How to ease out a client you no longer want to work with

Greetings, Training for Translators subscribers! I hope you’re all doing well! Scaling back your work with a client, or discontinuing your work with them completely, is honestly a sign of a healthy freelance business. It means that you’re progressing beyond what some of your clients have to offer, and hopefully working with more interesting and better-paying clients.

And yet, it can be very stressful to decide how and when to do this: Do you outright break up with the client and tell them not to contact you again? Sometimes! Do you just passively become “too busy” to take their work? Sometimes! It depends on the context…let’s take a closer look.

When to break up with a client

If you feel like a client treats you poorly, just dump them. Freelancing, and life in general, are hard enough as it is. You don’t need:

• Clients who you repeatedly have to chase for payment
• Project managers who disrespect you
• Anyone who constantly haggles about rates when you’ve already discussed that; like you’ve agreed on a rate, and then they continue contacting you for work that pays less than what you agreed on
• Clients who repeatedly renegotiate working conditions that you’ve already objected to (i.e. you’ve already told them, “I don’t translate more than 2,500 words per day,” and then they keep asking if you can do 10,000 words in two days)

Here’s how I handle this, in an effort to be polite. I tell the client, “To save your time and mine, you don’t need to contact me…” (in X situation). Such as:

• “…you don’t need to contact me about additional work until my last invoice has been paid”
• “…you don’t need to contact me for interpreting assignments with less than a two-hour minimum”
• “…you don’t need to contact me for machine translation post-editing work”
• “…you don’t need to contact me for rush work if a rush charge is not applicable”

Here, I’m talking mostly about agencies. For direct clients, I think it’s always worth trying to accommodate them, and charging accordingly, unless you really hate the work (I hate MTPE and I won’t do it at any price). But for example, if the client insists that they can only pay for one hour, that may just be a company policy. Ask for double your hourly rate and see what happens. If they have a hair-on-fire rush job, charge what makes it worth your while. I’m surprised at how often this approach works with direct clients.

Always consider keeping them as a KTLO

client

There is zero shame in what Ed Gandia calls KTLO (keep the lights on) clients. Clients where, there’s nothing particularly great or horrible about them, they send you work that pays the bills. Unless you really dislike a particular client or their work, consider keeping them on your KTLO list, or only working with them when you have nothing else in the pipeline.

For this reason, I honestly don’t mind clients who use automated assignment systems (I have a number of interpreting clients who do this). Instead of having to explain that you’d really love to work with them, but you’re busy, you just click Accept or Decline.

Even if you have to respond to the client directly, consider something generic like, “Thank you for this request! Unfortunately I’m not available but I appreciate the offer.” Honestly, I like this approach. So often, we feel the urge to overexplain when we turn a client down. You don’t owe them that; you’re not available, that’s it.

I think this is a particularly good option if something about your business is in transition: you’re trying to work with more direct clients, or you’re starting out in subtitling or non-native editing, or whatever. Personally, I try never to give up my existing KTLO clients until I’m really, really sure that I no longer need them. In many cases, I never actually give them up, I just politely turn them down indefinitely or until they stop contacting me.

Option three: raise your rates

To do this, you have to be willing to lose the client, but it’s an option. Think about what bugs you about this client, then raise your rates until the work feels worthwhile. Lots of businesses impose unilateral rate raises: no negotiation, no apology. Each year, my accountant sends me what he calls an “engagement letter,” getting my approval of his terms of service for that year. One aspect of that is his hourly rate, which goes up by about 5% a year. He doesn’t say, “I hope this is OK with you!!” He simply says, if you want to work with me again this year, here’s the cost. This is a totally valid option if you don’t mind losing the client abruptly.

If you started the year with a marketing push (Marketing: Do something!!), hopefully you’re starting to see some results. I hope these tips are helpful if you’re looking at paring back some of your work with existing clients!

Have a great week! Don’t forget to sign up for March Marketing Madness by Sunday if you’d rather pay $95 versus $99! Here’s the free preview if you’d like to try before you buy.

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