550: What Would Lu Do? Tough Emails with Clients

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business, it’s time for another episode of “What Would Lu Do?” where you ask the questions and LuAnn helps out with the answers.

Today’s question comes from another one of LuAnn’s coaching clients, who was experiencing a late invoicing issue due to some extremely hectic circumstances in her life.

Listen in as LuAnn digs into the details, susses out the situation, and lays out her reasoning on the resolutions.

If you are not working with a coach or perhaps you don’t have a business mentor or business bestie to provide guidance, this is the perfect opportunity to email LuAnn the burning issues that you need insight on and she’ll answer them on air. Please send your questions to luannnigara.com/wwld!

 

Show Highlights:

• LuAnn shares the details surrounding her coaching client’s dilemma.
• The client was hesitant to send out invoicing at such a late date and LuAnn prepared her to by saying that some clients would fight her, some would pay her and some would ignore her. 
• The client did send out the invoicing, knowing that she did the work and earned the money, but was ready to eat some crow if she couldn’t collect payment.
• Apologizing appropriately and owning her mistake netted her payment from most of her clients, but there was one in particular that was adversarial.
• After a few not so fun email exchanges the client ultimately sends this email: “You will receive payment for the invoices in the same timeframe you billed me."
• LuAnn shares the cordial response that the client wanted to send, but LuAnn had a more appropriate response in mind, since this was clearly a compassionless, bad-mannered client.
• The key here is to focus on the agreement to pay, which the client had agreed to do. Leave the emotion out of the equation. You don’t want to introduce any other elements that can take the conversation away from the primary goal, which is collecting the money. 
• LuAnn shares her thoughts on the various responses that the client might have sent, and suggests that the client allow herself grace when she makes mistakes. The hope and goal is to learn from the mistake so that it is avoided in the future.

Links / Resources:

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The Making of A Well - Designed Business: Turn Inspiration into Action   

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www.luannnigara.com/cob

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