In a service environment, not all clients offer a straight value exchange. In theory*, you are selling time for money and you price your services accordingly.
In practice, pricing can take into consideration the non-financial value that some clients can offer. They may work as a marquee client, a highly respected brand or business that attracts other valuable clients. Not exactly a loss leader but still not paying as much as we would like. Or, they are the first client from a new industry, allowing us to cut our teeth in said industry and build a case study that we can leverage to attract similar clients. Or, they are the client we are offering a new service to, again, allowing us to build experience and a case study to help us develop more clients in this particular service area.
And then there is the black hole client. The first time I heard this expression I felt an instant recognition; here was a name that summed up what I had experienced in certain client/agency relationships.
I use the term black hole client when I am referring to a client for whom no amount of time, energy and effort will ever be enough. Whatever you offer, they will always want more, and you will never be adequately remunerated or appreciated for your efforts.
Let me be clear, this is not a moral judgement of the client with whom you have an unhealthy dynamic. The same way that you can have a failed friendship with someone that your other friends adore, we just aren’t all compatible. That applies for platonic relationships, romantic relationships and client/agency relationships.
But once you realise that you are in this situation the question of ‘what am I going to do about it?’ arises. Back then, the answer for me was not much. I wasn’t going to do much about it except let resentment build up because I was too scared to address it properly and deal with the situation. Now, I would act differently, but that is the benefit of time and experience.
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This is what I would encourage the past version of me to reflect on:
Be honest, what are all the rationales you are using to justify holding onto this client?
Don’t just think your answer, write it down on paper so you can see all the ways you are lying to yourself NICE AND CLEARLY.
Is it a you problem or a them problem?
It is easy to blame the other party when we find ourselves in an unhealthy client/agency dynamic. The truth is that each party is likely to be complicit.
It is worth looking at the ways you have contributed to the issue. What are your behaviours, processes and ways of working that have allowed such an unhealthy dynamic to take hold?
Can you re-establish a healthy dynamic?
To get a sense of this you’ll need to reflect on #2 first. That will help you explore how much meaningful change is within your control.
At this point you will likely want to create a strategy to see if you can re-establish a healthier dynamic. I suggest that this strategy includes key action steps, desired outcomes and has a realistic timeline.
It could also include what is the minimum you are willing to accept in this client/agency relationship. For example, if you can get to a place where you are not over-servicing time wise (although you may be emotionally!) and there is a fee increase, are you happy to accept that true appreciation may never be part of the relationship?
Renegotiating relationship dynamics will take time, effort and energy. Be very clear on where the limits of your endeavour sit.
Do you need to call it quits?
This is where I get woo-woo - that black hole client is taking up space in the form of time and energy. While they occupy that space, you can’t fit a more aligned client in that spot. If you’ve put in as much effort as you are willing to into establishing a healthy dynamic and it is still not working? You’ve reached the point where the working relationship has reached completion.
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* There are many pricing arguments that say you should sell value, not time. This is extremely valid. But most agencies start out selling time and then adjust rates to align to percieved value once they have established themselves. It can be tricky to sell in fees on ‘value’ as value is extremely hard to quantify when results can’t be guaranteed as is often the case in PR. We can guarantee that we will do the work (aka time) and selling in fees that way can be a lot more palatable to people. Perhaps the reason that value can become a bigger part of the equation over time is that as an agency grows and develops it becomes much more sophisticated at delivering results, and not just work. But there are never any guarantees.