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 develop and sustain trusted client relationships. I consistently hear two major concerns from the leaders of service firms in a variety of sectors, from consulting to accounting to banking. First, “How can we improve the relationship-building skills of our front-line relationship managers (i.e, account executives, partners, managing directors, and so on) so that they are able to build deeper, more resilient relationships at senior levels; and second “How can we more effectively mobilize our complete capabilities, across the organization, to create enduring, institutionalized client relationships? Intensifying these challenges are ever-increasing client demands for more value in their relationships with external service providers.

The relationships that most professional firms aspire to build lie in what I call the Northeast Quadrant of the Client Growth Matrix, below.

In this space, two things have happened: first, the individual professional managing the relationship has evolved his or her role from an expert-for-hire to a trusted client advisor; and second, the firm has developed its overall relationship from a narrow one based on few services and one individual contact to a broad one founded on multiple relationships and services. These Northeast Quadrant relationships— we can also call them trusted client partnerships—are the bedrock of most organizations.

These two key dimensions are portrayed on the Client Growth Matrix. The X axis shows the journey of the individual professional, while the Y axis illustrates the firm or company journey in supporting the development of trusted partnerships.

A given client relationship can be approximately positioned in the matrix by asking a few simple questions. The matrix distinguishes four different positions, each with its own characteristics:

FIRST: Expert for Hire: This is where most relationships begin. At this point, the trust and mutual understanding that might deepen and broaden the relationship simply have not developed yet. This is not a “bad” position to be in, but probably not one where you want to remain for long.

SECOND: Trusted Advisor: In this quadrant, you’ve demonstrated a series of qualities— trustworthiness, independence, judgment, big-picture thinking, empathy, and others—that earn you a position as a trusted advisor within your client’s inner circle. You are, metaphorically, an architect who helps the client develop a vision or strategy but who is not involved in implementation—in building the house itself. This is a great role to play, but without moving up the other axis and broadening the relationship at a firm level, your ability to grow this client will be severely limited.

THIRD: Vendor: You’ve successfully broadened the relationship and developed a significant revenue stream with this client. You may in fact be managing a very large, multifaceted program. Don’t kid yourself, however—you’re still in “RFP territory,” just as you were when you were a solitary expert for hire.

FOURTH: Trusted Partner: This is the ultimate goal: to be a trusted advisor to your client and to harness the full power of your organization to deliver outstanding results. In this top-right quadrant you have built a true client partnership. You are leading your client’s agenda, have built many-to-many relationships, and are meeting an array of client needs. It’s not an easy task to play this role with a client, but if you succeed, you and your firm will probably have a client for life—and a highly profitable one at that. You’ll also experience great personal satisfaction in the role of a trusted counselor who is having a significant impact on his or her client’s success.

What enables the development of “Northeast Quadrant” client partnerships?

Over the last 25 years, I have conducted extensive research into the ingredients of successful, enduring client relationships. I have also worked closely with many leading professional service firms, technology companies, and financial services institutions on this topic. It’s clear to me that there are approximately 10 major building blocks—essential strategies or practices—that are necessary to evolve from an expert-for-hire to a trusted advisor to, finally, a trusted client partner. These building blocks, properly executed, enable you to move firmly into the Northeast Quadrant of the Client Growth Matrix.

Some of these building blocks are principally driven by the client relationship manager or account executive. For example:

• Developing relationship capital. Each client-facing professional has the responsibility of building a strong network of what I call “relationship hubs”—those critical, few individuals who can really make a difference. A firm’s total relationship capital is, naturally, the sum of all of these.
• Becoming an agenda setter. Experts for hire are reactive—they respond to client requests for work. Trusted partners are agenda setters—they understand, align with, support, and help improve the client’s agenda of critical priorities and goals.
• Institutionalizing the relationship.  A variety of strategies must be brought to bear to accomplish this, including creating many-to-many relationships, building a team with the right mix of “deep generalists” and subject-matter experts, and engaging in systematic account planning and development.

Other building blocks must be principally driven at the firm level. For example:

Creating a trusted advisor pipeline. For every 100 professionals hired, only a few will eventually be able to go on and manage major client relationships. How do you systematically select, retain, and develop relationship managers who can take on this critical responsibility 8 or 10 years down the road?

• Fostering firm-wide collaboration. There are a number of factors which can encourage collaboration across boundaries, as well as obstacles that prevent collaboration. It is the responsibility of senior management to manage these factors and deliberately foster familiarity and trust and the frictionless movement of people, ideas, and resources into major client relationships.

For each of these 10 building blocks, I have developed a comprehensive framework which outlines the essential tasks, best practices, and implementation tools required for success.

The post Earning Clients for Life as a Trusted Advisor appeared first on Andrew Sobel.

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 should be present in a good planning process:

• Upfront involvement of the client to provide input on key issues, needs, and goals for the coming year
• Leadership of the planning process by the most senior professionals on the client team. You cannot delegate the plan to junior staff!
• Periodic meetings of the full team to reflect and strategize (at least once a year and probably two to four times a year)
• Development of a written account plan. This can be brief. Remember—too many long, complex plans get created and then deposited in a file somewhere and then never used or referred to. It’s about the planning process, not so much about the PowerPoint slides themselves.
• Weekly or monthly update calls or meetings
• Individual follow-up between the relationship manager and individual team members

For any client, the core of the client account planning process is a team planning session to reflect on the seven key questions (see the video, below) and strategize how to improve and grow the relationship. A best-practice planning process, set against a calendar year, should reflect the kinds of activities listed in the graphic, “The Account Planning Cycle.”

