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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Involve Your Clients in the Account Planning Process
In working with many client teams on account planning, I’ve learned that there really is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach. The planning process and the tenor of your discussions for an existing multi-million-dollar, mature client relationship will be different from that for a relatively new client that is currently quite small. Broadly speaking, the following elements […]
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The Characteristics and Roles of Successful Client Relationship Managers
What are the essential roles of a client relationship manager? And what skills does he or she need to possess in order to fulfill these roles? Having studied tens of thousands of partners, managing directors, account executives, and other client-facing professionals in service firms around the world, I have identified six key roles for relationship […]
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The 3 Levels of Personal Recognition—Where Are You?
As a young consultant right out of graduate school, I immediately notice
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Four Key Ways to Add Value for Time in Client Meetings
When you meet with a senior executive, there’s one factor that usually determine
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Plan for Unplannable Serendipity: Make Your Own Luck This Year
By definition, serendipity is unforeseen
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Jerry Panas and Thanksgiving Blessings
Read Jerry Panas’ encouraging Thanksgiving exhortation, below. It’s for every day, not just Thanksgiving. And, read about why he had such an impact in the world: My coauthor for two books (Power Questions and Power Relationships), Jerry was arguably the single most influential and successful consultant to philanthropy and the nonprofit world in the last […]
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Ideas Are Everywhere and Everyone Can Come Up With Them
Willie Nelson, the acclaimed country singer-songwriter, has written over 1000 songs. A journalist once asked him, “How do you do it—how do you keep coming up with new songs?” His reply: “Songs are everywhere.” John Lennon and Paul McCartney of Beatles’ fame similarly had a knack for observing the world around them and incorporating the […]
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20 Opportunities to Grow Your Client Relationships
Are your client relationships growing, staying the same, or shrinking? How much influence do you really have over the direction they take? The answer to this second question is, I believe, a whole lot. While many factors influence whether or not a relationship grows, you and your team can have an enormous impact on the […]
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