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Explore over 350 articles that will help you grow your client relationships and improve your personal effectiveness.
Choose Ambitious, Bold Clients
Reframing Work and Life #3: The Client Aspiration Matrix There is an unreservedly important but often ignored quality that you should always look for in your clients. It is called ambition. Boldness is another way of putting it. Many executives simply want to do a “good job” while maintaining the status quo. Usually, but not […]
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How to Reframe Client Problems
Reframing Work & Life #2: Putting client problems in a new light The physicist Albert Einstein reputedly said that if he had one hour to solve a problem on which his life depended, he would spend 55 minutes studying and defining it, and 5 minutes solving it. Often, a client (or, your manager or a […]
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Four Types of Power Questions
Reframing Work & Life #1: The Power Questions Matrix Jerry Panas and I coined the term “Power Questions” in our book of the same title. Somewhat to our amazed delight, it went on to become a global best-seller that has been translated into 21 languages. Power Questions, put simply, are open-ended questions that engage the […]
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How to Manage Small or Transactional Clients
Small and/or transactional clients can pose many problems. In fact, dealing with these types of clients is a vexing issue for many companies. Here’s why: Small Clients: Are costly to service—they can use up senior time (partners, senior executives) with little return Often have limited budgets, and any one small client can only make a […]
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Five Powerful Steps to Grow Your Client Base in the New Year
Every new year, all companies face great uncertainties. But what is certain is that if you don’t grow your business, you will fall behind. There are of course times you need to shrink to grow, but that is a temporary tactic to enable future revenue and/or profit growth. In working with a wide range of […]
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Have You Captured all 3 Levels of Client Relationship Potential?
A tale of blind hubris A client of mine implemented an account planning process and asked all their partners to estimate their current share of each client’s business. Sometimes, this metric is referred to as “share of wallet,” although I dislike that term because it sounds like you are stealing the client’s wallet rather than […]
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An Invaluable Tool for any Professional–The New Power Questions Smartphone App
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” –Mark Twain, American Author and Humorist Good questions help us get to the heart of our most important issues, at work and in life. When I wrote Power Questions with Jerry Panas, I thought […]
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8 Inexpensive Ways to Add More Client Value
Find Better Ways to Help Your Clients Clients continue to demand more value from their outside advisors and service providers. Corporate executives themselves are under constant pressure to deliver more for less—to increase their output and spend less doing it—and they are passing that on to you. The logical result is downward pressure on fees […]
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