This week’s podcast is all about losing a customer and client and how you can turn what may seem like a bad situation, into a positive one. After losing a client, I thought now was the right time to discuss something that is going to happen to every entrepreneur during their journey.

On another exciting note, I’m doing my first ever challenge and would love for you to join in! The challenge is focussed on starting and building your email list. For those that haven’t started their list or those that are struggling, the challenge will have you signing up new members every single day. It’s a five-day challenge (including a private Facebook group) with tips on how to get started, what systems you should be using and lead magnets. If you’re interested in signing up, the link is below.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• If you have been approached to end a client relationship and it’s out of the blue, you need to face it as soon as you possibly can. Rather than thinking the worst, get on the phone and speak to them.
• It is important to apologise and ask why it is they want to end the relationship. If something was wrong, try to view it as an opportunity to learn and develop instead.
• Once you have discussed the issues at hand, you need to speak about a potential handover. You should offer to help as much as you can.
• If you’re working in social media, you need to agree a date for when you’re going to log out of everything.
• Consider whether or not you can offer any training. You can charge for this.
• If you had a really good relationship, consider sending them a thank you gift. Whether it’s a card or a bunch of flowers, they will be thankful.
• Don’t forget to ask for a testimonial, review or a referral.
• If you need the client that you’re losing, it’s normal for panic to set in. The first thing you need to do, however, is take a breath. You need to think, what if you’re exactly where you’re meant to be right now? A better opportunity, client or customer could be right around the corner.
• Panic mode can be extremely detrimental to your business so instead, you need to go out there and be as purposeful as you can. Share testimonials, post about your services on social media or ask your current clients for referrals. Step up your activity.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Not all client relationships are good ones and you have to do what is best for you and your business.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• My Experience with Losing A Client – 07:00
• How to Approach the Loss of a Client Relationship – 12:56
• The Mindset Around Losing A Client – 24:50

Transcript below

 

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you? So I am recording this little bit late in the day because I've had such a busy week. Some weeks are like that, aren't they? Some weeks you feel like you can take on the world, you can manage everything and you are on fire and other weeks, not so much. And unfortunately this week I've had a not so much week but anyway, it's Thursday when I'm recording this. So only another day for the weekend, which will be lovely cause it's nice to get a bit of rest and I've got some friends come around for dinner and you know what? Before I have my own business, I used to love a dinner party. I love cooking mainly because I love eating, but I used to love entertaining. I liked doing the table. If you've seen my Instagram and my Christmas table, you might get an idea of the type of thing I like doing.

And then I just really enjoy cooking and hosting and getting nice wine and nice food and all the yummy bits. So yeah, we've got some friends coming round and I am really looking forward to doing it. It is funny though, ever since having the business, I haven't done it anywhere near like I used to. And now I also find myself getting a wee bit stressed about making sure everything's perfect and right and rather than joining the process. But anyway, this weekend that's what I'm going to do and hopefully it's going to be a fairly chilled affair. Okay. Before I get on today's podcast episode, which by the way is going to be all about when you lose a customer or you end a client relationship and how you can pull some really good positives out of that. And we're going to look at mindset things and a few different bits and bobs, but great way to turn that what is seemingly potentially a negative situation into a really good positive one.

So we're going to be talking about that. However, I want to tell you something super, super cool. Before we do that, I am doing my first effort challenge now. I've never done a challenge before. I'm very excited about this. I am very excited to see how it works, how you interact with it. If you like it, if you don't like it, what results you get from it. But this challenge is all around how to start and build your email list. So this is for anybody who has sat there thinking, that's been on my list for too long and I need to do it and I know I need to do it, but I just haven't had a chance or I can't think of where to start, or I don't know how to build an email list. Or if you're sat there thinking, well, they have started a list and I'm trying to build my email list, but it's a little bit like tumbleweed and I'm getting nowhere with it.

Then this challenge is also going to be perfect for you because we're talking about how to build it and had to get to a point where every day you are being notified of another perfect potential customer coming into your email list. So that's what I want to do. The challenge around, it's going to be five days. It's going to be really, really value packed. If you've, well, if you listened to my podcast, which you obviously do, you know I love to give you the good stuff, I don't hold back. I make sure that I cram it full of the good tips and tools and techniques. So over the five days we're going to be learning things like how to get started, what systems right there and when you should use what type of system, because that is a big question I get asked all the time because obviously there are different email systems which you can store emails in.

