Have you ever felt like a challenging client was draining the life out of your business? You’re not alone. Difficult clients can be incredibly frustrating, but what if I told you they also hold the potential for your greatest growth and opportunity?
What? Yes!
The key is to transform how you view challenges!
Uncovering Success
Consider, all challenges (or problems) are just stepping stones you use to uncover your next level of success rather than seeing them as something that is happening to you (as roadblocks.)
Shift from feeling stuck, stopped or struggling to that of curiosity to uncover the hidden gold in every tough situation, circumstance, or event.
Here’s eight steps to help you find the hidden GOLD in difficult client situations:
Step 1: Clear the Resistance
It’s natural to feel stressed when dealing with a demanding client.
Allow yourself to experience these emotions without judgment.
This isn’t just about feeling better – it’s about developing emotional resilience, a critical skill for any entrepreneur
(In our programs, we teach you our Aligned Intelligence Method®, which is an invaluable skill set that’s specifically designed to help you clear ALL Resistance so that you can feel FREE.)
Step 2: Focus on your Higher Intention or Outcome
Keep your attention on the outcome or results the client hired you for so that you create win/wins.
Step 3: Uncover the client’s True needs
Often, difficult behavior masks underlying concerns or fears about unmet expectations beyond the current circumstances.
By digging deeper, you’ll uncover valuable insights and additional opportunities in your market or service gaps.
Ask yourself: “What’s really driving this client’s behavior?”
Step 4: Refine your processes
Challenging clients often expose weak points in our own processes or systems.
Use this as an opportunity to strengthen your onboarding, your communication, your user experience or project management processes, etc.
What changes could this now prevent in similar situations in the future?
Step 5: Develop new skills
Difficult situations allow us to grow.
Consider improving your conflict resolution skills by mastering the art of creating effective agreements.
This is Not about setting boundaries, but rather about establishing Clear Agreements so that you clear up any unmet expectations and foster workability, leading to win/win outcomes.
These skills will serve you well beyond this single client.
(In our programs, we teach you this invaluable skill set so that you know how to specifically stay in your power, regardless of a difference of opinion or disagreement, as well as how to communicate effectively even if you never thought it was possible before.)
Step 6: Create a ‘difficult client’ playbook
Document your new strategies for handling challenging situations.
This becomes a valuable resource for your team and all future hires to learn from.
Step 7: Turn lemons into lemonade (and marketing gold)
When you successfully turn this situation around, you’ve got a powerful case study to share.
Nothing sells quite like a transformation story.
Step 8: Know when to walk away
Sometimes, the best lesson is learning who is Not an Ideal client.
In other words, who, no matter what you do, is not a good fit, as they just refuse to create workability. Period.
This allows you to then uncover the right messaging, and marketing to ensure you are only attracting the right ideal clients.
Freeing you to trust yourself, and follow your gut by saying No to those who truly aren’t going to value your work.
(Most often, the real problem my client’s have are usually missing skill sets, or processes in their sales and onboarding. And only occasionally, it’s the wrong person)
Remember, every successful entrepreneur has faced difficult clients.
The key to your success is your ability to uncover your blind spots, find the hidden opportunities in these challenges/problems, and then use them to fuel your growth and expansion – by knowing how to resolve them. I encourage you to save this as guide and reflect on the following questions any time a challenging client appears:
What were the greatest lessons this taught you?
How can you use this experience to now up level your business?
As a leader, how will you grow bigger than any situation, circumstance or difficult type of person?
Reply to this email and share your favorite insight you got.
I’d love to hear the gold you just uncovered (or will uncover) in difficult situations.
