The Secret to Retaining Loyal Clients

The client chase just got more interesting.  In a world of changing priorities, changes in government regulations and musical chairs’ change at the top, our search for client loyalty appears to be shifting once again. Are loyal clients an endangered species?  A training program I developed two years ago, “The Paradigm Shift is Selling Professional Services”, was a harbinger for these changes.

Now this reality is sinking in for most firms.  This is no longer a surprise attack. It can’t all be tied to improving economic conditions or social media.  It happens at most firms due to lack of comprehensive planning.  Firms with a “we have always done it this way” approach to business development and marketing are finding a shrinking client base and more difficulty in acquiring new business.   In other words, they are taking the “I want to be forgettable” approach to client acquisition.  Top of mind means you are unforgettable in the clients’ thinking. How do you get there?

What do business development professionals need today to navigate the swamp that is the marketplace? What role does the firm play in creating a navigation process that leads to success?

First, is your social media and web content acting like a magnet to attract clients?  Firing a shotgun out of a window is a difficult way to hunt tigers. There is a lot of sound and fury, but no results. Every hunter will tell you that it is always better to have the prey come towards you rather than trying to track it down in its territory.  The prey can play too many tricks when it stays within its comfort zone.  There is always a sweet spot when it comes to client acquisition. Understanding the sweet spot of every client is a good start. It is only a start.

It is one thing to get a prospective client out of its comfort zone but another altogether to get your firm out of its comfort zone when the hunt is on.  There are too many variables and behavior patterns that can cause us to chase the wrong client at the right time and the right client at the wrong time.  It can be about money, prestige, favors and so on. “Our most loyal client just fired us,” was the tagline for an airline ad a few years ago. The ad went on to show the CEO sending his top executives out on the road to show clients they cared about them. Has your firm ever been in this position?

Expanding your comfort zone during the hunt requires the following:

1. Absolute focus on why this opportunity makes sense for the firm both short term and long term.

2. Although fee is a consideration, the decision can’t be just about fee. Chasing a client solely for revenue doesn’t build enduring relationships, remarkable work or outstanding companies.

3. What will the experience be like, if the client hires you for this project? Is there team chemistry? What is the client’s performance history on other projects or with other firms?  Do you share the client’s vision or do you even know what the client’s vision is?

4. Can your team have fun and laugh with this client?

5. Risk and reward considerations. What resources will be needed? Do you have these in-house now or will you need to expand your services?

If management keeps saying, “show me the money,” your firm is not coming out of its comfort zone.

Client loyalty is a two-way street. It is like respect, it has to be earned. You can’t expect a client to be loyal, if you haven’t shown loyalty yourself.  If you haven’t gone the extra mile in servicing the client. With that being said, you can’t expect a quid pro quo just because you have serviced the client. 

When I headed up the national business development for an engineering/architecture firm, the CEO  at a corporate quality meeting responded to a question about recognizing employees for superior quality this way, “ Their recognition is their paycheck.” Firms and project teams that believe providing good service is enough to ensure client loyalty are treading on thin ice in today’s market reality.  Loyalty then is in the eyes of the beholder. 

Every industry is under attack from healthcare to corporate facilities to higher education and everywhere in between.  Client competitors seeking to expand their operations and start ups looking to create new opportunities which might make your client’s products obsolete, all put pressure on our clients and their loyalty to our teams. Throw in government regulations that impact the bottom line and client loyalty is tested even more. You need to look inside the industry dynamics your clients are facing and help them develop strategies for strengthening their positions.  A trusted advisor is not easily kicked out of the boardroom.

Always remember, if you don’t have a seat at the table, you are probably on the menu.  Every firm should take their business development and marketing staff through the proven steps toward improving client loyalty.  And, then don’t put baggage in their way as they move your existing clients into the client advocate categories.  Every CEO would agree that the world would be a better place if all their clients were client advocates. There is no magic wand or secret formula for securing client loyalty.  It is a mind set and attitude that pervades the organization from the top down.

Thrive When a Client Fires You

This is the time of year we start thinking about next year’s marketing, which leads us to a discussion
 of how many clients will leave us in 2019.  You don’t have that conversation?  You never lose clients?

 

Benjamin Franklin told us that “The only things certain in life are death and taxes.”  It is obvious he didn’t work in our industry.  We can add loss of clients to life’s certainties.   

Client loss doesn’t have to be a disaster.  In many cases you can do something before it happens.
Clients don’t leave us simply because we performed below expectations or the project went south.  There are four reasons why clients leave a firm:

1. You performed excellent work but the client doesn’t have another project.  We call this client evaporation.

2.  You performed acceptable work but the client thought you stopped caring about them and fired you.  We call this client dissatisfaction.

3. You performed acceptable work, but a competitor came in and won the client’s business. We call this competitive disadvantage.

4. Your made mistakes, the project went over budget and promises weren’t kept, and the client fired you.  We call this client outrage.

It should be noted that only one of the reasons had to do with poor work or project delivery. There is nothing you can do about client evaporation except to stay in touch with that company for the time when it does have another project.  The amount of resources spent on that will depend upon what your marketing research tells you about the company.  However, there is nothing you can do to save the client who is at the stage of outrage.  There is no time for grieving.

