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Explore over 350 articles that will help you grow your client relationships and improve your personal effectiveness.
Valentine’s Day Lies—and Six Relationship Rules That Make Romance Work
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 the need to […]
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Four Strategies for Becoming Powerfully Relevant to Your Prospects and Clients
Are you like water and sunshine to your clients? Connect. Become relevant. Resonate. Make an impact. Those are the steps you follow to build your most powerful relationships. In Part One of this three-part series on the Laws of Power Relationships, I described strategies for connecting. In this post, I share four Relationship Laws that will […]
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Six Powerful Words to Grow Your Business in the New Year
The first word is Why? The first word is Why Every day of the next year will be gift for each of us. That’s why my first word for 2014 is “Why?” When used in the right way and at the right time, “Why?” is one of the most powerful words in our vocabulary. This […]
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How to Turn the First Sale into a Long-Term Relationship
For many professionals, the toughest part of building long-term client relationships is getting the client in the first place. But moving from the initial sale to an ongoing relationship has its own challenges. In fact, it requires careful planning and thought—starting on the very first day of your new relationship. You need to follow these […]
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Why Relationships Go Bad–and Nine Ways to Revitalize Them
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 relationships on the […]
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Four Things Every Client Wants in a Relationship
What do clients really want? I’ve interviewed and surveyed thousands of executives over the last decade about what they look for in a relationship with an external provider or advisor. Each client is unique, of course, and looks for somewhat different things in each specific transaction or engagement. But if you boil it down, there […]
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Six Essential Roles You Should Play with Client Executives
Have you ever gotten a call from a client who said, “I just want to run something by you”? Perhaps on a different day that same client asked you, “How’s my team doing?” On yet a different occasion he or she may have pushed you to talk about what you’re seeing out in the marketplace and how other companies are dealing with the same issue. You may not explicitly think about it this way, but in fact you play quite different roles with your clients. I have identified the six most common and important ones. Each is valuable in its own right. By recognizing these roles and cultivating them intentionally with your clients, you will add more value and dramatically strengthen your relationships.
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The Company We Keep: Is It Hurting or Helping Our Reputation?
Former CIA head and four-star general David Petreus is man of extraordinary accomplishments and service to his country. And so is General John Allen. But both their reputations have been diminished by their friendship with Jill Kelley in Tampa, Florida.
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