Managing Difficult Clients

Every business will have to deal with a difficult client at some point or another. The challenge with a small business is that when (not if…but when) you run into that difficult client, it can be detrimental to your business if you don’t manage that client well.

While you may be tempted to just walk away, if it is a significant client for you, that is difficult to do – and unwise. Rather, applying a few techniques in client management, using your emotional intelligence and ensuring a well-delineated, upfront client scope will help you to better manage that difficult client in a way that reduces your stress and frustration and manages the emotions and reactions of the client, enabling for a more productive client-consultant working relationship.

In this session, Gina Abudi will share a number of ways to manage difficult clients based on her own experience dealing with difficult clients. This includes:

• Understanding why some clients are more difficult than others
• Applying your emotional intelligence to manage a client’s emotions and your reactions to those emotions
• Using project management best practices to manage the engagement with the client
• Dealing with angry clients, rude clients, and those “impossible to please” clients

Learning Goals:

• Use your self-awareness of your emotions, your self-management of your emotions, and social awareness to manage a difficult client
• Use a project scope statement to manage client expectations of what’s in scope for the consulting project
• Create a communication strategy early on in the project
• Use risk planning to determine how to manage a difficult client

About Our Speaker:

Gina Abudi, MBA has 25+ years’ of experience providing management consulting services and training/educational programs for mid- to large global organizations and for non-profit organizations. She is President of Abudi Consulting Group, LLC., a woman-owned small business, which was founded in 2006. As lead facilitator, consultant, and change leader, Gina has led a number of projects, including 360 assessments, change management initiatives, facilitation of team meetings and executive strategy sessions, and development of mentoring and onboarding programs.

Gina has created and owns the IP to over 60 workshops focused on critical skills development, management, and leadership training. She works closely with a variety of clients to develop and deliver customized workshops, seminars, and training programs to meet long-term strategic development and training needs.

Gina is an adjunct faculty member at Granite State College, Clark University, and Tufts University teaching in MBA and Master’s programs. Additionally, she partners with the University of New Hampshire and New England College facilitating training sessions for their corporate clients.

She is lead author of Best Practices for Managing BPI Projects: Six Steps to Success (J Ross Publishing, 2015) and author of Implementing Positive Organizational Change: A Strategic Project Management Approach J Ross Publishing, 2017.)

Gina received her MBA from Simmons Graduate School of Management.