November 23, 2011

The Client Coach: Keep clients coming back for more

Imagine this scene at a seven-year-old's birthday party: Cone-shaped hats draped over messy but happy faces. Brightly colored, paper horns rolling back and forth with deafening squawks. Mountains of ice cream and cake (chocolate, of course), and megawatts of energy. Then, just as the electricity is about to ebb, someone raises a question that recharges the crowd.

“Who wants seconds on ice cream and cake?” One kid says “I do” and instantly 10 more join the refrain like a chorus of stray alley cats. “I do!” “I do!” “I do!”

By the way, do you see something important here when it comes to marketing? People tend to climb on bandwagons. If your “ice cream and cake” (products and services) are truly outstanding, your reputation will spread like warm fudge icing, and clients will say, “I do!” “I do!” “I do!”

Repeat business is often the margin between success and failure, so the important question is: After the first project, how do you get a client to come back for seconds?

Here are some tips:

• Identify with your client mentally and emotionally. Your first action on any project should be to trade places with your client to see the project from his or her perspective. Try to understand and anticipate what drives their concerns and perceived risks. Deal with these issues directly and upfront at the beginning and incorporate them into the project's goals and process. When projects start out well, your odds for finishing well are increased dramatically.

• Match the right people on your staff with the people on the client's staff. Once people get emotionally detached from a project, quality will suffer. The finest quality control systems in the world have no answer for an attitude that says, “I've had it! Just let me get this thing finished so I won't have to deal with those people anymore!” No project should ever be allowed to reach that point. There are just too many early warning signals that a perceptive project executive should pick up before it reaches this stage.

• Align your processes to the client's. From a process standpoint, find out what you can do to expedite and lessen the work on the client's side. If they prefer online, virtual project management, provide it. If they require more one-on-one interaction, be there. If they need a report in a certain format and outline, follow it to the letter. If they need more detail on your invoices, ask them specifically what they'd like to see and give it to them! It's attention to these little details that distinguishes you.

• Check your alignment regularly. What happens when your tires get out of alignment and you haven't checked them often enough? The same will happen to your client. Set up regular feedback sessions for give and take. In almost every successful project, several course adjustments are made along the way. Feedback is your “GPS” tool. It works as a preemptive measure to keep issues from careening out of control. A good project manager will establish monthly or bi-monthly milestones and use them to take the client's pulse when it comes to the project. Blow ups are seldom the result of one major explosion. They occur because of the accumulation of several smaller irritations that never got resolved.

• Assign a client champion. Project teams should have enough depth so that a client is never left hanging when questions or issues arise. At the same time, there should always be one “go-to” person as the client's primary contact. Once the first project is finished, a long-term relationship should be developing. Client loyalty requires a relationship. Unfortunately many project managers do the project well but forsake the relationship. This is not a good recipe for seconds.

• Make the project memorable, rewarding and fun. Celebrate milestones. Have a few “birthday parties” along the way. Clients are spending a lot of money for your advice. They should enjoy themselves. You should, too.

Use this recipe on your first project and when it's time for seconds, I guarantee your clients will come back for more.

Previous columns:

• The Client Coach: Even when times get really tough it's essential to stay in the game, 10-05-2011
• The Client Coach: Here's what successful marketers do, 08-24-2011
• The Client Coach: Good marketers focus on the finish, 07-13-2011
• The Client Coach: Winning projects today takes 'a fire in the belly' of your firm, 03-02-2011
• The Client Coach: When thoughts undermine work relationships, 01-19-2011
• The Client Coach: A/E/C firms: Are you a partner or a vendor?, 12-08-2010
• The Client Coach: Pricing: Are you selling yourself short?, 11-10-2010
• The Client Coach: Are your services becoming a commodity?, 10-20-2010