If you want to learn more, watch this short video I made about seven key questions you should use to drive the creation of a client account plan:

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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 managers:

1. Aspiration Setting: Establishing ambitious, stretch goals for the relationship that are always aligned with the client’s agenda of key priorities and goals.
2. Relationship strategy: Deciding what opportunities you should pursue and which individual executive relationships you should invest in.
3. Client leadership: Becoming a trusted advisor to the client and a recognized thought leader within the client organization.
4. Team leadership and growth: Mobilizing, orchestrating, motivating, and developing the right group of professionals—from across the firm—to serve the client
5. Ambassadorship and entrepreneurship: Identifying, mobilizing, and delivering the right people, solutions, resources, and ideas into the relationship.
6. Commercial management: Managing pricing, contracting, and negotiating; ensuring firm profit standards are being met; and ensuring that the work product is of high quality and meets the client’s expectations.

For a more detailed description of these roles, and the skills required to support them, see my presentation, here: Relationship Manager Roles

How do you help your relationship managers excel at these roles? See my Client Leadership Pipeline graphic, below.

The post The Characteristics and Roles of Successful Client Relationship Managers appeared first on Andrew Sobel.

While I hadn’t yet learned the full extent of what it took to succeed in my profession, I did know one thing: I wanted to be like those partners who had pink phone message slips, from prospective and current clients, piled up on their desk. (Yes, in those days we made phone calls on these clunky corded telephones…and we got little message slips from the administrative assistants). I didn’t want to be at the mercy of the business getters—I wanted to be one myself and control my own career.

There are many things you must do well to succeed in business, but today let’s just focus on one essential strategy: Achieving the recognition that leads to relationships. There are three levels of recognition you should strive for.

Level One: Internal Recognition

One year after starting at my firm, my then-girlfriend and I decided to get married (so far so good—we’ve been married 38 years this November). At the time, however, I was living and working in Boston, and she was employed in the international division of a bank in New York City. So, we hatched a plan to end up in the same city. To make a long story short, I asked—and our CEO agreed—to move to London to help start up our new office there, and my fiancé convinced her bank to also move her to London. All at the same time. How did we swing that? Internal recognition.

In my case, although wet behind the ears, I brought some modest qualifications: I spoke three foreign languages reasonably well and had prior experience living abroad. Perhaps more importantly, in the space of a year, I had made friends in the firm. I performed well on my projects, worked hard, and pitched in when colleagues needed help. After checking carefully with other partners who had worked with me, our CEO called me up and said he’d be delighted to have me move to London as part of the startup team.

Getting both our employers to move us to London, at the same time, felt like a supernatural event. But the explanation is much simpler: We had both achieved internal recognition, and this opened up a great opportunity for us.

Internal recognition can create career breaks for you and important opportunities to earn client recognition. In any company, leadership will put people with the best reputations for delivering results into high-profile, client-facing roles as well as in senior functional or business unit positions.

Fundamentally, internal recognition grows when you build key relationships and add value to the organization in meaningful ways. This means:

• Consistently delivering quality work and achieving your goals.
• Developing an in-demand expertise.
• Being seen as a team player—someone who collaborates well and willingly helps colleagues when they need a hand (but not a doormat).
• Building trusted relationships with key stakeholders such as your manager, colleagues, senior executives, mentors, and so on.

​What are the signs of strong internal recognition? For example: you get regular promotions and pay increases, you have the clout to influence your work assignments, you are asked to join committees and task forces, and more senior executives seek you out for their teams.

Level Two: Client Recognition

What’s the difference between just doing client work and getting client recognition?

Here are some important signs that indicate you’ve gone beyond just being an expert resource that clients use on a transactional basis:

• You routinely win repeat business from your clients.
• When your clients are surveyed or interviewed by your management, they specifically cite your good work and ask for you to continue working on their account.
• When a client executive moves to another company, they call you up and want to do business with you and your new firm.
• Clients tell others about you and refer their friends and colleagues to you.

​How do you achieve client recognition? Fundamentally it first requires developing your expertise in a specific area so that you can then get recognized in the market. With that expertise, you then add value to your client’s business and build trusted relationships with client executives. It’s Value + Relationships. If you add value but have weak relationships, you are an “expert for hire” who can easily be let go. If you have good relationships but don’t add value, you become an “empty suit.”

Remember: the more specific your focus, the easier it is to develop recognition and renown.

Level Three: External Recognition (the media and other thought leaders)

Three or four times a month I get unsolicited requests from diverse media outlets to do interviews or contribute to an article. Someone is usually writing about a topic that intersects with my known area of expertise, and through either Internet searches or speaking with colleagues, they come up with my name. This doesn’t happen by accident. Over the last 25 years I’ve published nine books and hundreds of articles, spoken at conferences around the world, and contributed content to many web sites and publications.

Your reaction may be, “That’s just not me. I don’t write and publish the way you do.”

But let me push you on this point. There are many benefits from media recognition of your expertise and success. The cumulative impact of reaching level three produces, to use a term popularized by author Alan Weiss, “marketing gravity.” When you have marketing gravity, rather than being forced to cold-call clients to drum up business, clients are drawn towards you by the gravitational pull of your renown.

