Rejecting potential clients

As a business owner you are able to determine which clients you do or do not want to accept. That’s just one of the many benefits of being the owner.

You can distinguish the difference between a quality client and those who are ones you just know will be more hassle than worth, the ones you’ll never be able to totally satisfy, the ones who will drive you insane and the profit on them just is not worth it.

This morning I had the “pleasure” of dealing with such a potential client. This person had called numerous times before today but always after working hours. She’d leave a not so nice message questioning why nobody answered the phones at 8 p.m. Well, this morning she finally called during working hours. And, what confusion. She did not grasp anything that was being told to her, she argued every point and kept talking over top of me. Exasperated, after about 15 mins of this I finally explained to her that perhaps she needed to consider taking her business elsewhere since she simply was not grasping the concept of “private labeling” vs drop ship vs wholesale accounts vs consultant sign ups. She kept arguing and I finally made it clear that I did not want her as a client and hung up.

You would think that’d have been the end of it, right?

Wrong! She continued to call and call and call, thus far in the past 3 hours she has phoned more than 18 times from two different phone numbers.

Now, WHO in their right mind would want to do business with a company that just got done telling you that they do not wish to have you as a client? That in itself is a sign that she’s not all together there.

Then, she phoned from her cell phone which happened to be from a different area code. Ok, we answer the phone and she insists she speak with “TAR-A” (pronounced it like TAR and “AH”). I half chuckle because she said she was a close personal friend of TAR-A’s. So I respond with “Hmm ok, if perhaps you are a close personal friend of hers, then perhaps you’d know how to pronounce her name correctly”

At that point she went on a verbal rampage about how she wants to discuss doing business with us and how dare I tell her this morning that we do not want to do business with her. I hung up because honestly I have more pressing things to attend to than listening to an insane person. She proceeded to phone 3 more times, and left 2 voice messages. One was cussing up a storm, then the last one was stating she still wanted to purchase from us! WHAT????? Again, another sign of a true lunatic!

These are the types of people we want to NOT do business with.

So, the point of the post: you, as the business owner, can and should make the determination on what type of clientèle you wish to do business and only accept said clientèle.

On the flip side, if you’re the crazed lunatic at the other end of the phone, save face and go and find a company that’s willing to indulge the whims of the insane.