Nightmare clients can destroy you and your business
Dara Lawlor

The Curse of the Nightmare Client

Dara Lawlor -
Nightmare clients can destroy you and your business

A nightmare client is like having a rat in your kitchen.  It’s an endless source of anxiety until you get rid of it, or it disappears. Now how you deal with this undesirable is up to you, but I’d hold off on spiking their coffee with hemlock or any other poison you favour.  Thankfully there are other ways.   Jokes aside, the damage that a bad client can do to either you personally or your business is considerable.

Nightmare clients affect your health, keep you awake at night and can make your life a misery.  They impact your personal life when you don’t have time for your significant others because you are consumed with the problems they generate.   They can bully, gaslight, monopolise your time, welch on invoices, renege on agreements and constantly change the goalposts.  They can destroy your team, leading to sick leave and unforeseen resignations.  I’ve seen bad client behaviour infect entire organisations, sucking executive teams and even board members into the weeds.

Incidentally bad clients aren’t necessarily the usual suspects – the aggressive bully or creep –  they can also be genuinely nice people who have a set of demanding and changing concerns driven by their own leaders.  

When we are clear on what we do and stand for life becomes a lot easier.  This often comes later with age and experience.  Until then we are often at the mercy of circumstance and need. Today I’m very careful who I work with, and I make sure that my clients are too. 

When you’re finding your way as a new business you grasp at what you can in order to get money, experience and reference sites.  Unless you’ve got your act together from day one you’re likely to meet a few creeps who take you for a ride.  Trust me, you’ll get better at spotting these but every so often needs must and you may have to put up with it in order to pay the rent and put food on the table.

The exhilaration of landing a new client can blind you when it comes to negotiating a fair exchange.  This can lead to over committing resource for very little in return.  This cannibalises other contracts, builds up resentment and damages morale.  Another aspect of this is installing proper contract governance frameworks.  In my experience the contracts that run smoothly are those where each aspect – process, account management and governance – is negotiated, agreed and blowtorched into every aspect of the operation.  

Beware if a prospect shakes an opportunity under your nose after a supplier has either been fired or left of their own accord.  They will expect you to pick up where the recently departed have left off leaving you neck deep in delivery and with little time to pay attention to the small print.   Yes, it may be a good chance to add more to your bottom line but think about what you are letting into your bed.  Will you be able to ramp up and deliver it without robbing Peter to pay Paul? Have you had enough time to really get to know them?  In my experience late arrivals are more trouble than they are worth. There’s usually a very good reason why they appear on your doorstep when it’s belting down outside.

Your client may be operating at a different level to you for now – especially if you’re new to the game and are in the middle of building your foundations.   Imagine marking any one of Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappé or Harry Kane in the European Championships  – that won’t be a fun experience no matter how good you are.  Likewise playing Iga Świątek or Carlos Alcaraz in round one of Wimbledon, tackling Cheslin Kolbe on the wing or racing Tadej Pogačar in the Tour de France.    

Your client may have a different world view and values.  Now you may have the diplomacy of António Guterres – the current Secretary-General of the United Nations – but different values can make the run-of the-mill daily chit chat needed to build a good relationship awkward.  When the sh!t hits the fan later on in the contract – and it probably will – you’ll be grateful to fall back on the goodwill generated through a cordial and genuine relationship.  

Like the rat in your kitchen, once you have a nightmare client they can be hard to get rid of.  You may not have the financial buffer or board support required to fire one.   So like most unpleasant things the best thing to do is to avoid one completely.  You do this by setting out clear criteria on what is right for you:

A lopsided agreement in favour of the client is bad for your business, ego and bottom line. Only work for a client if they are fair and understand that you too need to make money so that you can do good work.

Do you have the skills, processes and people to comfortably do the work?  If it’s a stretch you’re better off giving it a miss until you do.  A good reputation builds slowly.  A bad reputation can appear overnight.

Does the work actually fit with your strategy?  Picking the wrong clients can lead to a Frankenstein portfolio of contracts.  Think of a football squad whose members have different profiles to the ones that the coach actually needs to play in a particular way – think Manchester United at the moment. Different contract profiles make inconsistent and incongruent demands of the organisation.  They also send prospects mixed messages as they will not know what you stand for. 

Does the client have a reputation for being difficult to work with as well as tolerating bad behaviour? Some organisations think that you should be privileged to work for them.  This is easy to find out.  Pick up the phone and speak to those who have already been there. 

If you are rabidly anti-smoking and disapprove of gambling then maybe it’s best not to work for Philip Morris or Paddy Power.  You won’t be able to hide it and like the cigarette smoke, they’ll smell it off you.

If you’d like to pick my brains on avoiding nightmare clients and discovering what makes a good one then drop me a mail below or click on the link to arrange a chat.

Dara Lawlor

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Dara Lawlor
Dara Lawlor

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