Client from hell

Client X is a consultant who has a personal not for profit business on the side, one which is particularly quirky and at the same time kind of creepy in a saccharin sweet way.

He has been a client of my company for about three years, and I've never billed him a huge amount, BUT he is an amazing referrer of business.

In fact about 25% of last year's revenue was generated by referrals he made for people to use my business.

My problem is he knows this and he insists on calling me whenever he wants, and I really do mean whenever. I am updating some stuff for him at the moment and had sent him some drafts of the work on Friday. We had a short chat and he asked if he could ring me on the weekend.

I told him no, as there was nothing in his draft that was urgent and certainly nothing that could not wait until Monday. Not surprisingly the emails started on Saturday morning, all marked urgent.

Then by about 11 am on Saturday the phone calls started - I Kid you not!

But it doesn't stop there, he rang and left at least four messages over the weekend, all of which I ignored.

By this morning there were a huge amount of emails in my inbox from him, and I answered them all in one email at about 7:15 am this morning, nothing earth shattering and many things that had nothing to do with me.

I knew I was going to hear from him today, even though I had told him I was in meetings up until mid afternoon. But of course by midday he had left three particularly abrasive voice mails on my mobile phone and a barrage of emails (I have wireless access everywhere).

After my meetings I finally had a chance to call him and talk through his issues (I wish he would see a psychologist LOL). After a 45 minute phone call which was useless on my behalf we ended the call on what I thought the issues were complete.

But NO such luck!

Within ten minutes five emails and then two phone calls to make sure I got the emails.

Seriously this guy drives me mad! I often have to ignore his phone calls and even when I do answer them I have to breath and concentrate on smiling before answering the phone!

It's such a conflict, on the one hand I have to be nice to him and keep him as a client, on the other hand I want him to just fuck off!