Virtual Business - fire a client & get people to do as they are told?

[camdengirl]

I love Tim's book - not only because it advocates the use of VAs and I run a VA business - but also because it's just great advice! Why don't they teach this in schools? I've identified a number of time wasting activities in the business and thought you could help?

The first is a client who pays for 2 hours a month but actually takes up more like 10 hours because they are disorganised and give us stuff right at the last minute all the time. I want to fire them but I want to do it in as nice a way as possible without saying "You're a nightmare client!" Or for them to weasel out of it by saying "We'll be better and more organised" because I know they won't. Any ideas?

The second is when I'm in the office I get interupted a lot by staff members asking me things... Usually they are all contained in the manual (yes we have one!!) but it's about training them to look there first instead of asking me. The flip side of that is when they don't ask me and don't refer to the manual and then I have to deal with a horrible stroppy client on the phone! So my second question is: How do you train people to do exactly the procedure laid out in whatever manual you use? I don't want to be an ogre but at the same time the procedures are there for a reason!!!

Looking forward to your (hopefully!) amusing and brilliant responses....

Thanks!

[TimW]

Tell them if they don't consult the manual, they're fired. That will take care of that part.

Then, if they cannot find the answer in the manual, to consult you. If they consult you before the manual, tell them they're fired.

You could also run a contest of sorts...person with the most correct client assists/problems solved with the fewest interactions with you, wins.


As for the client who pays for two hours but takes ten, I hope you have been documenting this. If you have, then show them how much time they've actually used, and inform them that you'll need to increase their monthly retainer accordingly. They will either say goodbye themselves, or they will pay. If they pay, keep track of the hours in case they do the same thing...pay for 10 and use 18. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The problem will solve itself by them leaving or you earning more money.


TimW
Phoenix

[ChiTowner]

Hi Camdengirl (as in 'Camden, London'?)

"Tell them if they don't consult the manual, they're fired." Hmmm! Somewhat of an over-reaction, there!

You probably know this already, but you're really got what you've asked for. As the boss, you've set the tone, the dynamics of how your staff interacts with you. May be too much micro-management? Harsh criticism for mistakes made? I'm just guessing here but there's some reason why your people don't want to risk putting a foot wrong

So, of course it's down to you to behave differently first. Widen the scope of what your staff are allowed to handle themselves. Praise them for taking proactive action. If a mistake has been made, you may just have to suck it in. Focus on retraining or mentoring first. Disciplinary action would need to kick in if the same mistakes continue to be made

Do you have managers or team leaders reporting to you? If not, consider fast-tracking and promoting leaders. That would put a buffer between you and the majority of your people as well as make those leaders accountable for the performance of others

Also, are you really sure that everything is answered in the training manual? In a way that they can really understand? May be make it the new job of a small team of your staff to revise it

As for the client problem, yeah, TimW's approach sounds good to me

hope that helps
Debbie

[Doreen]

Billing your client for the number of hours they actually use seems reasonable. For several months my team had a consulting client on retainer, and every month they were simply billed for the number of hours they exceeded the included amount of work.

If they were going to add more than say, one hour over, they were notified by email and asked to confirm the charges. We did have a higher minimum, up to 10 hours of work.

You can handle all that in a contract with your client.

Lack of a consulting with a manual can have several causes. Are employees really trained enough on the manual and how it is organized so they can find the needed information when being pressured by a client on the phone?

Is the manual easy enough to use and in the proper format that they can find the information they need in there quickly?

If they encounter something they can't find in the manual, do they both have an efficient way to get help on learning where it is and being able to add the information if it is something that isn't in there?

Making sure your tools are really optimized for the everyday workflow of the people you're supervising can be time consuming and often requires some deep thought about how you set things up, but makes a huge long term impact.

Added: It's important that people trust the tools they use - if employees find out that things aren't in the manual, and that those missing answers don't get added for next time, it becomes easier for them to seek you out for responses. No one thinks to check a manual that is supposed to answer all, or 90% of their answers, if they have been disappointed by being unable to navigate it repeatedly or have found out it is incomplete multiple times. Asking someone else, especially when they have complete confidence you _will_ be able to answer the question, is just more reliable for them.

[wapminnin]

maybe you can submit the manual to this forum or to others and have people critic it.Glad you are pursuing your goals though keep it up.

[camdengirl]

Some great tips there - I really like the idea of rewarding "problems solved" by the team. Firing them is probably a bit extreme but I understand the sentiment - after all it's my time they are hijacking, maybe fining them them is more appropriate.

Generally I think I'm quite hands off. I tend to stand by any decision the team have made (including when they've made a loss!) as I believe it's better they take a decision themselves and learn for the next time.

The manual is all inclusive, but rather lengthy. They are all supposed to read it when they start and whenever it's revised too. Any ideas for creating effective manuals?

[TimW]

Any ideas for creating effective manuals?

Use small words and short paragraphs. If you can, include pictures.

No, I am not kidding. I wish I were, but in my experience, people really dislike reading paragraphs over a couple sentences (like 2) long. Whether it's because they're lazy, illiterate or ADD/ADHD/ABCD/Whatever, longer paragraphs tend to turn computer users into zombies without the desire to eat your brains. Though some might want to.

[camdengirl]

Good tip there.

We fired the client nicely by just saying that it wasn't a good fit and we thought they would work better with another VA who was able to respond to their dramas more quickly (okay I didn't use the word dramas!). All their stuff will be going straight back to them just as soon as they pay their bill... :)

[Free4Family&Community]

Tell them if they don't consult the manual, they're fired. That will take care of that part.

