Articles
Explore over 350 articles that will help you grow your client relationships and improve your personal effectiveness.
Finish this Year Well and Start Strong in January
Fall can be an achingly beautiful season, but it can also be a pressure cooker if you serve clients. In this last quarter of the calendar year, you need to finish well, regardless of when you close your fiscal year. At the same time, you need to prepare the foundations for a successful start of the […]
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Your Week 13 Challenge: Develop a C-Suite Relationship
You’re in the home stretch of the 100-Day Client Growth Challenge–just one more week after this! This week, you’ll apply strategies to help build a relationship with a senior executive by adding more “value for time” in your meetings. To complete this week’s challenge, be sure to read or listen to Week 13: Build Senior […]
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Week 7 Challenge: Use Agenda Setting Strategies + a Bonus Video
In Week 7 of this challenge, you’ll use agenda setting strategies to make an upcoming client meeting richer and more effective. Be sure to read Week 7 of It Starts with Clients, “Anticipate and Agenda Set.” How well do you really understand your client’s agenda? I define a client’s agenda as their three to five most […]
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Finding New Opportunities in a Shrinking Market (It Starts with Clients–Part 3)
In most areas of the economy, fundamental demand has shrunk. Some markets have actually grown (videoconferencing and eLearning, anyone?), and a few large ones have evaporated (retail, travel). Are you doomed to sink to the level of the average decline (or worse), or can you find or create new opportunities to help your clients and […]
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Week 1 Challenge: Review Your Client Base and Accelerate Your Outreach
One of the secrets to building clients for life is starting with the right clients. I lived in Italy with my family for four years, and I learned–similarly–that one of the secrets to Italian food is that the Italians always start with super-fresh ingredients. In contrast, It’s hard to make a delicious salad with rock-hard […]
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Day 1 Challenge: Adopt the Advisor Mindset and Serve More Client Needs
Welcome to the 100-Day Client Growth Challenge. I’m excited that you’re joining many other participants around the globe for this powerful, 100-day journey. It will help you strengthen your most important relationships and grow your client base. We are in the midst of a very turbulent time. Remember, however–business development may slow or stop, but […]
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8 Inexpensive Ways to Add More Client Value
Find Better Ways to Help Your Clients Clients continue to demand more value from their outside advisors and service providers. Corporate executives themselves are under constant pressure to deliver more for less—to increase their output and spend less doing it—and they are passing that on to you. The logical result is downward pressure on fees […]
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How to Turn Every Client Meeting Into a Wow Experience
By Andrew Sobel A Missed Opportunity I advised one of my clients to hold regular “agenda-setting” meetings with an organization they were working with. “But Andrew,” they told me, “we tried that. We set up a quarterly review session attended by representatives of key functions in the business. But after the first couple of meetings, […]
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Eight Reasons Why You Lose Clients – And What To Do About It (Part I)
By Andrew Sobel The playwright Oscar Wilde defined a gentleman as someone who “is never unintentionally rude.” Likewise, you never want to have a good client relationship end unintentionally and without a sound reason. Unfortunately, relationships often avoidably come to an end. Clients usually just vote with their feet and don’t carefully explain to you […]
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