How to stop working with a client

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. An ATA-certified French to English translator and Colorado court-certified interpreter, she also holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. For more tips and insights, join the Training for Translators mailing list!

This question was submitted by a reader. How do you stop working with a client? Just give them some notice, like a regular job? 

It’s an interesting question, and there are a few ways to answer it, so let’s analyze it from a few different angles!

If the client is treating you poorly, just quit!

This should be the exception rather than the rule, but it bears saying: you’re a contractor, not an employee. If a client is treating you poorly, just stop working with them as of this very moment. In this category, I would put reasons like:

• Payment issues: paying late, reducing the payment after the project has started, you having to chase the client for payment.
• “Treating a freelancer like an employee” issues: Expecting you to attend meetings at short notice, expecting you to attend an excessive amount of meetings without being paid, expecting you to be available for work at short notice or to rearrange your schedule to accommodate them. Those aren’t unreasonable expectations of an employee, but they’re unreasonable expectations of a freelancer: If the client wants you to do these things, they can give you a salary and benefits.
• Disrespecting you: Treating you in a way that’s unprofessional, denigrating your work, asking you to go beyond the scope of the project without extra pay. 

If a client does any of these things, just quit. “Thank you for your business in the past; I’m no longer available to work on your projects or assignments.” That’s it. 

Consider whether it’s worth raising your rates (or another change in parameters)

If you want to move on from this client because they pay poorly, or because they take up more of your time than the work is worth, I think it’s always worth one try at a rate raise or other negotiation. Calculate what it would be worth to you to stick with this client, and give them a chance to match that rate. “In order to keep working together, I would need to raise my rate to X, effective as of the next project. I really enjoy working with you; please let me know if that rate would be in your budget.”

This strategy assumes that you don’t care if the client refuses the rate increase and stops working with you. You can do the same with any other parameter of your working conditions: tell them that you need one day per 1,500 words of translation, or that you’re not working for them if you can’t select your interpreting boothmate, or you’re not using their in-house translation memory tool, or whatever else is bugging you. It’s surprising to me how often clients will go along with these types of requests if they really want to keep you. My take: if there’s a reason you don’t want to work with this client any more, it doesn’t hurt to tell them why, and see if they can fix it. 

However, don’t do this if you actually want to keep the client. I recently took a class with Ed Gandia, and he stressed that, counter to what most freelancers do, the first step in raising your rates with existing clients, is to proactively find new clients who will pay what you want to earn. His take, and I agree, is that when you try to negotiate a rate increase without having a plan B, you’re too invested in retaining the existing client: you need them more than they need you, and that’s a weak negotiating position. 

Then decide: Are you going to actively quit, or passively quit? 

Maybe you’ve already made up your mind: you don’t want to work with this client any more. Their work is boring, their project managers are mean, their deadlines are unreasonable, you know that they won’t pay more than you’re making, whatever the reason, you’re allowed to quit, and you can do it in one of two ways:

1. Passively. Just become unavailable. Answer every request with, “I’m sorry, I’m not available.” and leave it at that. Personally I prefer a more direct approach, but again, you’re a freelancer and you don’t owe this client anything. Here, a side note: When a client who I want to keep working with contacts me and I’m not available, I always say something in addition to “I’m not available.” Like, “I’m so sorry, I already have another assignment on that day, but I really enjoy your assignments and I’d love to work with you again in the future. As of now I’m actually completely available during the week of June 2 if anything comes up!” I think that if you stick to, “I’m not available” and leave it at that, this client probably won’t contact you more than a couple of times before giving up. 
2. Actively. If the passive approach feels weird or you really just want to get rid of this client, it’s fine to tell them that, and you can do it briefly or more fully. You can just say, “Thank you for contacting me for this project. At this time, I’m focusing on work that’s more aligned with my current goals, so I won’t be taking on any new projects from you going forward. I appreciate your understanding and wish you all the best with your future work.” Or you can give them more of an explanation. “Thank you for contacting me for this project. As we’ve discussed in the past, your rates are significantly lower than what my other clients are paying. I understand that your budget parameters don’t allow you to pay more for my language pair; to save your time and mine, you don’t need to contact me for future projects.” It goes without saying that this can feel awkward. We (for good reasons…like continuing to have enough work) want to please our clients; we want them to like us. But if you feel better being direct, or if you want to get ahead of the client asking why you don’t want to work with them anymore, just put it out there. After all, you’re quitting. You want to be professional, particularly in the event that you encounter someone from this client’s staff when they move on to another job, but it’s not really your problem to praise them if you no longer want to work together.