Articles
Explore over 350 articles that will help you grow your client relationships and improve your personal effectiveness.
14 Common Mistakes in Building C-Suite Relationships
Build Better C-Suite Relationships By Andrew Sobel It’s hard to get the first meeting with a top executive. It’s even harder to get the second meeting. If you don’t make a connection and add value in your conversation—if you don’t light some kind of spark—you’re unlikely to create interest in a relationship with you. Here […]
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Becoming a Person of Interest
By Andrew Sobel Your clients are pressed for time. Everyone wants to get on their agenda. There is competition, in a sense, to build a relationship with them. In response, you need an attraction strategy. You need to become a person of interest, someone that senior executives are drawn to spend time with. This is […]
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From Vendor to Trusted Advisor: Use Power Questions to Deepen Your Client Relationships
By Andrew Sobel Once you have acquired a new client or customer, the next challenge is to create a personal connection and deepen the relationship. Again, the right power questions will help you do this. To help deepen a client relationship, I like to ask what I call Passion questions and Depth questions. Passion questions help you understand what the […]
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How to Build Peer Relationships with Your Clients
By Andrew Sobel To become a client’s trusted advisor, you must be viewed as a peer. This doesn’t mean you must become a literal peer. If you work with a CEO, for example, you will never be their strict peer in an organizational or hierarchical sense. But if you want a seat at the table […]
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Why Relationships Go Bad–and Nine Ways to Revitalize Them
By Andrew Sobel What percentage of the time you devote to marketing and sales is directed towards growing existing clients versus winning new prospects? If you’re like many professionals, you get an adrenaline rush when you are in pursuit of an attractive new client prospect. You probably feel that new business naturally flows from existing […]
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Four Laws For Building Deep, Personal Relationships with Clients
By Andrew Sobel The story about Sir Isaac Newton and the apple tree, according to historians, is true. While sitting under the tree, he saw an apple fall straight to the ground. This made him wonder what underlying principle was pulling the apple off the tree. He soon formulated his laws of gravity. Just as […]
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Valentine’s Day Lies—and Six Relationship Rules That Make Romance Work
By Andrew Sobel Our contemporary culture promotes many trite, misleading, and self-absorbed ideas about what makes for successful romantic relationships. “Just be yourself”, “Find someone who won’t try to change you”, and the old chestnut, “You must love yourself first.” But these truisms don’t point to the real ingredients of rewarding relationships. Popular concepts like […]
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10 Power Questions to Ask a Loved One on Valentine’s Day
By Andrew Sobel Hearts, Flowers…and Power Questions? 10 Relationship-Building Questions To Ask Someone You Love this Valentine’s Day A token box of chocolates and reservations at a nice restaurant are, well, nice. But do they really deepen your relationship? What really makes Valentine’s Day great is not the candy but the conversation, says Andrew Sobel. […]
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