Then, if they cannot find the answer in the manual, to consult you. If they consult you before the manual, tell them they're fired.

You could also run a contest of sorts...person with the most correct client assists/problems solved with the fewest interactions with you, wins.


As for the client who pays for two hours but takes ten, I hope you have been documenting this. If you have, then show them how much time they've actually used, and inform them that you'll need to increase their monthly retainer accordingly. They will either say goodbye themselves, or they will pay. If they pay, keep track of the hours in case they do the same thing...pay for 10 and use 18. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The problem will solve itself by them leaving or you earning more money.


TimW
Phoenix

great advice. It made me laugh about geting them fired but you are all to RIGHT.

[Free4Family&Community]

Good tip there.

We fired the client nicely by just saying that it wasn't a good fit and we thought they would work better with another VA who was able to respond to their dramas more quickly (okay I didn't use the word dramas!). All their stuff will be going straight back to them just as soon as they pay their bill... :)

thanks for this advice.

[Adguru]

great thread, i went thru most of our publishers this week (we sell ads for about 100+ websites). About 50 of the sites we sold ads for accounted for less than 10% of our revenue. I used to always think it's better to have more sites so we can have a larger inventory... But after reviewing the numbers we can easily put these publishers on auto-pilot and spend the time on the publishers that make us far more money.

Very useful exercise!

[captaink]

Hmmm..

We had a client like this in a fomrer company and LOVED him.

Of course, we had to sit down with him and explain that he was so unorganized, it took us more time to do his stuff - even reading / sorting his emails took half an hour.

Basically, he got told he needed to be more organized and we got to bill any and all hours it took us to do his stuff.

Almost needless to say, the guy never got organized and made us a lot of money.

::captaink::

[kamakiri]

I almost ignored this one, but I had to jump in. My take as a bystander is that you have a training problem. I know, I had the same problem in my own business years ago. Part of it is based on poor hiring decisions. You hired the wrong people.

It is not the people who you fire who cause you the most grief, it is the ones you don't fire.

Part 2 is micro management, I saw that you said you didn't do that, but the people who deny it are the worst at spotting it in themselves, and (bite the bullet) you have all of the symptoms. Sticking by staff decisions has nothing to do with micromanaging them.

Buy and read the E-Myth Revisited. Spend a few weeks working on your business instead of in it.

And more of what you don't want to hear: You have a problem with being snarky. Not a personal attack. Please don't take it that way. From your tone of writing, I can see that you think very little of your employees and customers (some, most, all? Who knows). This comes through in your communications with them. People know. They sense the tenseness over the phone lines. It sounds pedantic, but make a point of giving out 5 complements a day and smiling on the telephone.

My mantra used to be: "This job would be great without all the employees and customers." I have been there, and the quicker you realize it, the quicker you will get over it and really begin to soar in your business.

[Sven]

Did I read that correctly, FINE your workers? What age do you think we live in? You want to rule by terror? This suggests to me that your manuals must be horrible...

As said before, people do not work well with manuals. Ideally, they are not needed. If they are needed, are they paper? why not digital? easier to search. Can you make them as a mindmap? That could show a expandable tree-like structure, including pictures websites, you name it.

[camdengirl]

Update on this one:

We gave the client the option of paying for the hours they were actually using, but essentially they weren't prepared to do it or be more organised and keep to the agreed hours. No loss to us really, as we gained the extra time we'd been spending.

On the staff front, we had a meeting and discussed how we could improve things so that I wasn't getting interrupted and they knew where information was.

Staff agreed generally that they tended to ask me things because it was easier than looking up the information. So we did two things: firstly made it easier to refer to the info using pictures/charts (good tip that!) and secondly made it harder to contact me.

Having the conversation definitely highlighted that I was finding this a real problem, and I don't think they'd really thought of it as such before. The ones who persisted in not following the correct procedures had to go. There just wasn't an excuse any more because they had to take personal responsibility for following the procedure or tell me that there was a problem with the outlined system.

A much happier bunch now though!

[kamakiri]

@Camden - I watched this today and you and this post came to mind. I felt the same, but did a poor job of explaining it. Rules, manuals and procedures are a poor substitute for cultivating wisdom in your organization. Barry Schwartz hits a home run explaining it in this TED talk. Take 20 minutes out of your day to watch it, you might just be able to use the ideas in it to take your company tot he next level.

(http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html)Talks Barry Schwartz: The real crisis? We stopped being wise (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html)


PS, your fired customer is a loss to you. It is a loss of revenue, a loss of referrals, a loss of morale, and a loss of an opportunity to learn. I don't think you are looking at it the right way there either.

[camdengirl]

Thanks Kamakiri - I'll watch that - it looks good.

But I'm sticking by the decision to fire the client - it's following the 80/20 rule, it decreased my stress levels, gave me more time to go find better clients who did fit our ideal client profile.

Straw poll: Wouldn't you fire a client who sucked the lifeblood out of your business, who was rude, didn't pay properly and wouldn't work the way you wanted them to?

[Dus10]

Any ideas for creating effective manuals?

1) Make sure they are 100% accurate.

2) Don't be overly descriptive. Give them the facts that they need. If they need too much hand holding, they are the type you want making decisions on your behalf, and you do need them to make decisions on your behalf. Also, if you are overly descriptive, then you have a greater chance at the information being inaccurate, as a very small change can make it wrong.

I run elections polls, and the instructions are way too descriptive... down to the color of a tab. Well, the tab color changed and people couldn't figure out the instructions. Get people that you trust enough to use some intuition and troubleshooting skills...