I’ve read a ton of business blog posts in the past about firing customers, but up until recently have never had to act on any of that information. But as of this past Friday, have finally gone and fired my first client.

I have to say I didn’t pursue this particular venue without a bit of trepidation, but really, after having pulled the trigger realized I made the right decision. I’ve always wanted to work as hard as possible for my clients, and provide them with the highest level of service, but realized that you can’t always make everyone happy, and in fact, there are certain clients that you will never make happy.

My consulting company has finally grown to the point where we can be more selective regarding the clientele that we service, and recently ran into a problem with a client that really just doesn’t fit our model. Some of the reasons for this are:

• Client only wants us for break/fix work.
• Client runs software that is entirely not supported by the developer for more than one mission critical application.
• Client is extremely slow to pay, and tends to question validity of hours, even when they change their requests half way through working through a problem.
• Client doesn’t want to run any sort of regular backup, and has basically ignored our suggestions on multiple occasions.

Even with as hard as I’ve tried to make the client happen, they still continue to not seem to trust anything I do. Really, the final reason I realized that I had to cut the client loose was when they began to impact my ability to service my larger, timely paying clients that are keeping me in business.

My addition to the when to fire a client collective wisdom, when they begin to interfere with your ability to service your quality clients is the moment in which they should no longer be a client of yours.