Clients come and clients go.

I'd bet that anyone running a business would enjoy it a bit more if they didn't need to have clients.

Yeah sure, the bottom line wouldn't look as healthy, but just think about how much time you'd save in delivering client work, having weekly calls and the dreaded monthly reports.

But, until the time that someone invents a business model that brings in money without customers, we're stuck with them. And, no matter how much they disrupt our lives, the last thing on earth that we want, is to lose them.

I ran my previous business for 4 years before selling it. During that time there were so many highs. But the specific moments that stick in my memory the most, are the times that we lost a client.

Even the ones we didn't really want to keep.

So for this blog, I'm going to relive a few of the moments that kept me up and night.

We love them really though. Don't we?

The early clients

You'll never forget your first client resignation. Particularly how much it stings as a business owner, versus an employee. It feels personal. Like you've let them down, yourself down and your team down. Even if it's caused by market conditions or a change of strategy, it's so difficult not to blame yourself.

If the first resignation comes very early in your business journey it's very easy to question the whole business model. But looking back now, with the benefit of hindsight, I would always think about your first 4 or 5 clients as a practice. Not in a bad way. Not that you won't be giving them your full attention. In fact, most likely the complete opposite. No matter how long you spend perfecting your product and offer, you won't really know if it hits the spot until you start delivering it. As a result, those early clients will likely form part of your product development team, and sometimes that can mean they end up less relevant than they seemed at the start.

No one likes to lose clients (or revenue) in the early days, but sometimes you need to accept some losses in order to progress forward. The worst thing you can do is try to cling on to clients if they don't fit within your ongoing strategy.

The small clients

When you start your business, these small clients don't seem small. In fact, they're your biggest clients.

But as you grow, you'll most likely start to increase the size of clients that you win and find it harder and harder to manage the clients that pay you less. Your team will start giving them less focus, as they should, which will result in them resigning.

For your team, this is probably a win. Less hassle with almost no impact on revenue.

But for you, a loss is a loss.

I really struggled with this in my agency. We could lose a client that made up less than 0.25% of our monthly revenue, but the impact it had on my focus and morale was the same as if they had been worth 25%. I started doubting everything we did. Started assuming that everyone must be unhappy. Basically started panicking about nothing.

How did I deal with it?

I asked the team to not let me know about client resignations below a certain value.

It let me keep focus on the longer term strategy of the business and not be distracted with bad news that didn't impact our progress.

The toxic clients

You know the ones. The clients that resign, usually with a threat to not pay the 6 months of outstanding invoices, and everybody celebrates.

It only happened a few times for me. But these ones hurt the most because I knew deep down that we should bin them off from the start, but I was too addicted to the revenue. I ignored the distress they were causing the wider team because I didn't want to miss the sales targets I'd set myself.

And in the end they left and never paid us any of that revenue anyway (apart from one that I hunted down because they particularly annoyed me).

Serves me right.

The out of the blue clients

The heartbreakers.

Just as everything is going well, and you've spent the day reviewing client performance and satisfaction.

You can't imagine a world where any of your clients would ever leave you.

And you get the email, subject "Contract".

Ah balls.

Never has anyone received an email entitled "Contract" and has had a request to increase or extend the existing terms.

These resignations might be due to in-housing, or maybe a global strategy shift. They hurt so much because there's literally nothing you could have done.

It impacts the team, because they enjoyed working with the clients. And of course, the precious revenue too.

We managed to reduce the out of the blue resignations by making sure we had as many tentacles into our clients as possible. So many different regions and services we were supporting with that the clients couldn't operate without us.

Remember, your clients are many other peoples prospects. Make sure that your offering can't be compared.

The big clients

The most painful thing about losing a big client - deleting the monthly revenue from your forecast sheet.

Big, needle moving impact on the monthly numbers.

I was super lucky that I never lost a big one. But, I had 3 that resigned.

One of them even resigned twice.

The lesson - it's not over until it's over (of course, sometimes it will just be over!).

When we got the dreaded call or email it was full action stations to understand the cause or reasoning. Then we'd hit back with a proposed action plan for the remaining notice period.

If it was 3 months notice, what could we do within that time frame to get them to want to stay.

If they'd already appointed another agency to replace us, how could we use that 3 month period to win something else alongside the new agency.

It's hard, but for big chunks of revenue it's worth the time investment to not give up.

Ultimately clients will always come and go, but some need fighting for and some need to be left to walk off into the sunset.