Are You Developing Your Clients for Life?

By Andrew Sobel

Ideas for Adding Value & Building Loyalty – Ten Questions to Ask Yourself A client for life always goes back to you when there is a need for your particular services. If there is a hiatus in the relationship, he or she will heartily recommend you to others and recall positively how much value you were able to add.

Let's review the basic principles that underpin these extraordinarily valuable long-term relationships. Here they are, framed as a series of questions:

1. Do you provide broad-based advice and consultation along with specialized products and services? Do your clients view you as an expert-for-hire or a broad-based, trusted advisor?
   
   
2. Are you able to listen empathetically to clients on multiple levels – feelings, thoughts, and context? Do you convey information and provide answers, or ask great questions and deliver insight?
   
   
3. Have you developed a balanced blend of selfless independence – a singular focus on your clients and their needs, tempered with complete emotional, intellectual, and financial (as a mindset, at least!) independence from them?
   
   
4. Are you a deep generalist – do you have great expertise combined with a breadth of knowledge about your clients and the industries they operate in (or in the case of individuals, their family and work situation)? Are you able to converse with your clients about more than just business, and genuinely relate to their interests?
   
   
5. Do you bring big-picture thinking to your clients – synthesis as opposed to analysis? Do you ask thought-provoking questions that help clients reframe their needs? Can you identify critical issues and discern trends and patterns? Are you able to make knowledge connections that shed light on your clients' problems?
   
   
6. Do you consistently have good judgment? Do you help clients avoid typical judgment traps (such as overconfidence, stereotyping, and faulty premises) and then combine experience, intuition, and personal values to make good decisions? Do you admit mistakes and learn from them, or do you need to show that you are always right?
   
   
7. Are your relationships based on professional credibility or do you go further and develop deep, personal trust with clients? Do you consistently demonstrate integrity with your clients – adherence to a clear set of values, consistency, reliability, and discretion? Do you spend enough face time with clients to have the opportunity to establish trust?
   
   
8. Do you have great powers of conviction based on a clear set of values and a sense of your mission as a professional? Do you communicate with clarity, energy, and palpable belief?
   
   
9. Do you treat every long-standing client like a brand-new client? Do you bring the same energy, enthusiasm, freshness, and new ideas to each conversation with an old client that you bring to the first meeting with a new client you have just won over? (If you don't, why would clients stick with you?)
   
   
10. Do you have a scarcity outlook with clients – "That's too risky," "That probably won't work," or "I wouldn't risk it" – or rather do you have an abundance mentality that sees possibilities, opportunities, and growth around every corner? (Which type of person would you rather spend time with?) Reflect on these questions as you think about advancing your own professional development and improving your approach to clients.
    

Andrew Sobel is the leading authority on client relationships and the skills and strategies required to earn enduring client and customer loyalty. He is coauthor of Clients for Life: How Great Professionals Development Breakthrough Relationships (Simon & Schuster). He can be reached at (505) 982-0211 or by e-mail at andrew@andrewsobel.com www.andrewsobel.com

Published in Networking Today, June 2002