And I use Kajabi and I've used infusion soft, but they're very expensive. So you don't start there. And then at what point do you, do you decide, actually now I need to move to that. So we're going to look at that. We're going to look at things like lead magnets, we're going to look at giving people an opportunity to sign up, and then we're going to look at how do you actually get them on the list. So once you've got a lead magnet, hedge it because it actually entered the lead magnet, and then what do you do with them while they're on the list? So five days each day, there's going to be a video. We're going to have Facebook live. So I can answer all your questions. We're going to be in a private Facebook group so we can all work through this challenge to get there.

And the idea is by the end of the five days you are going to know exactly what you need to be doing to be getting on and building that email list. So I'm really, really excited about it. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it goes. Really interested. I, I try and view every marketing thing, every strategy as let's see how interesting this might be. So I don't ever really hold much judgement on success or failure or how many I'm expecting to get or how many people might enter. It's mainly, okay, this is going to be fascinating. Let's see how it goes. So that's that and I'm really excited. So if you want to join that would be helpful Teresa. Maybe tell you the address. So go to teresaheathwareing.com/fivedays and I haven't got a date for it to start, but by the time this episode comes out, there will be a date.

So go to that page. On my site, sign up, get into that group and join me for this awesome challenge that we're gonna do. I am very excited to see you in there. Okay, let's talk about today's episode. And I'm going to tell you why I was inspired to do today's episode. It's for a few different reasons, you know, cause you know I'm a little bit woo-woo and I quite like the woo-woo stuff. It's like the universe has been going, you need to talk about this, you need to talk about this, you need to talk about this because I've had so many different things happen that have made me have to answer questions around this or think about this. So firstly, there's been a few people in my Academy at that have recently lost some clients for whatever reason or a customer that was buying product is no longer buying a product.

And they'd been asking some questions about how they manage that and what they're going to do. But also, interestingly enough, I have just lost my second ever client as in they were my second client that I got when I started the business six years ago. So my first client that I got when I started the business still works with us and we still manage their social media for them and they still support me and I support them and I love them dearly. And my second client that came on has just come to the point where it's ended. And bearing in mind you've been doing this like five years now. I've worked with this client and it's really a little bit emotional actually because obviously I know these people, I know their businesses, I've worked with them for a long time. But let me explain to you what happens.

 

My Experience with Losing A Client

 

So in your business you start off with an intention of how something might look and we're really fluid. Things change and move and they get different and that's exactly what happened to me. And you probably know my story about, I started off consultancy, I started off being someone's social media, not social media manager, someone's marketing manager, and basically would go in there and help them market their business. So if they couldn't afford a full time marketing manager at a good level, they would pay me to go in for a day, a week or so many hours a month or whatever it was. So that's what this client did. And I worked with them. They were in a state agent, they're local to where I live. And I worked with them for years in that, in that scenario. And basically a couple of years back when things started to change in my business.

So when I started doing the podcast, when I started speaking more, it was getting more and more challenging both for me and them because I wasn't around, I wasn't as available as I have been because I had changed up what I did. So no longer was I sat in my office or no longer was I local to where they were. I was all over the place. And you know, there was a few comments where they were a bit like, Oh, you know, your heart in the country. And, and I was really, really apologetic, but I was still trying to manage their things. And the other interesting thing was I was doing the work, not my team. I never ever handed them over. And it almost got to the point where I never could hand them over because they were so entrenched in me or I need them so well that it was going to be impossible to hand them over.

And because I am the type of person I am, I never increased their prices. Now I know some of you are going to be sat there going, you did what I know. I know it was crazy, but I have this very moral, I'm not saying it's not moral if you up your prices obviously, but I have this thing where if I hadn't have had them as my second client and they were very good to me in those days, they referred me a lot. They paid me straight away and I was a single mum with a child to feed and they didn't, you know, delay on my invoices. They paid them immediately. They paid me well and therefore I felt like I owed them something. Can I still, you know, I don't regret that decision at all. So anyway, I never upped their prices. So again, it wasn't even economical for me to pass them onto one of the team because I wouldn't have made enough to make it worth its while anyway.

So I get working with them and I had a meeting with them a few months back, probably six months back now and said, listen, I don't know if this is working. I love you dearly, I love working with you. But in all honesty, I'm not around and I'm not offering the things that I normally offer or I, I don't offer this service anymore. This isn't a thing. And I don't want to let you down. I don't want you to be in a position where you email me and go, Teresa, we need a decision on this tomorrow or we need something today and I can't do it. And I hate letting people down. I, I really dislike that, you know, I want to be really good at what I do. So anyway, I had this conversation and they, we carried on for a bit longer and they basically emailed me the other day saying, can we have a call?

