How to deal with customers,perhaps the single most important thing for anyone to understand in business. Specially if you’re in a service businesss where customer pays you after receiving services. In India, most often this is a very bad habit that people have accustomed to, and that is paying after the entire service is rendered up to the satisfaction. Because of this one limitation, many freelancers and service people suffer at a greater level.
I’ve learnt one of the most important lessons of my life and it might completely change the way I look at my business and at work. Am writing that down here so that you can relate to it if something such happens with you too. Here’s what happened
Yesterday, I was talking to a client of mine, who was once my very good friend and now a startup founder for whom I was working. I asked him for a pending payment for which the job was done quite long ago, but it wasn’t delivered. But he refused to pay me saying he needs the demo of the project once again and then only he’ll make the payment. After having worked for this client for almost one year, and delivering everything exactly as expected, I was angry, furious for delayed payment.
It really felt very bad to me and I was very upset and very angry for such behavior. I felt offended because I personally felt so. I felt it and took it as my personal insult.
Later, I realized, I can’t really mix my personal issues with business and also can’t mix the issues of business in my personal life, it just doesn’t work that way. When something goes wrong in business, its wrong in business and not in your personal life.
So now and on, I’ll be thinking of business as business, not as my personal life
If there is a loss, its a loss of business not my personal life
If there is an insult, its about business not mine
If there’s anything going wrong, its business, not me
I’m different than my business, I am whole, complete and perfect
Only when you think like this, you can work confidently, otherwise you’ll be hurting yourself for every minor issues happening at your business
How to deal with Customers
I know it’ll seem very uneasy for you, but you have to learn to reject customers. Yes you read it right. You must learn to reject few customers to avoid later issues. The number 1 method to deal with customers in business is to select appropriate customers. You can do so by fixing your work commitments well before starting the work.
Some ways to deal with customers in business so that it makes a good deal for both parties
Charge well, believe me, whatever is your first quote for the service, its very low, you need to increase it, probably double it
Payment terms
Project Terms and scope of your work
Deadline from your end for finishing the work
Deadline upon when you’ll get the payment
and Most importantly, Never work for anyone without getting advance
