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During the last 10 years or more, there have been a lot of speakers who have counseled audiences at conferences to fire their worst clients. The rational goes that firms should keep that "A' and "B" clients and get rid of the 'D" clients who are more trouble than they are worth. But I've always had some reservations about that advice since in good times, it was tempting, but I kept thinking, what happens in tough times?

Obviously, we hit tough times a couple of years ago. But an even more serious objection to this philosophy came this week from Kevin Robert, CEO of Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting at the annual CCH user conference in Orlando, Fla. Robert noted usual wisdom that those less-desirable clients are often the ones who are the most demanding, but who are also the first to haggle over fees.

But instead of chucking them, firms look for cost-effective ways to serve these clients, Robert suggested. That becomes more possible with self-service on the Internet which can enable firms to provide services to these clients without having to deal with them in person or on the telephone. That obvious economics are that this approach reduces the expenses associated with the revenue, and also reduces the stress on the firm employees.

I don't think Robert meant that firms should never fire bad clients. I think he intended to suggest that firms could do a lot more to limit the number of casualties. That's how I read it and I suspect that while many bad clients might be less profitable than the good ones, it's unlikely that firms lose money on most of them. And in a soft market, revenue that produces some profit is still a profitable business.

Robert's observation that he had not agreed with the firing of D clients is just a start. How to execute this approach is going to involve more than just establishing Internet-based services and telling the undesirables to use them. I think there needs to be some sales job to encourage them to make the move. It may also be that many firms don't yet have the Web-based platform to take this step.

However, I also suspect that letting fee-driven clients know that they can get services at a lower cost can be a pretty persuasive argument. After all that's what they want to begin with.

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