Obviously, there are things that should have been done before it got to that point.  Some of those things were out of your control.  The contractor might have slipped on a tight schedule or tried to make up some lost profit by sending in a pile of change orders.  Your project team might have changed and the new people needed time to get up to speed.  Team and client chemistry might have been out of balance. You might have made promises early on that were shaky at best and you never went back to the client to explain the reality of the project. Or, worse, your project manager might have made promises you didn’t know about that weren’t kept. Broken trust is the result of allowing any of these things to get between you and your client.  You were in control of more than you thought.  Communication is the critical success factor. Do you understand disaster communications?

An airline ran a commercial a few years ago that opened with a CEO in a conference room with his sales team.  He tells the gathered employees,” The first client we sold when I started this firm fired us today. I have plane tickets for everyone here and we are going to personally visit every key client to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

If you want to prevent reason 2, then you should do what the CEO in the commercial did.  Call it psychology 101, personal dynamics, or how to win friends, but the key to exceeding client expectations is letting them know how much you care.  Sometimes that is easier said than done.  This is especially true for the client that will evaporate next year.  Does management have a list?  The list of key clients along with staff assigned to maintain and build the relationship.  Does staff know what is expected and is there accountability?  Is it included in your marketing plan and part of performance reviews? Anything less than this means a valued client has a chance to fall through the cracks and into the hands of a competitor.

Starting with the premise that clients like you, how can competitors take clients from you?  It probably looks a lot like the way you take clients from your competitors.  We like to pull clients out of the cracks of our competitors. First, the client has to be open to change.  Are any of your existing clients open to change?  Perhaps the client is obligated to issue RFPs for all work.  Change, therefore, is part of the institution.  Yet, you have been their service provider on multiple projects.  Maybe it was because they trusted you to help write the RFP.  Although an RFP gives the impression of shopping around, we all know firms are often “wired” into projects.  You train your staff on quality projects, meeting delivery schedules, timely submittal of meeting minutes and other communications, including answering questions.  How much time do you spend on client service outside of the required project deliverables?

The amount of time spent on client service training is directly proportional to the number of clients lost to competitors in spite of your good work. You have heard of the leaky bucket analysis for business development.

When it comes to servicing your client, it is good to remember this jungle saying:

Every morning when the sun comes up the lion knows he has to start running otherwise he will starve to death.

Every morning when the sun comes up the gazelle knows she has to start running otherwise she will get eaten by the lion.

Moral of the story: It doesn’t matter who you are, by the time the sun comes up you better be running.

The industry moral to this story is that without clients your firm will starve and your competitors are running not to be eaten by you.  Yet, you and your competitors play a dual role.  When your staff understands the daily importance of client service, your firm will do more eating than being eaten.  As we teach in our training programs, you also need to reassess the 80/20 rule when it comes to existing clients.  Since it costs at least 5 times as much to obtain a new client than keep an existing client, it makes economic sense to spend more on client retention.  How to do that is a question we can help you find the answer to.

In the meantime, get ready to fill your leaky bucket and develop a client-centric 2019 Marketing Plan.

Improve Your Business Pipeline with a Story

When you are given the opportunity to make a client presentation, what is your action plan?  At this point you have completed the “go-no-go” process and are looking forward to winning new business. Don’t let your competition or ego get in the way. Frame your next presentation as a journey and you will win.  If you understand that humans are wired to listen to stories, is the story you're planning to tell compelling? Is the client listening?  Since your story and the stories of your firm are more involved than a 30-minute presentation, your biggest challenge will be deciding where to start and where to end. You can lose the audience in a heartbeat when you assume they have more knowledge than you do or when you bury them in jargon.  Being yourself might be a cliché, but the journey begins with who you and your firm really are. The middle is filled with what the client really needs you to solve.

The owner of an engineering firm I consulted with a few years ago had received a heart transplant and from that started his own business.  What do you think was his story during client presentations?  His message was simple and his journey was clear.  He did a superb job of quickly introducing the value his firm brought to the important client issues while wrapping the journey in his ability to overcome obstacles.  He made clients believe he cared about their needs and would deliver the solution they needed.  The client saw the world a little differently after his presentation.

What can you learn from this? Do your presentations make the client see the world differently? Your presentation team must be passionate about what they are doing.  The quality of the client solution is important and how you wrap it in your narrative is key.  Although there is not a best way to deliver a client presentation, there is definitely a bad way: Don't make it appear to be a formula. You have a plan and each team member plays a part.  Rehearsing eliminates the outcome that your presentation sounded like a Google response to a trivia question.

The presentation could be defined as the art of persuasion.  When we need to persuade, when we need to move people away from one way of doing things towards another, stories are the way to go.  What is really at the center of all business activity: Persuasion.

Clients relate to stories because they give continuity to the facts and case studies that every short-listed  firm is showing them during the interviews. Stories connects us and engage our clients. They give meaning to what we communicate. It allows clients to relate to your solution on another level.

Is your presentation an exercise in brand superiority?  Does your brand matter to the client?  One of the intended outcomes of your presentation is to create an emotional bond with the client. Never waste precious presentation minutes slapping yourself on the back.  Stories make your brand unique and act as the glue to tie all the other parts together.  There is no better way to differentiate your firm from your competition.

When our presentations include great stories, as opposed to ‘just’ communicating, we create meaning and reinforce a common sense of purpose. We get the client to enter our playing field where common goals and solutions are easily recognized. If this makes sense to you, presentation coaching might be a cost-effective way to improve your performance.  Contact trystanderson@businessdevelopmentpros.org for information.