Furthermore, we live in a low-trust world where suppliers make many inflated claims about their products and services. External recognition builds clients’ trust in you by providing what are powerful, third-party endorsements of you and your work. The late critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, for example, did this through their “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” movie ratings. Same with the J.D. Powers automotive quality rankings. If you are on a panel at a well-known business conference, the halo of prestige from that event also lights you up.

How do you know you’ve reached level three recognition? When a journalist or writer is researching a story in your area of expertise, you come up on their radar. Other experts might ask to interview you for their own publications, blogs and podcasts. You’re considered a real, not self-proclaimed, “thought leader.” If a prospective client searches for you on the Internet, publications you’ve authored come up. For example, in a Google search for “C Suite Relationships” I appear second or third in the search ranking—above well-known brands like Harvard Business Review. How I did this is another, longer story, but it has to do with the “flywheel” effect of my steady writing and publishing.

At the Personal Level

As an aside: while this article focuses on your career, there’s another level of “recognition” that is also critical: Being someone family and friends are drawn towards because you exemplify those characteristics that fuel strong personal relationships. These include empathy, caring, loyalty, likability, and self-awareness. Many studies show that having a strong network of personal relationships is associated with reduced depression and loneliness, improved health, and a longer life span. Want to have a long and successful professional career? Don’t neglect this other group of essential relationships! And by the way, those same qualities (empathy, caring, etc.) will greatly enhance your client relationships as well.

Where Are You on the Recognition Ladder?

While these three levels tend to correlate with the arc of one’s career, there is no law of physics that holds you to that slow progression. With the right strategies, you can actually “leapfrog” and achieve Level Two and Level Three recognition quite early in your career. Just don’t forget the formula of Value + Relationships!

The post The 3 Levels of Personal Recognition—Where Are You? appeared first on Andrew Sobel.

When you meet with a senior executive, there’s one factor that usually determines whether you get a follow up meeting: Have you added value for time? It the client benefits from your conversation, you’re on your way. If they didn’t find it particularly helpful, then next time they will delegate you to a subordinate or just ask for a written update.

Client Executives are Time-Starved

Right before the Covid-19 pandemic started, a client of mine told me about a consultant who kept emailing her to ask for “just 20 minutes” of his time. “Andrew,” he said at the time, “Yesterday alone I had about 10 people asking for a same-day meeting, and my calendar was already jam-packed.” Because of the ease of scheduling phone and video sessions during the pandemic, this problem has worsened.

It’s no secret that senior executives have more demands on their time than ever before. They are now bombarded with up to 400 or 500 email or text messages a day (including through services like Slack), spend many hours in meetings, and work longer hours than their predecessors did.

As a result, while mid-level managers seek value for money when it comes to hiring and interacting with external providers, senior executives are focused first on value for time. Sure, they also want value for money. But you will never successfully build an ongoing relationship with them if you don’t add substantial value for time in your meetings.

Many executives could fill their days twice over with people who want to meet with them. So why should they make time for you?

The Four Pillars of Value for Time

For client executives, there are four main sources of value for time: Insight, Perspective, Relevance, and Resilience. You need to draw on these intentionally for your executive meetings with both prospective and current clients.

After your meeting, you want your client to think, “That was a valuable conversation. It was time well spent. I’m looking forward to our next get-together.”

So, let’s look at each one of these pillars:

Insight. There are different types of insight that you can share with clients. First, there are external insights about markets, competition, customers, and trends. Second, if it is an existing client or if you otherwise know the organization, there are internal insights you can bring about challenges and opportunities the executive needs to confront. Thirdly—and this is a particular flavor of the previous category—there are specific insights you can share about people, relationships, and culture. Regardless of your expertise, if your work exposes you to the client’s organization, you may be able to offer ideas about improving teamwork and collaboration, reducing conflict, enhancing employees’ skills and capabilities, and so on.

Perspective. It’s extraordinarily valuable to help a client improve or change their perspective on their issues. In my interviews with clients about their most trusted advisors, this often comes up as a key trait they treasure. Can you help reframe a problem or give your client a big-picture perspective on their issues? They certainly don’t get this very often from their internal staff, or so they tell me. I once said to a client, who was focused on something that really wasn’t furthering their strategic agenda, “I’m wondering if perhaps the ladder you are climbing here is leaning against the wrong wall.” He laughed, and later came back to me and admitted he was not seeing the forest for the trees.

Synthesis is a key aspect of big-picture thinking. It’s the ability to see patterns–to connect disparate findings and possibly discover a new idea. A lot of the untapped value for executives lies at the intersections of different parts of their business—e.g., at the borders of operations, finance, HR, sales and marketing, etc. These opportunities are often missed, however, due to organizational silos.

Relevance. Value for time is also based on the relevance of your what you’re talking about. A good way to get instantly out of sync with your client is to push your agenda without taking the time to understand what they want to focus on. How often do you ask, simply, “What would you most like to focus on today?” To be relevant, you have to align your conversation to their agenda of critical priorities. Are you doing that?

Sometimes, it’s a question of dropping the planned agenda to focus on an immediate, urgent issue the client is facing. Don’t blithely talk about something that’s going to happen in three months when your client is facing a crisis they need to navigate right now, today. You might ask, “By the way, are there any immediate issues that have come up this week that you’re concerned about and working on?”

Resilience. An underappreciated way to add value with your client is to help increase their resilience as a leader. How do you do this? Sometimes, it’s a question of helping to increase their confidence. Even very senior executives have doubts, and they often have no one they can trust to discuss them. They need encouragement like the rest of us. Just saying, “I think you’re doing a great job under difficult circumstances” can be reassuring, and trust me, they probably are not hearing that from anyone else!

