and do let me know about how you get on.
Loved this blog, then check out my Red Bull For Your Business Productivity Workshop.