There are a couple of ways to do this. One way is to meet with them and say, ‘I’m feeling like our work together is not as productive as I would like and I’d like to refer you to someone else.’
This conversation is never intended to be confrontational; it’s about elegantly backing away. Your clients are your friends in the workplace. You want them to talk nicely about you.
For me, I never leave a client no matter what. I believe that if I leave, they will be worse off than if I stay. I get challenged regularly by several people in my life for this philosophy. They say to me, ‘I can’t believe you still have this person as a client.’ But my feeling is genuine that if I walked away their business will fall apart.
I was working with a client where all I was doing was showing up and asking, ‘How are you doing, are you getting stuff done?’ and the answer, repeatedly, was ‘No.’ Finally I said, ‘Listen, why don’t we take a 90 day break. You can catch up on all the work because to pay me a high-price to kick you in the butt now is not that valuable.’ And he was very surprised. He wanted to talk about it, but didn’t know how.
Stay aware of it. You wanting to make a client an un-client, they probably want to make you an un-consultant, and they don’t know how to talk about it. They’re eventually going to get angry and fire you. They’re going to bang on their table and stop sending you money, and you’re going to be angry too.
Here’s my feeling: I always want to be able to walk down the street and say ‘hi’ no matter what relationship I have, I don’t ever want to have to go to the other side of the street and hope they don’t see me. So end the relationship, but be graceful, be elegant. Let them know you can no longer work with them. And don’t make it about blame. Make it about you not being as effective as you need to be. And that’s it.
I want to hear your stories: have you ever had to fire a client? What did you learn from that experience?