You can also improve their resilience by diplomatically challenging them: “I know you’ve set a goal for 5%, but I wonder if that’s aggressive enough considering what your competitors are doing?” I might also say something like, “I think your implementation plan is strong, but there are two aspects of it that your executive committee is going to criticize. Your case needs to be strengthened in those areas.” By challenging your client, you help them improve as a leader.

For your next client meeting, what’s your value-for-time strategy? How will you leave your client wanting more? Focus on Insight, Perspective, Relevance, and Resilience. 

The post Four Key Ways to Add Value for Time in Client Meetings appeared first on Andrew Sobel.

No amount of planning can predict these unexpected opportunities.

Or can it? You can’t anticipate the exact break you’re going to get, but you can plan on doing things that will greatly increase the odds of these serendipitous events occurring. And they will—if you do the right things.

In short, when it comes to growing your client base, you actually can plan for the unplannable. Here are six strategies that will amplify the serendipity in your professional life:

1. Reach out regularly. Contact current clients, past clients, and your most important VIP relationships on a regular, rotating basis. Your goal is a meeting (phone, video, in-person as circumstances allow) to discuss their issues and share helpful insights and perspectives with them.

How often do you reach out to the individuals in your core networks? If you only do this a few times a week, that’s not enough.

2. Educate your market. Make sure clients, prospects, and yes, friends, actually know what you do and the extent of your/your firm’s full capabilities. If they don’t know, then when they have a problem that you could help them with, they won’t bother to think of you.

Personal Example: I got tired of having the large roofing companies not show up to fix my roof issues at our house in Santa Fe. So I hired an individual who repaired roofs, who ended up doing a great job. One day, I offhandedly mentioned that I needed to repair some stucco. He said, “My brother does stucco repair.” So I hired his brother as well. Further down the road, I asked his brother, “So, what do you specialize in? What kind of work do you like to do?” Turns out he’s an excellent painter, so I asked him to repaint my garage and basement area. And on it went—soon, he was also refinishing some woodwork for me. And building a “coyote” fence around my garden…and adding a flagstone path on one side of the house…

You get the idea.

Are your clients familiar with the full extent of your capabilities? Do you share examples with them about the kinds of work you are doing for other organizations?

3. Give visibility to your thought leadership. Write and publish regularly, so that your name and your content is not just visible to your prospective clients but also well-catalogued in search engines. Gaining new business from existing clients, getting enthusiastic referrals, and earning word-of-mouth praise are certainly your gold standard for business development. Yet, many clients do online research around issues of interest and also search for providers online. “Publishing” these days is a pretty broad term—it could mean a full-length article that is featured on a magazine or newspaper’s website, or it could simply be a short blog or podcast interview that you post on your own or your firm’s website.

Are you actively building your recognition in the market?

4. Put yourself at the crossroads of the marketplace. The more you are out talking to people in your market and in your field of expertise, the more you’ll have to say to the next prospect or client you call. Be like a bee or butterfly who alights on dozens of flowers, both depositing some of the pollen from the last plant they visited and also taking some of the new pollen with them, stuck to their legs, to share at the next the stopover. You never know what interesting tidbit you might pick up from a conversation, or when someone you connect with might remember you a year later and mention your name to someone else.

Are you having lots of conversations with interesting people in your field?

5. Help Clients on a Personal Level. When clients feel you’ve helped them personally as well as institutionally, they become far more likely to talk to friends and colleagues about your work and refer you to other potential clients. A personal connection creates passion and enthusiasm. Personal help can mean many things—for example:

• Providing advice/being a sounding board on career issues and opportunities.
• Introducing your client to valuable contacts and expanding their network
• Adding value around issues that are important but not a direct focus on your work, e.g., helping them to improve their team’s effectiveness, become a better communicator, build a better relationship with their own manager or boss, strengthen their leadership skills, and so on.
• Facilitating an interest they have outside of work (culture, sports, nonprofit, etc.)

Are you connecting personally with clients, helping them succeed as individual executives, and creating “personal promoters”?

6. Be generous and caring. If trust is the lubricant of relationships, generosity fuels them. Generosity is winsome, appealing, and builds trust in your character and intentions. The all-around handyman I mentioned earlier was once finishing a job at my house. I needed to move several heavy pieces of furniture out to my driveway for pickup by Goodwill. I said to him, “Do you have another 20 minutes or so to help me move this furniture? Of course we’ll add the time to your hours.” We nearly broke our backs lifting several heavy bureaus up some stairs, down another flight, and then out the front of my house. I then went to get my checkbook, and he waved his hand dismissively, saying to me, “Andrew—you’re a great customer—I’m here to help, and I won’t take any payment for moving this furniture. Forget it.” And he quickly departed.

Are you generous with your time, wisdom, and relational capital?

​Do these things regularly, and you will soon find yourself marveling at that unexpected client opportunity that seems to just fall into your lap. But this time, you’ll smile and realize it’s not just happenstance…

*******

Two Online Learning Opportunities: Building Your Clients for Life and Building Relationships that Matter.

This is a perfect time to build your skills at client development. I believe we will eventually have a resurgent economy in 2021, and there will be pent-up demand for proven products, services, and solutions. Check out these two in-depth, online courses on my Learning Academy:

​Building Your Clients for Life​

​Building Relationships that Matter ​

The post Plan for Unplannable Serendipity: Make Your Own Luck This Year appeared first on Andrew Sobel.

