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AUTHOR: Milana Leshinsky WORD COUNT: 1037 WRAP: 65 URL: http://www.AssessmentGenerator.com ===============================================

"Don't Work With Jerks: How to Recognize a Difficult Client Early and Make Your Business Stress-Fre/e"

by Milana Leshinsky http://www.AssessmentGenerator.com

Five minutes into call I knew this client was going to make my life miserable. The problem was, I already said "Yes."

Into every professional practice falls a little rain, or better said...walks in a nightmare client. You start losing sleep by a couple of hours every night, you keep thinking about her project during your lunch time, and you feel like your life has been taken over by this client.

What a nightmare! Didn't we go into business for ourselves to enjoy it? Do we not have choice of who to work with? Of course, we do! The challenge is in recognizing a difficult client early enough to say "No."

So how do you do that? First, determine what "difficult" means to you. It may mean different things to different people. For example, while some professionals will be happy to take a phone call from a client between 9 and 5, others may have a special time set aside for phone calls. While some business owners love getting detailed specifications for a project, others may feel trapped and limited in their creativity.

1. What is a difficult client

To help you decide what things may be important to you, here are some of most common traits of difficult clients:

- They do not respect your time - They tell you how to do your work - They always check up on you - They constantly change their mind about a project - They knit pick over every detail - They try to intimidate you into doing things you haven't agreed to - They treat you as if they're boss and you are employee - They have little respect for your expertise - They call you at a non-scheduled time - They frequently e-mail you with questions, requiring long replies - They ask you to throw in a few extras without offering to pay extra - They keep reminding you how high your fees are - They are frequently disappointed with your work - They won't pay on time, but ask you to continue working with them - They frequently cancel or reschedule your meetings - They believe they're your only client, & demand your full attention

You can complete this list by adding a few other traits that you find annoying or unacceptable in your business, or to your life style.

2. Red flags: Early warnings of a difficult client

Once you know what's important to you, how do you look for signs that this may be a difficult client? First of all, listen to your intuition. It's easy to ignore red flags, especially if you're hungry for business.

"Your gut is never wrong," one IT consultant said. "Whenever I've ended up with a nightmare client, it's because I didn't listen to my instinct and I went for zeroes."

Listen to your instinct. Additionally, do your best to avoid clients that:

- Don't want to sign a contract - Are in a rush - Are looking for cheapest provider - Are your friends and relatives

Right… But if your budget is limited, how can you find way to your customers’ wallets? Two words: Be Creative! Put your imagination at work, combine it with technology and come up with an Internet Marketing Strategy. You will be amazed how cheap, yet highly effective a properly designed Marketing Campaign can be.

The best way I know to bring more traffic to your site without spending too much money is word of mouth. If you have “sticky content” your visitors will come back for more, and they will share your URL with their friends. A good idea is to use appropriate humor content on a special section on your web site, because as any good marketing specialist will tell you, humor is one of two things that sell most.