Building Client Relationships:

The Key To Consistent Ongoing Work.

Building client relationships for the success of professional or skilled services business is as critical as it is for a healthy human being and they are both built on the same foundations: Respect and Trust. Just like ‘relationships’ in a person’s life, client relationships are not built overnight and require a certain amount of effort to maintain.

Think of a long term client relationship build on trust and respect as a marriage. Presumably when ‘courting’ in the very exciting pre-marriage, relationship building phase with your now treasured spouse, you went through a sequence of events which had you grow closer, fall in love and then effect the ‘marriage transaction’.   It wasn’t just a single date, ‘love at first sight’ and then bingo ‘marriage’.

Imagine you had the sort of mutual understanding, admiration and respect in your key client relationships as you have developed in your primary personal relationship. You could count on that client not only thinking of you first when a new project in your area comes into conception but also in many cases you would gain projects without even having to consider competition. Loyalty and dependability is a 2-way street.

Once a relationship based on respect and trust is established it is one of the most valuable things that either a skilled services business or a person can have. It provides the stability, confidence and the ability to grow and evolve which every organisation (commercial or biological) needs.

The more evolved businesses within the Professional services business field become, the more they are able to acquire the majority of their work from organisations and individuals with which they have previously done business. After having made an initial breakthrough to win that first project they work hard to consolidate the relationship and build it into something greater.

Providing Value

Business relationships are built on the basis that both sides deliver and receive value and it is through this delivery and receipt of value that respect and trust are developed. Even prior to winning ‘the client’ there is opportunity to build the relationship by providing value.

Typically, there are opportunities during the ‘pre-scoping’ phase of projects (when the requirements of the client’s project are still in formation) where a client organisation can benefit from your specialist skills and experience.

Understanding the challenges and providing advice in this phase helps the person you are speaking with look good to their organisation. Many skilled ‘technicians’ miss this opportunity and only deliver value after having won the client; problem is, if you don’t win ‘that’ project you may never get the opportunity to demonstrate your value.

At every stage in the life cycle of the relationship with a client, there should be value being provided to the client to continue in maintaining and building respect and trust. Having a culture of “providing massive value” at pre-project client meetings, will build your businesses goodwill and trust far more rapidly than any discount on the back end of a quote.

The Deal Clock

Many professional and skilled service businesses engage the potential client way too late in the buying cycle. If ‘awarding the contract’ is twelve o’clock on a clock face they will be in contact with client organisation at ten minutes before the hour, usually when a Request For Proposal (RFP) or Tender (RFT) is made public or potential service providers are informed.

Often the service provider who wins the work has been in contact with the client organisation right back at ten minutes past the previous hour or even before that. The service providers who have the strongest relationship with the client are in regular contact with them and have the opportunity to understand the bigger picture of the long term project schedule. They even have the opportunity to informally consult to clients in the ‘pre scoping’ phase and this gives them the critical edge when it comes to ultimately winning the right to deliver the work.

Creating A Relationship

‘Creating the relationship’ in the first place is obviously the key to ‘building’ it into a healthy living thing which continues to grow and thrive. To do this there is no magic potion or pill to take, it is a simple matter of getting in front of prospective clients in order to build some level of relationship in order to be given the initial project opportunity.

In many social relationships, people are introduced to other people by intermediaries who believe they are suited. In these social relationships the common ground would generally lie in social normative values but in business introductions, this is generally out of complimentary needs. However, the relationships that truly work long-term have common values at their core and the complimentary needs become part of the outcomes. What we can learn from this is that some relationships just won’t work and sometimes we don’t even know why.

To learn about how best to attack the challenge of generating the opportunity to deliver an initial project to a new client, see the first article in this series of blog posts (called ‘Why You Need to Sell’). One of the main things to take away from that first blog post on ‘selling’ professional services is that once you appreciate that there is a process to use which makes it a conversational and easy progression then there is very little to fear and so very much to gain. Creating these relationships should be fun, just like creating any relationship between human beings.

The initial project opportunity will likely come in the form of a smaller ‘test the waters’ type project to get a feel for how the two organisations work together. The old saying ‘how you do little things is how you do big things’ applies here and once you have successfully ‘over delivered’ on satisfying all the requirements of that first opportunity, there will very likely come more opportunities to deliver more significant projects. The unspoken process is generally a test for you to enable the other party to assess the risk they are going to have with trusting you with their projects.

Post Project Reviews

There is an enormous opportunity at the conclusion of any project to grow closer to the key people within a client organisation and build the relationship with that business further by undertaking what we call a Post-Project Review.

Of course most professional and skilled services businesses have a formal ‘handover’ process which signifies the end of the project in terms of having delivered against the requirements of that project, but this doesn’t usually go too far into the clients’ satisfaction with the project, how it was conducted, the people involved and the overall perception of your organisation.