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 50 years. He helped hundreds of leading institutions and organizations clarify their mission and raise the funds to implement it. I’m thankful he was a friend and collaborator. Here are seven reasons Jerry was an extraordinary human being and professional: 1. Read his Thanksgiving blessing, attached. 2. He was a master of his craft–but more. He was an innovator, and brought a unique, mission- and donor-centered ethos to his work. 3. He never complained. 4. The cup wasn’t half empty or half full–it was always full. If you asked Jerry how things were going, the answer was simply, “Great.” 5. He developed a special personal style and brand years before the concept of “personal branding” become popular. 6. His life was mission- and purpose-driven. At the age of 85, every week he was still flying around the country, teaching his principles of fundraising to rapt audiences. 7. He communicated through engaging and humorous stories, and recognized their power decades before “storytelling” became the subject of countless business books. Happy Thanksgiving!

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The most common refrain I hear from client executives is a desire for more new ideas and perspectives from their service providers. In most markets, the core products and services that firms offer are nearly identical, and therefore outperforming the competition in ideas, innovation, and creativity can be a meaningful source of differentiation.

It’s hard to come up with really great ideas, however. Or is it? And do they have to be “really great”–as opposed to just thought provoking–to be useful to your clients? Let’s look at some misconceptions about creativity, the different types of ideas you can bring to your clients, and specific sources of ideas. The truth is, ideas are everywhere, and you don’t have to be a Thomas Edison or Mozart to come up with a steady stream of them for your clients.

Remember, however: The goal of idea generation for clients is two-fold. First, you are concretely trying to come up with specific ideas to help improve their business. Second, you are sharing ideas with them to engage them in a discussion about what their most important priorities are. The latter, frankly, is just as important as the former.

I. Misconceptions about Creativity and Clients

• “If I’m going to go to a client with a new idea, it needs to be really compelling and original.”Rubbish! This attitude is an excuse to avoid talking to clients and taking any risks whatsoever. One client of mine, a top investment banker, told me, “If I waited until I had a brilliant idea to go see my client the meeting would never happen.”
• “The idea better be a fairly sure bet—if it’s half-cocked I’ll look stupid and reckless.”Well, the whole point about an idea is that it’s just…an idea. You’re not making a firm recommendation, you’re provoking discussion. Through discussion you can then develop it into something more practical and implementable.
• “Some people are uniquely creative and can dream things up while sitting in their garden.”While it’s common sense that some people are naturally more creative than others, good ideas are not generated in a vacuum. As we’ll see below, ideas often derive from intimate client knowledge, careful observation of the world around you, reflection time, and a willingness to be bold with clients.
• “Clients won’t pay for ideas. Even worse, they just steal them.” This reflects what I call a “scarcity mentality.” It’s true that in general clients don’t pay directly for new ideas. They pay us for the provision of a specific product or service (which might be idea generation). But if you don’t surround your core service with creativity and innovation—if you don’t infuse your relationships with imagination—then you become a tradesman, a fungible expert for hire.

II. Different Types of Ideas

It’s useful to think about four categories of ideas:

1. Ideas to help improve an individual client executive’s performance, career advancement, and overall well-being.
2. Specific, operationally-focused ideas for improving your clients business (e.g., an idea on how to reduce costs, improve time-to-market, or increase employee retention).
3. Big-picture ideas dealing with strategy and organization (e.g., an acquisition idea, a suggestion for improving the balance sheet or knocking out a competitor).
4. Ideas which shape clients’ perspectives and understanding of the world around them (e.g., a perspective on how a new demographic cohort will impact hiring, training, and retention strategies).

Ideas can be helpful at an institutional or personal level. They can be small and specific or focused on the big-picture. They can be intended as suggestions or focused on shaping a client’s perceptions.

III. Sources of Ideas

Here is a brief list of some idea generation techniques and sources that may be helpful to you in developing your own ideas for clients. I’ve shared some of these in other articles and blogs, but they bear repeating:

