I’ve been a full time coach/consultant for over a decade now. I’ve seen some stuff believe me. When I got started out, I would train salespeople who came from damaged backgrounds. People who’ve been incarcerated, divorced, addicted and more. These were the people I set out to serve in the beginning of my career. After all, let’s just admit that we all coach what we know, and I knew those struggles all too well.
About once every few months, I’d have to get real with a client. I would always come from a place of love, but the truth will often piss those off who are not ready to hear it. Overnight super fans would turn into super haters. Nothing changed on my end other than giving them words they didn’t want to hear. Most people will do anything they can to protect their ego from the truth.
I’ve had super fans turned super frazzled and threaten my family, my employees, me personally and more. Now days I’m fully aware that this is part of the job, but in the beginning I took everything to heart and it was hard to understand why someone I wanted to help now hated me. If you’re not making people mad, you’re not being real with your clients. I’m not saying to go out and be rude and hurt feelings, but no matter how hard we coaches try to avoid it, eventually we will step on the wrong toe that sets the client on a long crusade against us. This usually happens when you know their “secrets” and call them out for what they are.
Back in the day, when a client would go off on me, I’d return the favor. This was and is the most absolute stupidest thing I have ever done. Me firing back, right or not, only made the situation worse. I once had a client get so mad he spread lies and got like 30 other clients to bail on me. I could have avoided that by how I responded. The other clients didn’t like how I replied to the client so they left. Lesson learned.
I have coached and sat down with numerous coaches and this happens to us all. The more popular and bigger your brand, the more often it will happen. I sat down with Steve Spray, the top producer for Grant Cardone’s sales team and he told me it happens to Grant all too often. They have had people run up in their office and more. Even Tony Robbins has a full time security staff follow him around the crowd at his events. He’s prolly been lunged at more than once.
When you are building a following online by blogging and using social media, you’re gonna have haters. There’s gonna be posts from you that they disagree with. Some simply unfollow while others become super vocal and self righteous about things. For those of you who are new, don’t worry, it’s just part of the business.
When someone who’s a paying client goes off and gets mad at a subject that was touchy but needed to be addressed, here’s what works for me now. I simply tell them I’m sorry and I was only trying to help them. I let them vent, apologize again and then calm them down. In order to live right, from time to time you gotta give up your right to be right. In the case of the crusading ex-client, you apologizing and smoothing it over is a lot better than a bunch of 1 star reviews and mad Facebook posts.
The fans who love us the most are often the ones who turn on us the hardest. Remember Selena? She was killed by the president of her fan club. It’s scary out there how fast fans can go from loving you to hating you. Be careful who you take on as a client. If they have the propensity to be a fool (check their page and see what rants from the past they have) just don’t take their money.
Also, watch out for fans that always drop your name and quote you daily but you don’t have a relationship with. I’m not talking about the casual Facebook friend tagging you. I’m talking about the person who’s on all your posts, tags you in their posts and always chimes in no matter where you show up. Those folks are the ones who tend to flip over the hard way. Not always but when things do go their way, they can be just as big of an anti-fan as they were a super fan.
The bottom line is that you should expect super fans to go on crusades against you from time to time. It’s part of the business. You can minimalize the situation by simply making things right and reminding them you’re only there to help, not hurt. We change lives, that’s what we do. Sometimes people don’t want their life changed. They think they do, but subconsciously they aren’t ready. Make sure you act accordingly.
