Fire them…

It can make your stomach turn, keep you up all night, make you replay scenarios on how to fix it, get angry, feel trapped – 

That client that you thought would be awesome and then they turned out to me a nightmare?

That manager who you thought would take your business to the next level, but is a secret tyrant, do-it-all themself-er, neglectful, [insert your own adjective here]…..

– It’s firing day. VOMIT. 🤢

Let’s talk about 2 different types of firing.  Clients and Teammates.

Clients – I can hear you now, “BUT BUT BUT, I worked so hard to get this client.” Yeah, I know. BUT, what is the impact of a bad client on your team? In Mike Michalowicz’s book The Pumpkin Plan, he gives a great chart on how to rate your customers.  It looks something like this:

Make a chart with all of your clients and rate them based on Revenue, Pay Fast, Repeat Revenue, Potential Revenue, Communication, etc, and rate them. (A being the best and F being the least preferred).

You will find the ones on the bottom of the list are most likely the clients who make your face cringe when they call you. It’s time to weed them out. Here are a few ways to think about doing this:

– Deny offering new services

– Raise the price

– De-prioritize these clients or straight away say that you will no longer be able to support to them, due to some other contracts etc.

Now, you and your team have more headspace to upsell your best customers and/or find new ones.

Now for the second half of this blog. Firing the Teammate.

I have been doing this for over 10 years and firing day doesn’t ever get any easier. You are dealing with people’s lives and hiring and firing should not be taken lightly. But sometimes it is not a fit. Sometimes the person’s time with you has grown sour and they are no longer breathing life into your organization, but instead crushing it’s soul. 

A few rules when it comes to firing people:

1. They should never be surprised. (unless this is a layoff situation)
2. If you didn’t set them up for success with the following, the burden is on you. (think about a severance package)
   1. Clear Mission and Vision of the Company
   2. Core Values that you hire, fire, and promote based on
   3. Quarterly conversations for updates on what is working and what is not working.
3. You will feel better after the 10 minutes of pain.
4. If you are feeling the pain of them working there – they are feeling it too.

 A few questions to ask yourself if you are on the fence about letting someone find a better position outside of your company:

1. If I knew what I know now….would I hire this person?
2. If I had someone who I thought would be perfect for this role beating down my door for the position, would I keep the current person?

 Again, I know that these conversations are never easy.  BUT, I can tell you 9 times out of 10 when I have had to make this hard decision about a client or a teammate, I get at least one person thanking me for making the change. 

Onward and Upward, team!

As always, reach out if you want to bounce some ideas around, I am always happy to chat!