1. Observation. By exercising “mindfulness”—a keen awareness of the world around you and the particular moment you are in—you can come up with lots of interesting ideas. In 1948, George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer and amateur mountaineer was hiking in the Alps. After his walk, he noticed his socks and dog were covered in burrs. Curious about how they stuck to his clothing, he examined them under a microscope and observed the tiny hooks that allowed the burrs to hang onto the fabric. In 1955, he patented Velcro, now a billion-dollar industry.
2. Analogy and metaphor. Analogies are a powerful way to create new ideas and transfer concepts from one domain to another. Charles Merrill, the founder of the modern financial behemoth Merrill Lynch (now owned by Bank of America), tapped into the power of analogy when he brought stocks and bonds to the masses. Early in his career as a banker, he helped finance several of the burgeoning retail store chains such as J. G. McCrory, which were focused on the mass market. Merrill quickly adopted this new concept of mass merchandising and used it to reconceptualize and restructure the stockbroking business—which had previously served only the very wealthy—in order to make investments accessible to the average man and woman. His slogan for Merrill Lynch became to “take Wall Street to Main Street.”
3. Suspension of Judgment. Good idea generation requires a suspension of judgment in order to allow “unrealistic” alternatives or ideas to be allowed into the discussion. Many great discoveries were either accidental or the result of “mistakes.” Marconi pursued his (ultimately) successful experiments in the belief that radio waves followed the curvature of the earth (they don’t). Penicillin and x-rays were also “mistakes,” which developed into life-saving medical breakthroughs.
4. Reflection. “I lived in solitude in the country,” said Albert Einstein, talking about the sources of his great ideas, “and noticed how the monotony of quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” Some researchers in the field of creativity, in fact, believe that insight occurs during the reflection and relaxation that follows a period of intense activity and work.
5. Getting Your Hands Dirty. The more you understand your client’s business and life, the easier it will be to come up with good ideas. This is a dilemma for professionals who work in large companies: as you become more senior in an organization, you often work less and less with clients, and when you do, you are often exposed to projects and client situations at a very big-picture level. You do less and less hands-on work with specific client issues and problems. The more you “walk the halls” and get your hands dirty, as it were, the more ideas you’ll come up with.
6. Use Your Client’s “Lens” to View the World.  Whenever I read something—an article or book—I have a nearly sub-conscious filter at work which is searching for ideas, examples, or concepts that might be useful to my clients. Here’s a small but relevant example: I read that while there are billions of stars in the universe, only 6,000 can be seen from the Earth with the naked eye. Furthermore, from any one vantage point on Earth, only 2,000 are visible. While working with a client on a teaming program, I picked up on this and made a mental note. Later, it became one of the analogies we developed in communicating the goals of the teaming program: A global, interconnected team has a far broader perspective to bring to a client, seeing, as it were, three times as many stars.
7. Develop lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. Studies of scientists who have come up with breakthrough ideas reveal an interesting phenomenon: These scientists publish far more papers than their less-creative peers. As one CEO told me, “Some of the most creative people are able to throw away the bad ideas much quicker than other people can.”

Push yourself. Set a goal to come up with 2 or 3 new ideas a quarter for each client. As we’ve seen, they don’t all have to be earth-shattering ideas. Take time to really reflect deeply on your client’s problems and issues—it will set you apart from your competition. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”

Learn More

If you’d like to learn more strategies to grow your client relationships and revenue, get a copy of my new book, It Starts with Clients: Your 100-Day Plan to Build Lifelong Relationships and Revenue. It gives you the precise strategies–and action steps–needed to master 14 essential client development challenges and grow your client base in any market conditions. You can buy it here, and also join my 100-Day Client Growth Challenge.

The post Ideas Are Everywhere and Everyone Can Come Up With Them appeared first on Andrew Sobel.

In a newsletter earlier this year, I described eight “growth principles” or strategies to grow your relationships (e.g., choose the right clients to begin with, build flagship clients, invest in agenda-setting thought leadership, etc.). In this follow up, on I’ve added to these principles and made a list of 20 different events and opportunities that can all serve to fuel relationship growth.

Opportunities that can stimulate relationship growth

1. A company crisis. A friend in need is a friend indeed, as the saying goes, and whenever there is an institutional crisis there is an opportunity to take the relationship to a new level. An earnings shortfall can lead to the wholesale sacking of professional advisors and other suppliers or it can be a chance for you to show the client how you can help them dig out of a hole.

2. A personal crisis. This could include such things as a crisis in a client’s personal life (e.g., family difficulties) but also on a professional level (e.g., uncertainty about one’s career or getting laid off). You don’t want to be intrusive in these situations, but they are an opportunity to show empathy, act as a sounding board, and to let your client know you’re there for them. 2020, certainly, has been a trying year for many.

3. A relationship crisis or client dissatisfaction. The research shows that dissatisfied clients usually just vote with their feet and walk away without saying anything. If a client expresses disappointment or displeasure, it’s a wonderful opportunity to potentially take the relationship to the next level by rising appropriately to the occasion. When this happens, there are specific steps you need to take—for example: Listening deeply without being defensive; showing you have fully understood the client’s perspective; jointly agreeing the solution; and rebuilding trust in small, daily increments.

4. A difference of opinion. How effectively and empathetically you deal with a significant difference of opinion can have a huge impact on your relationship. A difference of opinion can be a great moment to showcase your intellectual and emotional breadth. Are you able to ask thoughtful questions and listen deeply to your client’s views? Can you utilize a multiplicity of techniques to support your view and also influence your client’s position (e.g., factual argumentation versus storytelling, etc.)? Giving in too quickly and easily can give the impression you want to please your client and won’t take a stand on issues of importance. Being overly rigid and stubborn about your positions can be equally bad—after all, who wants to work with someone who is inflexible?

5. A new executive. It is typically at the beginning of an executive’s tenure in a new role that he or she is most open to both reaching for outside help and for accepting and acting on the advice they receive. If you are already working in the organization, this is a chance to be available as a resource about the culture, organization, corporate history, and so on. If not, your positioning might be one of providing fresh ideas, bringing objectivity to the situation, and not having ties to the status quo.

6. A step-change environmental event. Deregulation, new technology, an unexpected new competitor, or dramatic price fluctuations (e.g., for oil) can all trigger a stepped-up use of external advisors. This year, we have no end to the “external” crises—the Covid-19 pandemic, a fractured economy, and more. Many great companies were born during the 2008-2009 great recession, and I have no doubt that, despite the enormous challenges businesses are now facing, that the same will be true of 2020-2021.

7. A reorganization or restructuring. These types of events always create opportunities—and risks—for your client relationship. This is why “agenda setting” is so important. If you are at the front end of these conversations, and are seen as an insider who has provided input into the restructuring, the chances of you being part of the solution are much higher. If you’re among the five or ten firms which are fighting over the RFPs that emerge, you’re in a tough position. The details of the implementation of these reorganizations, in particular, are often overlooked when the overall strategy is set by the client, and this is a strong area of opportunity if you weren’t in on the ground floor of the planning.

