Articles
Explore over 350 articles that will help you grow your client relationships and improve your personal effectiveness.
Building Relationships with Senior Management
My firm has asked me to develop a target client where we’ve done some work at the middle-management level. How can I now build a relationship with senior management?
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Does This Client Make Sense for Me?
A client of mine, who is a partner in a large professional firm, recently lamented to me that many of his colleagues were spending huge amounts of time chasing low-payoff RFPs. “It’s a very tough way to get new business, and it distracts us from investing more deeply in high-potential clients that we already know […]
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Six Models for Building a Client Franchise
“How do I build a following?” “How can I increase my leadstream?” “How do I create a brand for myself in the marketplace? These are important questions, and I get asked them frequently. The answer to all three is–it depends. There is no one right approach to building a client franchise, no single model that […]
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New Promotion, New Clients, Now What?
A client called me recently to tell me he had been promoted. That was the good news. The bad news was that his phone had stopped ringing and his calendar was emptying out. Prior to his promotion, he had worked extensively with a senior professional in his firm, and had led most of the execution […]
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How to Price
Robust pricing is a key to profitability, yet most professionals spend little time seriously exploring how to price their services effectively. Worse, they chronically underprice as they over-react to client pressure to reduce fees and become afraid they will lose the sale. Most of you reading this deliver a high value-added service. We’re not talking […]
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Growing Relationships: The Client’s Perspective
“We really don’t need a lot of new client relationships,” the chairman of a large professional services firm recently told me, adding, “We have a great client base already. There’s huge potential to grow and develop our existing clients.” Many companies feel the same way: That there is a large opportunity to deepen and broaden—to […]
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Ten Questions to Help You Grow Your Client Base
January is a good time to reflect on ways to grow your client base during the coming year. Here are 10 questions you should ask yourself as you plan how to make this year a success: 1. What compelling ideas can you bring to your clients? Clients frequently comment to me about how they can […]
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How to Lose a Client in 10 Days
(A Tongue-in-Cheek View!) Note: This is an attempt at humor. This is not a serious article (one friend of mine thought it was…serious) The advertising great David Ogilvy wrote that every ad agency should fire a major client each year. Independence and selectivity, in fact, are among the hallmarks of great client advisors. “Experts […]
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