How To Say No To Customers

When starting my business the one thing I tried to do was accommodate every potential customer and say yes we could help them. This brought some needed revenue to my start-up. However the downfall was that over time I was finding that I was wasting time on certain jobs and was actually losing money. So I quickly had to learn how to say no.

Let me break it down for you. A normal typical business works a 40 hour week. A small job may be worth a small amount to you however may take 3-4 hours to of man hours to fulfil. To some this will be worthwhile, however those 3-4 hours may be better spent trying to attract the larger more profitable work.

What I have found is that by saying no to those smaller and unprofitable customers, I have attracted a lot more of the customers I want to my business. This has increased my revenue, profitability and gave me more of my weekends back in my early days.

Now saying no to customers can be challenging when you have a carrot dangled in front of you to potentially boost your bottom line. But you can make saying no easier by using the following strategies.

Firstly, if a customer is asking for something similar to what you do but not your core business you can refer them to a company that specializes them in that. Your customers will appreciate it as it will save them time and get them a more specialized service.

Another strategy you can use is just to over quote and make a project or job worth your while. If the client says yes then you can palm this off to another company and make a mark-up. Typically customers are savvy and will get multiple quotes or know when something is overpriced. Caution with this method though as you can damage the perception of your brand.

My favourite and typical response to customers is to say no and this is not what we specialize in and then explain exactly what we do. By doing this I can confuse the public about exactly what my brand is about.

However you may be in a situation where you have said yes to a customer and do not want to keep going ahead with a certain product with re-orders. The best way to handle this is to find another supplier that can do this at a similar quality and price and hand your customer off to them. You also need to explain that you are discontinuing that product or service.

Saying no particularly when you are coming out of the start-up stage can be beneficial to your business. It can get you focused on the work you can do. By adopting this over time you will find that more of the customers you want to deal with will come to your business and you will see less of the customers that waste your time.