Articles
Explore over 350 articles that will help you grow your client relationships and improve your personal effectiveness.
The Secret to Winning Your Next Sales Pitch
Clients hate sales pitches. You probably do, too. How do you like to sit still while someone presents PowerPoint slides to you? Clients don’t like boring pitches, but they love to learn. So turn your next sales presentation into a collaborative, value-added session for the client. Role model what it would be like to actually work with […]
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Eight Reasons Why You Lose Clients – And What To Do About It (Part II)
Sometimes client relationships end for appropriate reasons. But you never want a good relationship to end avoidably. In Part I of this article I described four of the eight most common reasons why client relationships end. These were: 1. A reorganization or executive turnover 2. A one-off or temporary need for your services. 3. A financial crisis or […]
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How Do You Get Your People to Collaborate More?
Every executive I speak to would like to see more collaboration among their professionals, especially to better serve clients. Collaboration among different service or product lines, and also between support functions, is essential to fuel relationship growth. Here’s what doesn’t encourage collaboration: • Telling people to collaborate. Collaboration is a behavior, and people don’t change […]
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Eight Reasons Why You Lose Clients – And What To Do About It (Part I)
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 why they are not giving […]
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The Beatles Principles: Lessons in Innovation and Client Loyalty from the Most Successful Band in History
The Beatles sold over one billion records and forever changed the face of pop music. As a team, they were able to create a whole that was greater than the sum of the parts. Together, they composed better music than they ever could have or did as solo artists. What did they do to accomplish this, […]
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Specialists Do Better Than Generalists. But Deep Generalists Do Even Better.
The new wisdom is: Become a visible expert in a niche. If you do you’ll command high fees and be sought after. You’ll get noticed. You’ll out-compete generalists. All true. But even more true is this: Add some breadth to your depth, and then you’ll really shine. I call it the deep generalist. (Actually, someone […]
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The Importance of Breakthrough Moments in Relationships
Regardless of what stage you’ve reached in a client relationship, you need to look for and seize what I call breakthrough moments. In examining the careers of great professionals, I have found there are always notable moments when they perform in extraordinary ways. The result is a major increase in their stature and in the […]
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Why Having A Great Brand Can Lead You to Fail in Sales
So you have a strong brand. Congratulations. You walk into a prospective client’s office feeling confident and self-assured. You bask in the trust and respect that a good brand confers. But wait—this particular meeting may not be the bowl of cherries you expected. In fact, the executive you’re talking to may have a pre-conceived notion […]
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