A proper Post-Project (or ‘Post-Job’) Review should take place after the handover in a separate meeting which is specifically geared towards getting a clear understanding of just how happy or unhappy the client was with the work that you did and specifically ‘why’. For any given project there is a spectrum of client satisfaction ranging from ‘Angry’ right through to ‘Elated’ and this exercise is to understand where you sit.

Why is this SO important? Because building any type of relationship is a matter of delivering against expectations that have been set and then gaining concensus on what worked and what didn’t in order that respect and trust are developed further.

The greatest opportunities come at either end of the spectrum. When a client is ‘Angry’ most service providers skulk away and do not fully explore the reasons for the poor performance. Some don’t apologise for mistakes or tardiness and then scratch their head when they don’t get any more work from that client. As with any human relationship, it’s hard to stay angry if someone shows they care, is big enough to apologise authentically and is able to demonstrate that this occasion was not a fair representation of the how things usually go (perhaps you can show there were some unusual circumstances).

Entire organisations are built on providing massive value. The Saturn Motor Company in the USA (a division of General Motors) had early teething problems with the Saturn, a compact small-engined car. Their level of service was so superior that even those who had experienced problems with their first Saturn, came back and pruchased another one. They proved that (in particular, Women) remembered the service long after the vehicle. Saturn grew at an exponential rate until a change of management saw an adjustment to their service levels and this brand just faded back into obscurity.

I have seen some of the strongest client relationships grow from an initial bad outcome when the organisation delivering the service has been diligent about following up the bad outcome with honest, authentic communication in Post-Project Reviews.

At the other end of the spectrum when a client is ‘Elated’, instead of just letting that opportunity pass without any real understanding or acknowledgement, those seeking to get the most out of client relationships will extract a clear perspective as to just why the client is so happy. Often this process will really instil into the clients key staff why dealing with your organisation is a great experience and will increase the likelihood that you are thought of first when the next project comes up. Of course this forum also provides the chance to extract compelling testimonials and even referrals from clients to help will other clients.

One of our clients, an engineering consulting firm with structural, civil and geotechnical capabilities employing eighteen engineers revolutionised their revenue with this strategy alone. Given that they had a couple of large, long term and very satisfied clients there was an opportunity to get a lot more work by ‘intelligence gathering’ in the Post Project review Phase, particularly for other divisions.

Take the opportunity to really make something of the outcomes of a project (either positive or negative) by growing closer to clients through Post Project reviews.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

To consistently nurture relationships with key personnel within prospect or client organisations it is essential to capture critical information to help make your on-going communications with that client more relevant. Organisation and personal information, information gathered on past and prospective projects, their key issues and matters most recently discussed should all be recorded in a central system, which can be accessed by all team members who speak with these clients and contacts. We generally refer to this as a CRM system.

There is no way amongst everything else you and your people do that you can remember all of the details of important people and conversations without a central storage system that does this. It might be as simple as recording the information in a spreadsheet or in Microsoft Outlook contacts section; it could be a more sophisticated CRM software system (there are plenty of them), but it has to be captured, to be recalled and possibly shared, later.

It is easy to forget that the relationships with key personnel and information gathered from them are the property of the business and represent a valuable asset. This information could be the lead into you biggest project or your most productive ongoing relationship so treat it with the respect and seriousness that it deserves.

The critical function that a CRM system serves beyond capturing information is plotting the next and future activities which will bring you closer to capturing new projects. A ‘reminder’, ‘to do’ list or ‘action items’ list needs to prompt your key people to pursue opportunities which had been opened up before at the right times.

Before a client organisation becomes a client they go through a series of phases and they should be shepherded through these phases in a process driven yet personal manner. You might remember these phases from an earlier post (these are the phases in a ‘Sales Funnel’):

Conclusion

In this world of short attention spans, immediate gratification and quick fixes it is still the solid relationship that wins. People and organisations keep company with those they can trust. Trust is becoming even more important in a world where many things are becoming commoditised and sold for the cheapest rate.

Remember also that relationships provide the opportunity to have clients understand that the cheapest initially quoted price rarely results in either the best outcome or (ironically) the lowest final cost.

The best clients in skilled and professional services provide ongoing (and often) multiple projects. The most successful service providers are those which have strong, long term relationships with clients because that means solid revenue streams. Solid revenue streams mean being able to attract the best talent, grow the business in a manageable fashion and build tangible value in the business asset.

So changing your organisation’s focus and paradigm from ‘project based’ to ‘relationships based’ will alter the security, profitability, growth and significance of your skilled services business. This will reduce your sales activities, increase your awareness of long-term opportunities and plug your organisation into the relevant industry, long-term.