There is a fantastic post on the Top 10 Ways to Fire Clients From Hell at Inside CRM. Lovely stuff.

Here is one of my favorites:

5. The client who wants you to be something you’re not: Some
clients have a clear idea in their heads of what they’d like to see
from your work. Often, this is good news, but if their specifics don’t
line up with the way you like to operate, you may end up butting heads.

How to get out: To
reason with this client, you can explain why you prefer to do things
the way you do. After all, you’re the expert. If he simply doesn’t
understand or refuses to accept your methods, it’s time to cut ties.
Explain to him the problems that his requests create for you and let
him down easy. If you can, refer him to a colleague or competitor that
you know can deliver what he wants. A referral is key, because you
don’t want him to be unsatisfied and claim that you can’t do your job.

I like this one one because I have had quite a few clients
who insist that I become expert on something that I am not.  In one of the
worst cases, I remember getting a call — about 48 hours before a
long-planned talk — from a wine industry consultant who insisted that
I completely change my session so that it was about pending
legislation in the industry. I tried to explain that it was something
that I had no expertise in at all, and that if I tried
to pretend that I was an expert in something, but was not, everyone
would lose. She wouldn’t back off, so I walked. But I was not as gracious as
is suggested above.

Also, you might check out this annotated version of the Inside CRM post on Hyperblog, where you can see how one employer — it was a contract job for the blogger, so the employer was also a client — managed to be all 10 kinds of clients from hell rolled into one. Talk about an asshole infested place!

Of course, not all clients from hell are assholes, but some of them certainly qualify.  But it is wise to get rid of them when you realize that you have a demeaning jerk on your hands.  And there is at least one company that takes this a step further, warning potential clients that they will get fired if they turn out to be assholes — and that is the word they use.  To this point, there was a great Wall Street Journal article a few months back on the Van Aatrijk Group’s assertive and explicit use of of this policy. As I said on my "honor roll" of places that apply the rule:

Peter van Aartrijk is CEO and
founder of this 14 person marketing and advertising. He has used the rule
since 2000, when the firm was founded.
As Mr. van Aartrijk told The Wall Street Journal in April:

I decided we would surround
ourselves with clients who are
fun to be with and are still very smart. All of what we’ve done since has been
built around that simple philosophy — a ‘No Assholes Policy,’ or NAP."

Mr.
van Aartrijk reports that applies the rule to employees as well as clients, and
that: that he routinely uses this policy to turn away clients:

"I probably turn away about 20% of the revenue we could be bringing
in. But I think we gain over the long term, in relationships with clients;
we’re still growing 20% a year. We make new clients aware of the NAP up front.
Most of them love it. Some send emails to others and blind-copy me, and they
say, ‘Be sure to ask him about his NAP.’"

And, as this recent Wall Street Journal article on the Cranky Skies suggests, and as I was told by several airline executives in the course of doing research for my book, most major airlines keep lists of passengers who have been such jerks that they aren’t allowed to purchase tickets — so they use the rule too, albeit rarely.

Finally, there are some cases where either clients aren’t such assholes that they deserve to be fired, or perhaps they are flaming assholes, but you or your company still can’t bring yourself to fire them. Some people and places use what I first heard described (by an attorney) as "asshole taxes" in such cases. Since I first heard about this tactic, I have had dozens of people tell me that, when a client is a known jerk, or turns into one, they raise their rates. Their argument usually goes something like "That way, I can tell myself that the client may be treating me like dirt, but is paying me extra for the privilege."  So it is a way reduce the cognitive dissonance. I have heard about variations of "asshole taxes" from car mechanics, plumbers, management consultants, and even one waiter who reported that he quoted higher prices on restaurant specials when he didn’t like the customers.  So watch out, if you are asshole customer or client, people may be charging you taxes at every turn, and you might not even realize it. 

And to return to the wine industry, I still love the email from the wine importer who wrote me that "“In my
business, we have a rule that says that a customer can either be an arsehole
(I’m English originally) or a late pay, but not both. We have reduced stress
considerably by excluding some customers on this basis.” I love both the description and the practical compromise.

I would love to hear from people about other tactics they use for getting rid of, or "taxing" nasty clients.