And I was like, yeah, yeah, sure. And I got on the phone and bless this client, he was, he was really nervous and he said, I've been worrying about worrying sick about this and I'm having this conversation and said very similar to what I had kind of said, you know, we love working with you but we don't think you're right for us anymore. You know, we've seen your success and we are over the moon with it and very proud but we can't get what we need. And he was really concerned that I was going to be cross or angry or upset and I wasn't. I was relieved. I was so pleased that they had found an alternative and that it kind of got me off the hook as well as giving them the service they needed. And I was absolutely no, you should totally go with someone else.

That's totally understandable and I just want you to have a really good service and I want your business to thrive and it can't do that with me in the situation I am now in. So therefore I handed them over and it was that whole process that made me think about some of the ways in which you can do this in a really nice way. Now granted, this has finished very lovely, but I also have a, a story of a client that I sacked so and that wasn't as nice as this obviously as you can imagine. But again, it was kind of the same thing. It was actually a real personality thing there. I felt very anxious every time I saw an email come in, I felt like there was big communication breakdown and although I felt we were doing above and beyond what we had agreed and what I was being paid for, what the team being paid for, it wasn't enough.

And therefore, even though it was my biggest contract at that point and they put in the most money into my business, I made the decision to fire them and it wasn't an easy decision and yet it went okay. They weren't happy with me. However, even through that not nice period, there was still things that I could do to make it not as bad as it could have been. So that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about what if you lose a client, what if you lose a customer? What if you have to get rid of a client or customer and how are you going to deal with this and make the best possible situation out of it because it's inevitable. Don't, you know, does to even think that I've had two of my very first clients for literally six years is kind of crazy, but it's inevitable that people are going to move on.

 

How to Approach the Loss of a Client Relationship

 

People are going to change. You're going to come to an end of a, a project or whatever and therefore you're going to lose that customer or that client. And what are you gonna do? Like how are you going to make that situation as good as it can possibly be? So let's start with the nice ones. You know, if it's a really nice amicable thing, then let's do some nice things to be thankful to them. So really appreciate the fact that actually they may not want to work with you more and there is that panic. So we'll worry about that in a minute. But they, you know, if I went and looked at what this client's paid me over those years, that would be a lot of money and I gotta be so thankful for that. So I think the first thing is, is in how you deal with it.

So if someone comes to you and says, I'm afraid this isn't going to work, if it's completely out of the blue, cause normally if things aren't quite going as you would like then or sort of ticking along nicely, then you're normally aware that something's about to come up. However, if it's coming completely out of the blue, the very first thing I would do is obviously jump on it and respond immediately. So the minute they said we need to talk to you, I was like, this is what I can speak to you. And I gave them my next available slot. So sometimes we might want to hide from this because we won't want to think. I don't want to have that conversation. But I really urge you to just get on it, face it immediately. Because the longer you sit on it, the more you're going to think in your head.

Oh, that's why, Oh, it's because of this. Oh, it's because of this. Oh, I've done this, they've done this. I'm really angry at them actually. While I'm glad it's ending, I'm whatever the stories are, you'll be telling yourself in your head, it's actually just so much more easier to go. I don't know why they want to leave. Let's just contact them and speak to them. So obviously you're gonna get on the phone because that's going to be the best and easiest way to do it. Or zoom call or something where it's more face to face. You don't really want to be doing this over email and then you want to be saying to them why? That's the first thing. I am so sorry to hear this. And can I ask why this is the case? So what is it that's made you come to this decision?

And then obviously you're going to get their response. And it might be numerous reasons. I can't sit here and go through them all, but I guess the most popular ones are I can't afford you or I can't afford it if it's a product or something was wrong. And obviously I want you to view that something wrong as a really good opportunity here. So I want you to be put your emotions to one side. Put your feelings to one side, which is hard cause when it's your business, geez, does that hurt? But put all that to one side and ask them, okay, can you tell me about it? What is it that the problem was? Why did they make that decision to leave you? And I want you to be curious. I want you to see this as an opportunity to learn an opportunity to develop an, even if the learning from it is actually they're not the client for me and they didn't understand the service and that's why it wasn't right.

I would still try and look, is there anything we can change? Did we not communicate properly? This is how we work. So even if the fault isn't dying to you, you still want to be thinking, what can I do? So that's your first thing. Look at why they're leaving and trying kind of get as much information around that as possible. Then once they've kind of said, yes, this is it, this is what's happening for me, I want to be as helpful as possible. I am very much one of these people that wants to set up the situation for success. So every time someone works with me, every time we have a client that has worked with me over the years, it's very much a case of these things are yours. This is your advertising, this is your images. I am storing them here and I'm using them, but basically everything I own belongs to you and you can have it all at any point and I want you to be as self-sufficient if I wasn't around.

Now, obviously this is going to differ for some of you that are selling a product, but the point for me in a service is if you decide you don't want to work with me anymore than I want you to be able to still do as good a job with Amy and feel happy with...