8. By speaking truth to power . A professional who is willing to speak the truth at a key juncture—even at the risk of antagonizing someone—may just get pulled into their client’s inner circle and find the relationship elevated to a new level (or find themselves on the winning end of a large proposal pitch). One CFO I interviewed, for example, talked passionately about a particular banker who had been asked to lead many large deals for the CFO’s corporation. “He once said ‘No’ to a very large acquisition we were looking at, and had the guts to say that to the board. His firm would have reaped huge fees, but he felt it was the wrong thing to do, even though our CEO was initially very much behind the deal. That earned him a special seat at the table here.” I will often warn a prospective client about the risks of a particular program—even though it might cause them to reconsider it and not hire me—and twice I’ve had a CEO comment that “No one else has talked to us about that!”

9. When other incumbents make mistakes. Whenever there is dissatisfaction with an incumbent, it creates an opportunity. Often, it represents a chance to get your foot in the door on a small project. That’s why, even if a particular competitor of yours is well-ensconced with a potential client, it can make sense to call on them regularly and build a low-key relationship. You never know when someone will slip up or when a senior executive will decide to try someone new.

10. When there is an incumbent transition. If the relationship partner or some key team members at a competitor leave, this can also create an opening. This happens often in investment banking, and it’s not uncommon in consulting or the legal field. Again, the way you stay informed of developments like these is to have regular conversations with the client.

11. Leveraging reciprocity or balance of trade. If you work with a large organization, you may be in a position to use “balance of trade” as a strategy for growing a larger share of wallet of your client’s business. One of my clients, for example, dramatically grew its relationship with a major high-tech company on this basis. It turned out they purchased large amounts of equipment and software from the client, whereas the client used very few of their consulting services. This was brought up formally with the client’s top management, and the client agreed to give them the opportunity to be considered for new contracts and opportunities which had been previously sole-sourced to a competitor.

12. Engaging in client listening activities. There are many different opportunities and channels to get client feedback, and each one presents a slightly different opportunity to uncover information that will help advance the relationship. These include:

• Independent, institutional feedback (e.g., a formal client assessment process)
• Periodic, one-on-one conversations between the relationship manager and key client executives
• Senior management visits (e.g., your CEO meeting with the client’s CEO)
• Client surveys

13. Making targeted investments. Investments in a client relationship can take many forms, and they can often form the basis for “Agenda Setting” events that are designed to create a dialogue about the client’s key priorities. For example:

• “Deep Dives” into an issue of interest for a particular executive
• A free project
• Market research to create proprietary data and insights
• Bringing external resources to the client—e.g., a leading academic or expert in a subject of interest
• Tailored learning events for the client (seminars, workshops, training, etc.)

14. Saying “No”. Saying “No” can often become the catalyst for moving from a Steady Supplier to a Trusted Advisor relationship. This could take the form of challenging a client’s priorities, for example, or declining inappropriate work. One of my clients, when asked to do some work in an area it was not particularly strong in, referred their client to a competitor. This reinforced their trustworthiness, and it strengthened, rather than weakened, the relationship.

15. Finding a new buyer. Sometimes, a strong relationship with a c-level buyer can propel a relationship to new heights. Sometimes, however, it’s a question of finding a new and perhaps non-traditional buyer who can become your champion (e.g., someone at a relatively low level but who has budget authority, or someone in an entirely different part of the organization).

16. Creating a new relationship environment. Most client interactions occur in a formal office setting. By changing that environment, you can augment the freshness and degree of intimacy in the relationship. This idea is supported by research involving married couples: Psychologists discovered that when the couples varied their “date night” ritual and went to new places and new events—rather than the same restaurant or movie theater each week—their feelings of intimacy and closeness increased. Changing the relationship environment could mean simply taking the client out to lunch, or, at the extreme, going offsite for a couple of days to strategize and set priorities.

17. Bringing new players into the relationship. If the same relationship manager and team has been working with the client for a long time, their perspectives can become limited and their energy and enthusiasm diminished. A client of mine worked with a large Fortune 500 corporation, and for years the revenues had been steadily shrinking—despite annual assurances by the lead partner that “we have a great relationship with this client—they love us!” In fact the client had changed significantly, and a new, more diverse set of executives were now in place. In what was viewed as a somewhat wrenching and disruptive move, the firm’s leadership put in a new, younger partner to revitalize the relationship. In three years the revenues—and my client’s impact on this company—grew dramatically.

18. Taking the perspective of a competitor. If you were a competitor trying to make inroads into your relationship with the client, what would your strategy be? Where would you attack? Which issues would you try to focus on? Which executives would you target for your own relationship-building efforts? Taking just an hour or two to think this through will most likely suggest some opportunities to expand your relationship, or at a minimum, protect it from competitive incursions.

19. Proposing long-term, partnership arrangements. A trusted client partnership is a step beyond trusted advisor. It implies mutual trust, long-term collaboration, and many-to-many relationships. It can also entail structural connections that go beyond the average professional-client relationship. These could include:

• Long-term contracts which reduce risk and increase value for both sides (e.g., discounts or rebates for assured volumes of business).
• Joint intellectual capital development. This could range from co-authoring articles to jointly owning trademarks or patents for collaboratively-developed intellectual property.
• Methodology showcases. For example, companies that have implemented Palladium’s “Balanced Scorecard” approach can win “Hall of Fame” status which results in positive mutual PR and brand enhancement.
• Employee exchanges. Some law firms, for example, will lend associates to work in a client’s in-house legal department for several months.

