Client loss is an inevitable part of agency life. It can happen unexpectedly, or at the end of a long, lingering illness of the business relationship. Sometimes it’s for the best for everyone involved, and sometimes it just hurts.

We lost a client recently. Not because of anything we did or anything they did, but because of circumstances out of everyone’s control. They were pleased with our work, and hope to come back and work with us again in the future. I hold out a lot of hope that I’ll get to work with these great clients again, but that didn’t stop me from spending most of the day going through the five stages of grief:

1. Denial and Isolation: “What? Why would they be leaving us? We’ve just had some of our biggest success on their campaign! You’re joking, right?” It’s hard to believe that a client with whom you have a great relationship is leaving, but it happens. Once I accepted that Lorraine was not playing a very unfunny joke on me, it was time to move on to…

2. Anger: “How could they do this to us? Don’t they know how hard we worked?” It’s hard to accept sometimes that it’s not all about you, that clients have their own concerns that only partially involve their marketing. Even if you’ve provided fantastic ROI and great growth, sometimes it just isn’t enough, no matter how hard you try. But I kept trying to find a way as I headed into…

3. Bargaining: “Have we tried talking them down to a lower priced package? What are they unhappy with–what can we fix?” Sometimes, there’s nothing to fix, nothing to offer, nothing to say. Sometimes, clients need to go because of their own reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of work you provide. In some ways, this is even harder than losing a client due to some problem with their service: this way, there’s no one to blame when you head out of bargaining and into…

4. Depression: I spent most of my day in this phase, sliding into a deep and unshakable funk. Despite what they said, obviously they were leaving because they didn’t like me, because of something that I did. It was all my fault and the company was going to fail and it was all because of me. Yeah, right.

5. Acceptance: Finally, I stopped thinking emotionally and started thinking logically. Was there anything I could have done differently or better? Not really. Was this situation really out of my control and unrelated to me? Yes. Would the company really fail because of losing one client? Hardly. They were even one of my smaller clients, for goodness sake!

So then I realized what I had to do: stop being sad and start being awesome. I would be so awesome that no one would ever again consider cutting Roundpeg. And that’s what I’m doing today, starting my new campaign of awesomeness.

How do you deal with client loss? Especially when it isn’t the result of a customer service issue?