Articles
Explore over 350 articles that will help you grow your client relationships and improve your personal effectiveness.
Seven Relationship Lies—and Rules to Replace Them on Valentine’s Day
I usually write strictly about professional relationships, but today, I want to share seven Valentine’s Day lies—and the relationship rules to replace them. Our culture promotes many misleading ideas about what makes for successful personal or romantic relationships. Popular concepts like the need to “just be yourself” or “move on if your needs aren’t being […]
Read article
Ten Questions to Ask Your Clients Every Year
A client of mine dodged death twice. The first instance involved serendipitously avoiding what turned out to be an infamous plane crash caused by a terrorist bomb. The second time had to do with a seemingly innocuous spot on his arm. It looked like a odd-shaped mole, and he ignored it. As the CEO of […]
Read article
The 3 Levels of Personal Recognition—Where Are You?
As a young consultant right out of graduate school, I immediately notice
Read article
Plan for Unplannable Serendipity: Make Your Own Luck This Year
By definition, serendipity is unforeseen
Read article
Ideas Are Everywhere and Everyone Can Come Up With Them
Willie Nelson, the acclaimed country singer-songwriter, has written over 1000 songs. A journalist once asked him, “How do you do it—how do you keep coming up with new songs?” His reply: “Songs are everywhere.” John Lennon and Paul McCartney of Beatles’ fame similarly had a knack for observing the world around them and incorporating the […]
Read article
20 Opportunities to Grow Your Client Relationships
Are your client relationships growing, staying the same, or shrinking? How much influence do you really have over the direction they take? The answer to this second question is, I believe, a whole lot. While many factors influence whether or not a relationship grows, you and your team can have an enormous impact on the […]
Read article
12 Indicators of Relationship Decline
The CEO of a Fortune-100 company I was advising got an unexpected call from the CEO of their largest technology supplier. The technology company CEO said he was going to be in New York City the following week and wanted to meet up to review the relationship. They scheduled the day and time, and my […]
Read article
Eight Strategies to Grow Your Business in Any Market Conditions
One of my clients, a global consulting firm, wanted to build a relationship with a Fortune-50 company in the Midwest. This company never used consultants, and my client had virtually no preexisting relationships with their management. However, my client was determined to win them over. They asked a senior partner to spend most of his […]
Read article
Nine Reasons Why You Lose Clients – And What to Do About It
The playwright Oscar Wilde defined a gentleman as someone who “is never unintentionally rude.” Likewise, you never want to have a 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 explain to you why they are not giving you any […]
Read article