In this post ‘On quitting a freelance gig‘, Seth Godin tackles the issue of how to leave a current client because the relationship is not satisfying. For me, the principles of this post do not just apply for freelancers, they do also apply to all professional services firms.
The gist of the problem: “Freelancers need to worry about doing the right thing as well as maintaining their reputation. Leaving a project in midstream hurts your reputation, and your promise needs to mean something. But sometimes we express our fear of change by sticking around longer than we need to and longer than we promised to.”
It can happen that there is a client mismatch between what we can offer and our values, and how the client behaves or simply, how his needs evolve. This mismatch can be from the start and not have been identified in earlier business development stages; or it can develop over a longer intervention. In any case, it is important to be able to decide to stop the relationship if it can be damaging.
First, to avoid this situation, there needs to be a thorough assessment of the client culture before taking the job. This is not always easy, so we also generally start with a limited intervention which serves both for us and the client as a discovery. This gives the possibility to part ways without having to terminate a longer contract. Similarly it is important to make sure your contract has a regular meeting clause at each stage of the project, where it can be stopped by any party after having assessed the results so far. And finally should you decide to part ways, it is nice to provide the client with a contact or a reference of someone that can take over.
Leaving a client in the middle of a services project is not the best situation. It needs to be prepared and properly timed. Still sometimes this is unavoidable to escape destructive relationship, and we need to recognize the possibility.
