If you stay in business for very long, there’s going to come a time when you outgrow some of your previous customers. As your business develops, you will begin to notice that certain types of work and certain clients are more profitable, rewarding, or in some other way more desirable. When your days begin filling up with more of these ideal projects, you’ll reach a point where you have to let some old customers go.

Disagree? Maybe your plan is to hire another employee whenever you come up against the edge of your work capacity. I can’t say that approach wouldn’t be successful. I do imagine it could be very difficult. When you hire your first employee, you don’t double your work capacity. A lot of time is now spent communicating. Before you just had to have you and your customer on the same page. Now you’ve added a third person that needs to understand and agree with how the project is handled.

Everyone probably has a different threshold of what point they will feel the need to turn old customers away. Let’s assume, though, that everyone can agree that such a point exists. So how do you do it?

Some of my clients have already been through this. Their last web developer outgrew them before they came to me. In some cases it was a very frustrating and discouraging process for them. My customers are the lifeblood of my business, and I am very grateful that they allow me to create web sites every day and make a living. So I want to do right by them.

I think an important courtesy is to give them advanced warning (if you can). Nobody likes to be blind-sided. If you can tell your customers that your business is going to be transitioning over the coming months into larger projects, they have time to plan. In fact you may even be able to convert some of those relationships into ones that works better for you. Maybe instead of calling you every few weeks with a handful of minor changes, you can ask your customers to combine all of their requests into a major revision every 6 months. This won’t work for all of your customers, but some of them may embrace the idea.

For those customers that simply can’t line up with the direction you’re moving, the best thing you can do is suggest a replacement. I don’t mean picking the name of a web developer out of the phone book. Find a developer that you have had a conversation with and trust to take over these relationships. You’re far more qualified than most of your customers to determine if another developer has the chops to pick up where you left off. One of their biggest fears when you leave is that they won’t be able to find someone to fill your shoes, so help them. They will love you for it and remember you when they have larger web projects down the road.

filed under: Dealing With Clients