There are times when you need to push a client to do something or stop doing something. There’s a deadline approaching, they’re dragging their feet and need to make a decision about something, new facts have come to light they need to consider but aren’t.
Or they owe you money and you can’t continue working until they get current.
You’ve told them, advised them, given them more time, but they’re not doing what they need to do.
This isn’t just an issue with existing clients. It also exists with prospective clients who have a problem that isn’t going away. They need your services, perhaps desperately, but don’t hire you, or apparently anyone else. You follow-up with them again and again but at some point, it’s clear they want you to stop.
With clients, there is a relationship and you give each other the benefit of the doubt. With prospective clients, that dynamic doesn’t exist and the more you follow-up, the more they resist. Soon, things can get ugly.
Client or prospect, instinctively, or ethically, you want to push them. Remind them again, remind them more urgently, warn them, or otherwise push them to do what they need to do. And, it’s necessary and important, you should. The problem is, the more you push them, the more you run the risk of alienating them, or, in the case of getting them to pay you, appearing desperate.
Not good.
You have to do what you have to do, of course, and if pushing them is what you have to do, you do it. But if you can, instead of pushing, it’s always better to pull.
What does “pulling” mean? It means encouraging and suggesting and resasoning, not pressuring. It means building regular follow-ups into your management and marketing systems that, as much as possible, automate the process without making it look anything but reasonable and necessary.
Instead of coming after the client or prospect and annoying them into compliance, you have a system that does most of the work for you, inviting, explaining, reminding, gently increasing the urgency and frequency of contact over time.
It might also mean having someone else on your team contact them, someone who might be better at the job, but even just having a different person do the job could make all the difference.
If you don’t have to push, pull. Pulling makes you look like you know exactly what you’re doing and are doing it on their behalf.
Pushing makes you look unprepared, adversarial, desperate.
Nobody likes a pushy lawyer. Unless, of course you are that lawyer, you’re pushing the opposition on behalf of your client, and it’s working.
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