4 ms·
The practical problem here is that, in a lot of industries, clients talk, even when they're supposed to be in competition with each other. Getting rid of the pr
by pw0ncakes 17y ago
The practical problem here is that, in a lot of industries, clients talk, even when they're supposed to be in competition with each other. Getting rid of the problem client isn't what's hard; getting rid of them without losing others is the problem.
- access_denied 17y agoWhat about providing good service so that the others don't want to get lost? Or are _all_ of your clients making their business decisions based on some rumours?
- lsc 17y agoyeah, there's no reason to burn bridges. I know I often take a loss when I want to fire a customer (this is a lot easier for me, as it is a product business, I'm not getting paid by the hour.) and I'm pretty up front about what I provide (E.g. I'm not really, ah, 'full service') so it's pretty easy to pass off the customers requiring more help on the competition. For me, this is one of the primary reasons why I like being a product business so much more than contracting or being an employee. "Here are the things I can do for you" - and if you want something else, the extent of my responsibility is to give you a refund and a recommendation. I still work to develop new features, but nobody gets particularly mad at me if I flake out and don't get them done within my estimated time frame, not like contracting where if I don't get the thing done on time, sometimes months of my time become valueless to the client. It was harder when I was primarily a contractor. Man, I was a horrible contractor. Giving away half a months work is much more painful than refunding someone for a fairly high margin product.