Building client relationships is an important way of establishing how the skills and expertise that you offer can support and engage with a business that is looking for help.
A genuine interest in the client and their business is essential, conducting a deep dive into their market positioning, understanding their brand, anticipating the challenges they may be facing and having a genuine belief that you could help them is paramount. One of the fundamentals when looking for new business is looking for synergy in how you might work together.
One of the key skills in developing new business is the ability to ask the right questions and even more importantly listen to the answers.
Sometimes the most talented people find it difficult to share their capability. One way of developing new business is sharing ideas, creating portfolios, but also recognising that the first ideas you create may not necessarily meet the brief.
If given the opportunity to meet with the client, resist the temptation to simply present, so many people are unable to ‘read the room’ and so never get the opportunity to discover the buying signals, or really understand the challenges the client is facing.
A key skill when meeting with clients is a natural ability to engage in conversations, to be flexible, to creatively adapt to the feedback you receive, even in the room, which can make the biggest difference in winning new business, or losing the opportunity.
Asking simple questions can help you understand their needs:
‘What is the biggest challenge you are currently facing?’
‘If this works, what would be different in the future?’
‘What is the most important change you would like to see?’‘What support do you have for making these changes?’
If you are sent a bid document analyse it in minute detail for the clues that are contained within it, but also look objectively at the broader perspective of the challenges your potential client might be facing.
One of the key elements of your proposal should be:
‘Our understanding of your requirements’
If you can get this right, together with a fairly and accurately costed proposal for how you could help them, you are well on the way to winning the business.
Honesty is critical, both in how you present your credentials, but also in the costs involved. Always respect client confidentiality, be prepared to sign an NDA, but also recognising the importance of the sensitivity of the information you may be given. Realistically if you can build a real partnership with your client, you are not just winning a piece of business but building a collaborative relationship for the future.
This is particularly true in start-up businesses where your creativity can start them on their journey, and you can work together in partnership to help them grow.
One of the key areas that makes a difference between a good relationship and an outstanding relationship is exceeding expectations. This can occur in many ways, providing exceptional customer service is one way, by being genuinely interested in your client, remembering the little details that they might share with you, about their interests, family, concerns. Importantly this cannot be ‘faked,’ it has to be genuine.
The best partnerships work with mutual trust, understanding and supporting your client with their concerns, having a solution seeking approach; problems can occur with the best planned projects, it is how you find solutions which builds your client’s faith in you.
One really important way of building relationships is by offering value-added research. Demonstrating that you fully understand their ambitions and sharing ideas about how they might grow their market share, or equally helping them with their future-proofing or risk assessment shows that you are genuinely interested in their future.
As a business, being fully invested with a collection of key collaborative clients is a better business model than a continual stream of one-off assignments
If you are working in teams ensure that everyone involved in the project works to the same high standards. One way a project can fail is when a great relationship is established with an account holder but this is not reflected in the rest of the team. Problems can also occur when people over-promise and under deliver. When making commitments ensure you have the agreement from everyone involved in the delivery process.
Importantly, don’t be afraid to walk away, the key to enduring client relationships is based on authenticity; being genuine, honest and a sharing of common values. If at any stage in the relationship you feel uncomfortable about continuing, you may need to make a decision about walking away from an opportunity, or continuing with a relationship. However, if this is the case always maintain a high standard of professionalism.
Realistically you won’t succeed in every opportunity to win new business, but if you can walk away knowing that you were open, honest and professional you can take the learning into the next opportunity.
Like building any relationship you will find companies where you can synergistically work in harmony to create great results and when you find these relationships nurture and care for them as they will become the lifeblood of your future.