How To Gracefully Fire a Client

Clients come in many varieties. Some are thoughtful, professional, cooperative and ALWAYS pay on time. Then there are the other ones. When a client goes beyond “difficult,” to being such a burden on your resources that your other clients suffer, then you may have no choice but to cut the cord. There are many legitimate reasons to end a client relationship, including non-payment, poor communication, client procrastination, and plain old-fashioned disrespectful behavior. Sometimes these situations can be solved with a little conversation, sometimes they can’t. For the purposes of this article, we will assume that you have already decided that you no longer want to work with your client. In that case, here is my action plan to gracefully bow out of a client relationship at any stage of the project.

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