Articles
Explore over 350 articles that will help you grow your client relationships and improve your personal effectiveness.
Earning Clients for Life as a Trusted Advisor
Competition, commoditization, client sophistication, and transparent markets mean that few services can be truly differentiated in their own right. Strong, enduring client relationships, therefore, are the lifeblood of most organizations. Long term relationships serve another key function in today’s tumultuous markets: they reduce risk for both clients and service providers. It’s not easy, however, to […]
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Week 4 Challenge: Hold a Great First Conversation
[Please note: this article, and the rest of the articles in this series, together constitute the 15 emails in the It Starts with Clients Client Growth Challenge. Please subscribe here to receive them on a weekly basis over the next 100 days] In Week 4 of this challenge, you’re going to improve your effectiveness at […]
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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 3 Challenge: Gain Access and Set up Meetings
[Please note: this article, and the rest of the articles in this series, together constitute the 15 emails in the It Starts with Clients Client Growth Challenge. Please subscribe here to receive them on a weekly basis over the next 100 days] In Week 3 of this challenge, you’re going to begin a systematic outreach […]
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Week 1 Challenge: Review Your Client Base and Accelerate Your Outreach
[Please note: this article, and the rest of the articles in this series, together constitute the 15 emails in the It Starts with Clients Client Growth Challenge. Please subscribe here to receive them on a weekly basis over the next 100 days] One of the secrets to building clients for life is starting with the […]
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Day 1 Challenge: Adopt the Advisor Mindset and Serve More Client Needs
[Please note: this article, and the rest of the articles in this series, together constitute the 15 emails in the It Starts with Clients Client Growth Challenge. Please subscribe here to receive them on a weekly basis over the next 100 days] Welcome to the 100-Day Client Growth Challenge. I’m excited that you’re joining many […]
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10 Causes of Client Attrition—and How to Stop It
Why Your Clients Are Leaving By Andrew Sobel Even firms that enjoy strong client loyalty and high levels of repeat business lose 20 or 30 percent of their revenue every year due to attrition. Some attrition is desirable. Some is unavoidable. But much of it can be prevented. Think about how much work it requires […]
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Five Powerful Steps to Grow Your Client Base in the New Year
Every new year, all companies face great uncertainties. But what is certain is that if you don’t grow your business, you will fall behind. There are of course times you need to shrink to grow, but that is a temporary tactic to enable future revenue and/or profit growth. In working with a wide range of […]
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How to Accelerate Relationships
Client relationships can take a long time to develop. This is especially true in large corporate environments where you have multiple stakeholders that have to be won over and executives who are cautious about opening up to an external advisor. It’s very frustrating when the relationship-building process seems stalled. In some cases, my clients report […]
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