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My impression of the original article is that it suffers from overrationalization. The author knows, from empirical observation, that toxic customers exist. And

My impression of the original article is that it suffers from overrationalization. The author knows, from empirical observation, that toxic customers exist. And he feels -- possibly accurately, but possibly due to the awesome power of hindsight -- that these customers should be detectable in advance. And that may be true. But if so, it's not a scientific process. The warning signs do factor into it, but in the end it's a matter of gut feeling. (Perhaps because it's not necessarily the case that a given customer is universally toxic, it's that they don't fit you, your company, or your product.) But it's always embarrassing for an engineer to write a blog post like "how to detect toxic customers by going back and forth in conversation, trying various rhetorical strategies that you make up on the fly, and occasionally closing your eyes and trying to use the Force". So instead the author tried to invent a nice, rational checklist. It has the virtue of looking scientific. The only downside is that it may not actually work very well. It's not what the author is actually using, either. You can't do sales, especially corporate sales, with an algorithm unless you're willing to leave money on the table, maybe a lot of money.

notahacker 16y ago
Gut feeling is the only real way of separating things out. Asking huge numbers of questions can be a sign of a customer support nightmare or a person/company/entity doing their homework. Following up can be a sign of high expectations or them being keen to make a decision asap. Asking for a discount is sometimes a buying signal. Conversely, whilst rudeness isn't a good thing, some of the customers that will be a really bad fit are the ones who are really making the effort to be polite and charming. The one almost universal red flag would be constant inappropriate reference to price. Asking for discounts is to be expected. Asking if there are cheaper, slimmed-down alternatives, or freebies for volume purchases is reasonable. Constantly referencing the price whilst raising unrelated issues or requests is a sign that something's amiss. Whenever you hear something like "I'm surprised to hear you haven't added xyz considering you're charging £xxx" or "so before I starting paying £xxx, would you...?" it's a pretty good sign that they're either rationalisig a decision to not spend the money with you or have an inflated sense of how far up your priority queue their spending pushes you. Then again, you can suspend that rule for businesses that are likely to pay enough to push themselves up your priority queue too..

notahacker 16y ago

Gut feeling is the only real way of separating things out. Asking huge numbers of questions can be a sign of a customer support nightmare or a person/company/entity doing their homework. Following up can be a sign of high expectations or them being keen to make a decision asap. Asking for a discount is sometimes a buying signal. Conversely, whilst rudeness isn't a good thing, some of the customers that will be a really bad fit are the ones who are really making the effort to be polite and charming. The one almost universal red flag would be constant inappropriate reference to price. Asking for discounts is to be expected. Asking if there are cheaper, slimmed-down alternatives, or freebies for volume purchases is reasonable. Constantly referencing the price whilst raising unrelated issues or requests is a sign that something's amiss. Whenever you hear something like "I'm surprised to hear you haven't added xyz considering you're charging £xxx" or "so before I starting paying £xxx, would you...?" it's a pretty good sign that they're either rationalisig a decision to not spend the money with you or have an inflated sense of how far up your priority queue their spending pushes you. Then again, you can suspend that rule for businesses that are likely to pay enough to push themselves up your priority queue too..