When Brice Lucas of Blue Fountain Media pitched a series on dealing with difficult client types, I was impressed by his positive advice: it doesn’t have to end in getting rid of clients. As we know, our difficult clients are often our best paying ones, so I found his approach solid. The first article in this series addresses clients who don’t pay on time.

When you ask a client for money, you are dipping into that cushion of goodwill. So when a client doesn’t pay on time, decide how to approach them a case-by-case basis.

It may be okay to let a client pay late if they pay late with predictability. The fact is, you perform the work and you get paid. If that check comes in a little late every month, but it comes in consistently late every month, that’s a much better scenario than receiving no payment at all. But if it’s too much to manage, go ahead and inform the client about your new policy that requires payment before you start work.

Blue Fountain Media’s policy on monthly projects is that payments must be received prior to the first of the month within which the work is performed and if payment is not received prior to the start of the next month, work is stopped until payment is received. This can obviously put you in an awkward position when it comes to maintaining a healthy relationship, so it’s better used at your discretion. It’s important to note that well documented payment histories make this easy to manage.

Last week, we had a “bargaining” client who was constantly trying to get us to cut him a “deal” after the work had been performed. We executed the work scheduled for the month, and he promised to pay, but didn’t. When we took a firmer stance, he tried to get us to lower our prices despite the fact that we’ve grown his online business by over 800%. By tracking the time consumed just pushing the client to get payments in, and by documenting his payment cycles, it was easy to make a logical decision to use our “pay-first” policy when dealing with him from then on.

Another client was recently handed a project in good faith that the final payment would be made shortly after delivering the product—counter to our policy. We delivered the project and the client disappeared for over 90 days, with not a single email or phone call.

I had no leverage to secure the final payment outside of legal recourse, so I went visited the client’s office to talk about it. The final project exceeded their expectations, but for various reasons the client was unable to pay or even communicate about payment. Yet the trip to the office brought the issue to a human level: I spoke with the CEO, we received payment that day, and the relationship has continued.

Legal re-course is expensive, time consuming, and un-enjoyable. Protect yourself with a process that ensures both a mutually beneficial and respectful relationship with your client.

• Communicate frequently throughout the project to build a genuine relationship. This makes it harder for them to withhold payment.
• Set up payment milestones so there’s not such a large amount owed at the end.
• Deliver your promises, and clearly show and get approval of the progress you’ve made.
• Start out with, “Your project has gone really well! I am just following up on payment…” If you find yourself doing this often, consider the relationship and compare it to payment history.

Stay tuned for the final installment next week!

Brice Lucas leads the account director team at Blue Fountain Media and oversees company operations and processes. Blue Fountain Media is an online marketing and website design company with a core focus on creating solutions that translate into real revenue. Brice believes laughter is the solution to most problems, and that any problem can be solved in a series of logical steps.

Photo credit: Steven Depolo, courtesy of Flickr, CC 2.0