“You’re not a real attorney until you’ve fired your first client.” I got this advice from someone as a third-year law student. I was flabbergasted. What the heck was this guy talking about? Isn’t the whole goal to get and keep clients? I couldn’t imagine someone hiring me to be their attorney let alone firing them. The very notion seemed crazy.
Crazily enough, I played a large role in firing a client during my first week as an attorney. I was a young associate in the litigation department at a large Denver-based international law firm. I was asked to do some research for a brand new client about the legality of some investment offerings he’d made to potential investors in a real estate deal. The question was whether he’d violated state and/or federal securities regulations in the offering. It was urgent. I quickly gathered the basic facts and began researching Colorado security laws (the most likely area of concern). It quickly became clear there were issues. Not only had this client likely run afoul of Colorado securities law, it sure looked like he was defrauding his investors.
The more facts I gathered and the more law I learned, the worse it got. When it began to look like there was some potential criminal liability. I was terrified. How was I supposed to tell the senior partner for whom I was working that his brand new client was not only in big trouble civilly but potentially criminally? I checked and double-checked my work. I drafted a memo outlining the issues as I’d been taught and presented the issues as clearly as my greenhorn mind could. The partner called me into his office and asked some very pointed questions. He then grabbed a senior associate to check my work. I passed. We then walked down the hall to see the firm’s in-house counsel (I didn’t even know firms had such positions) and the three of us gathered in the partner’s office to call the client.
I don’t remember exactly what was said but it was short. Essentially, the partner explained, “We’ve done the research. You don’t need our services. You need to hire a criminal defense attorney and we don’t do that. We can’t represent you in this matter.”
After the conversation ended, the partner looked at me, laughed, and said the same thing. “You’re not a real attorney until you’ve fired your first client. You have to have enough business, enough self-respect, and enough understanding of your limits as an attorney before you can draw clear lines about who you’re willing to work with. Until you’ve reached that point in your career, you’re not a real attorney. You’re just peddling law, selling yourself to whoever will hire you.”
“Does this makes me a real attorney then?” I asked with a questioning smile. “Hell no,” he laughed. “That was my client. You have a long way to go.”
Firing your client applies far beyond the legal world. Indeed, the more I’ve been involved in sales, the more important I think the concept is. So many of us are willing to sell to anyone who will buy our products. Under the guise of “the client is always right” we let our customers trample on our lives, treat us poorly, and grind us down to where we make no money. We chase every deal, meet any competitive price, and do “anything” for our customers. We brag about it. We’ve been trained this way and see any loss of business as a failure. It often gets personal. We attach our professional self-worth to winning every deal, regardless of the cost to us personally or the profit to our companies. We sell from a sense of fear or desperation, saying yes to nearly everything in front of us. We believe that if we don’t have a 100% retention rate, we’ve failed. If we don’t win every deal, we’re a loser.
The reality is far different. Every customer comes with a cost to the provider, whether it is the cost of the product being sold, the time it takes to service the customer, or the emotional energy it takes to build and maintain the relationship. If the sum of those costs exceeds the benefit to the business, the business (and the salesperson/service provider) should walk away.
I’m not saying you should tell your customer off or use this to justify poor service. Far from it. A true partnership with your customer is based on mutual need and respect. I would do nearly anything for them because they need my help. But the key is nearly. There are lines. And the “real” salespeople and good customers know it. At GreenPoint, we’re in the farmer success business. We won’t succeed unless our growers are successful. We need them as we have no business without them. Too often, however, we forget they need us too. And for us to be successful, we need a sustainable business model. As my father used to advise his clients, “Any deal too good for one side or the other ultimately fails.” It is not sustainable. If we don’t make money, we can’t operate. If we can’t match the market and make money, we need to get more efficient. But how often do we really explain our limits to our customers? How often do we trust our customers with that kind of information?
A group of us were talking to a number of loyal growers several weeks back, explaining our service model. We walked them through our cost structure and how it wasn’t great on the services. By the time we’d finished, they were floored. “We didn’t know that,” they exclaimed, “ Why don’t you charge us more for services?” I didn’t have a great answer. But what was going through my mind was, “Because we’re scared of losing you. Because we don’t respect ourselves enough or believe the service we provide is truly valuable. Because we don’t trust you to not leave us.”
So what happens if you have that conversation with your customer? Do you actually have to fire them? Do you have to walk away from deals because the cost they demand is less than the price you’re willing to sell, either in money or respect?
Not necessarily. I remember this with my wife, Carrie, who practices real estate. She was struggling with a brutally tough client. After listening to her concerns for a few weeks, I finally asked, “Why don’t you just fire him?” I told (or retold…I only have so many stories) her my story from the law firm. She kept trying for a few more weeks but things didn’t improve. Finally, she drew the line, summoned her courage for the tough conversation, and called the client. She’d rehearsed what she’d say, “It doesn’t feel like this is a good fit. You seem very unhappy with how I’m representing you and I’m not excited about how this is working. Here are a few other real estate agents who might be a better fit.”
When I got home from work that night, I asked her how it went and whether she had fired him. Nope. “When he finally figured out I was firing him, he said, ‘Wait, are you firing me?’ I went on to explain. He became incredibly apologetic. He said, he hadn’t realized his behavior and that he was really happy with me. So we’re giving it another shot.” From that point forward, their relationship was fundamentally different.
The bottom line is that until we truly understand ourselves and our true value to our customers, and have the courage to clearly communicate that to our customers, we’re not really true partners with them. We’re simply scared salespeople, selling to a transactional customer who only sees us as a faceless company to be left if someone offers a cheaper price. Those customers exist for sure, but at some point, it’s better for everyone if they go to a competitor.
So get on out there. Have THAT conversation. Maybe you’ll fire your first customer. Maybe you won’t. But whatever happens, you’ll be a better salesperson as a result.
Onward!
Jeff
