Welcome back! Previously, on Awkward Conversations Week, we talked about how to tell someone their payment bounced. Mmm. Sticky. Today we’re talking about telling a potential client you don’t want to work with them.

“How to say no” may well be the second most searched term in the history of the internet. (Second only to “how to flip an omelette”. Naturally.) Saying no is darn tough for many, even under the best of circumstances, and even when you’re declining something no reasonable person would agree to.

Saying no to a potential client is an especially weird animal because it is often very difficult for people to imagine anybody turning down paid work. There is a belief that freelancers, small business owners and service professionals would take anybody’s money, much like a bookstore or a cell phone company. But, of which you are undoubtedly aware, there are plenty of reasons an ittybiz owner might want to say no, and it helps to have some language handy.

This one has a few different subtypes with different associated concerns, and we’ll address each of those separately. The template, however – affectionately referred to as Thanks But No Thanks in our templates file – remains the same. We tweak for details, but the boilerplate is pretty solid.

Regardless of the subtype you’re dealing with, the trick to saying no to paid work is in making sure you communicate three specific things. Your communication needs to hit three success metrics, or you’re cruising for drama later:

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So, funny story.

As you may know, the revenue model we have at IttyBiz is significantly made up of people who put our classes on payment plans. If you were around for BIG LAUNCH, you may remember that there was a 12-pay option, where instead of paying the full tuition upfront, students could spread their payments over a full year.

Periodically – and by “periodically” here, I mean “around 50 times a month” – PayPal cancels a payment plan (what PayPal refers to as a subscription). Sometimes this is because a credit card expired, sometimes this is because a payment bounced, and sometimes this is because the moon is in Virgo.

When this happens we get an email notification telling us that the subscription was cancelled. In response to this, we send out a standard email to get the sorting it out party started…

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Here’s a question we’ve had a lot over the last few weeks. (Fellow blogger writer consultant types – have you noticed how these things tend to cluster? Is that just me?)

Somebody with a small to moderate following and a small to moderately popular blog has something happen in their personal life. Experience says this is almost always a divorce, but this month’s examples also include a pregnancy and a significant change in personal direction.

Because this event seems like – and in reality, often is – the biggest thing to happen in recent memory, we want to tell the people we know. This is what a few million years of living in tribes will do to you. When you get pregnant, every other cave woman wants to know why she hasn’t been told already.

When you run an online business, there’s a very good chance that a large part of your social interaction comes from the internet. The intimacy you have with your clients, your customers, and even your blog readers or newsletter subscribers often surpasses the intimacy you share with people you know locally.

Because of this, holding on to a “secret” feels… weird.

Adding to that, we are often pseudo-social with people, online or otherwise, in ways that are not particularly authentic. If you haven’t seen somebody around in a while, you’re likely to ask where they’ve been, regardless of whether or not you’re actually interested. We were raised to believe it is the polite thing to do.

You, to group: Hi.

Relative stranger in group: Oh my GOD!!! I haven’t seen you in forever! Where have you been? What’s going on?

If this is your best friend from high school, they probably do actually care about where you’ve been and what’s going on in your life. But in most cases, we say these things to people whether we have an affection for them or not. It’s a social contract.

Because of all of this, if you leave social media for a few days, or you stop blogging as frequently for a few months, you’re going to get emails or Facebook notifications that read something like this:

“Oh my GOD!!! I haven’t seen you in forever! Where have you been? What’s going on?”

As you go through this significant change in your life – your divorce, your crisis of faith, your infertility treatments and subsequent pregnancy, whatever – you’re going to get a handful of those emails. And then, the next time you and I are on the phone, you’re going to ask me…

“When should I tell my list?”

Here is the answer.

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A number of questions came up this week on the topic of open and click-through rates.

If you’re new, open rate refers to the percentage of people who open an email you send.

Click-through rate refers to the percentage of people who click on a link in that email.

First, and you need to be aware of this, both of these numbers are completely unreliable in any kind of absolute way. If your newsletter says your open rate is 50%, that’s not actually even kind of true. It cannot be accurately measured, no matter what song and dance routine your autoresponder software goes through to convince you otherwise.

The only reason we care about open rate and click-through rate is in a relative way. Are your open rates generally going down, going up, or staying the same?

Is your click-through rate is usually 4% but today it was 2%? Well, it looks like you missed the mark on today’s email.

Is it usually 4% but today it was 12%? More like this one, sweetie!

With me so far? Percentage rates = relative. Cool? Cool.

Now that’s all well and good, but it leads to a very natural problem.

If Monday’s click-through rate was 4% and Tuesday’s was 3% and Wednesday’s was 2% – that looks bad, right? Houston, we have a problem?

Well, yes and no.

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