One of the things that I have always advocated is building a relationship with your clients.
I don’t mean just attending meetings, but creating a dialogue inside and outside the office environment.
This is not to be confused with becoming mates … or getting so close to the business you lose your ability to be objective … it’s about helping develop better understanding of each others needs and skills so that over time – and with a continual stream of positive actions and input – you can build the trust that leads to you being seen as indispensable to that individual and their business.
So how do you do it?
Well obviously it’s doing the big stuff well – however I am a firm believer you have to continually demonstrate you give a shit about them and their business … which means sending them information that you think is interesting … writing papers/documents/books that you think could be valuable, even if they haven’t asked for them to be done … doing mini research projects that you think could raise issues or opportunities for their business in the future … even going for lunch and just seeing how everything is going.
In short – as my colleague Richard Summers say’s – marketing yourself to them.
There are a lot of companies that believe the flow of communication should be carefully managed – and of course, you don’t want to go off and do things on your own without at least notifying your colleagues and wider team about what you’re doing – however if you think client relationships should only be the domain of the account service department, then you’re both limiting your influence as well as your ability to develop the skills that could lead to you working on things you really give a shit about.
This isn’t about being a corporate toady … nor is it about falling into a ‘client management role’ … it’s about shaping your role, influence and career which is why planners who think their job is only about working in the background are missing the point, because the best thing you can do is help clients define their objectives rather than simply responding to their briefs.
10 ‘Quick Ways’ To Open Dialogue
1/ Use Google Alerts to identify interesting news/issues that you can send off.
2/ Use Twitter to track popular opinions/news that might be of interest to your client.
3/ Read newspapers – you never know when a topic of interest may come up.
4/ Look at the things the company fundamentally believes and do mini projects to see if things have evolved/changed.
5/ Visit and photograph a different client store each week and report your findings.
6/ Do street interviews and report what you’ve found in relation to your clients business or just people’s general attitude and approach to life.
[You can do this in a whole bunch of ways … ways that also allow you to show off your unique/different approaches to uncover insights – ie: photographing what people have just bought through to the clothes they’re wearing to go shopping … and pretty much anything inbetween. Trust me, it would be a very strange client who didn’t find this interesting, if only for the approach you’ve used]
7/ Do a competitive review – but not on who their competitors are, but on who could view them as a competitor.
8/ Tell them about films/books that you feel cover issues that you know are close to their [personal or professional] heart.
9/ Connect them up to people you know who do things – or have experience in things – that are of [personal or professional] interest.
10/ Invite them for lunch.
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This is, of course, in no way an exhaustive list – I’m sure many of you have a bunch of totally different little tips and tricks to open dialogue – however if you’re lost and looking for a helping hand, any one of these may help, accepting that some [like research and competitive reviews] will take alot more time to do than others, which automatically has implications on just how often you can interact with your client.
Word of advice, don’t over-do your interaction.
There’s a fine line between helpful and annoying … but if you provide genuinely valuable information in a positive way, you will soon find you get sought out [as well as stand out] from the countless people they regard as giving them problems rather than solutions or even simply, ‘food for thought’.
PS: Happy Independence Day to all Americans out there. Though there’s nothing happy about it from her Majesty’s perspective.