20. Doing joint account planning. Many companies conduct account planning exercises behind closed doors, where they brainstorm which services they can sell to the client during the coming year. Best practice is to conduct this jointly with the client. It sends a powerful message to the client if you say, “We are thinking about how we can best meet your needs during the coming year and add more than our share of value. We’d like to sit down with you to better understand your goals and plans, and then discuss the areas where we jointly believe we can add the most value.”

Learn More

If you’d like to learn more strategies to grow your client relationships and revenue, get a copy of my new book, It Starts with Clients: Your 100-Day Plan to Build Lifelong Relationships and Revenue. It gives you the precise strategies–and action steps–needed to master 14 essential client development challenges and grow your client base in any market conditions. You can buy it here, and also join my 100-Day Client Growth Challenge.

The post 20 Opportunities to Grow Your Client Relationships appeared first on Andrew Sobel.

They scheduled the day and time, and my client’s CEO then asked his own CIO to get in touch with the account manager that handled the relationship for the technology firm. Over time, he told me, the service and responsiveness of the technology supplier had slowly declined. They had gotten complacent, despite enjoying a huge contract with my client.

Incredibly, even after they made several phone calls and sent emails to the supplier’s account manager, they got no response—he did not call the CIO back or otherwise respond.

In the meeting between the two CEOs, the tech firm head confidently said to my client, “So, my account executive tells me we have an ‘A’ relationship with you.”

My client looked at him grimly and replied, “Actually, we think it’s a C+ right now.” The visiting CEO’s jaw dropped. He was truly blindsided.

Fortunately, the supplier eventually fixed the relationship. But it’s a cautionary tale—this can happen to anybody. Just as a neglected house eventually falls apart, so does a client relationship that isn’t given proper attention.

​You need to carefully monitor the warning signs that a relationship is or will shortly be in danger. I call these the “lead indicators of relationship decline.” Numbers one to seven have to do with you and your management of the relationship, and eight to 11 have more to do with external circumstances whose consequences you have to manage (number 12 is sui generis). All 12 are not automatically negative indicators, but they could presage adverse impacts.

1. The relationship has stopped growing. Your measures of relationship growth ought to include some or all of the following:

• Revenue growth
• An increase in the breadth of your services/products used by the client
• A growing set of relationships (“many to many”) in the client’s organization
• More and deeper senior-level relationships
• Innovation growth (e.g., innovation in the solutions you provide the client, innovation in the way you manage the relationship, etc.)
• Growth in the impact you are having on the client’s business

Is your relationship growing, quantitatively and qualitatively?

2. You aren’t investing. Your organization has stopped investing in the relationship and is treating it like a “cash cow.” To grow, you need to invest. The profit margins produced by a large, flagship client account, however, can become addictive. I often see companies milking large accounts when they should be investing in them each year. Investments could take many forms, for example: Time and research that are put into issues of interest to the client, a small but strategic piece of work that is done on a complementary basis, support for relationship-building activities, support to have guest visits from different subject matter experts in your organization, and so on.

Are you intentionally investing in your most important clients?

3. Your relationship manager is complacent. How would you know if your relationship manager or account executive may be complacent? For example—he or she:

• Consistently tells you—with little self-examination—that the relationship is great, year after year.
• Has been managing the client relationship for many years, and doesn’t seem to have strong aspirations for it. You don’t see a high level of energy, planning, and innovation.
• Doesn’t fully understand the client’s evolving agenda of key priorities and goals, especially at the level of the individual client executives you work with.​

Is your relationship manager energized about the opportunities with their client and actively seeking to grow and improve the relationship every year? Have they developed a strong, well thought-out client plan?

4. The client isn’t highly engaged with you. You don’t see the client reaching out to you for advice and help, and drawing you into the day-to-day life of their organization. Are you invited to their internal conferences and events? Do they look for ways to showcase the impact you’re having on their business? Have they stopped communicating with you? Worse, is the client unhappy with your work and complaining about it?

Do you see evidence that the client actively engages with you/your firm?

5. You have a narrow relationship. Does this client account hang by the thread of a single relationship, or is it anchored in many-to-many relationships? If it’s a major client relationship, and you only have one really strong connection, it may be at risk.

What would happen to your business with this client if a key executive sponsor left or moved?

6. The client service team is weak or flawed. If every year you have a nagging feeling that you don’t quite have the right team serving the client, or that there are holes in the experience base of the team that you struggle to fill, you may have a serious problem.

Are you fully confident in the experience, skills, and drive of the team serving the client?

7. Lack of planning and feedback. For a major client, you need a plan to sustain and grow the relationship. You need to be getting feedback on a regular basis—feedback on each contract or project, and also annual input from the client on their perceptions of the relationship and satisfaction with your work.

Does your team develop and continually update a robust, aspirational plan for the relationship, and seek meaningful feedback?

8. There are significant executive changes. Executive turnover or changes can be an opportunity, but they can also be a threat to the relationship if you are insufficiently grounded in the client’s organization. When there are organizational changes, you need keep your client close and be on your toes.

What executive changes are happening now or may occur in the future at your client? What are your plans to deal with these and fortify your relationship against key individuals leaving?

9. The client faces strategic headwinds. If your client faces significant strategic threats, there may be a risk to your relationship (what if Blockbuster Video had been a major client of yours? In 2004 it had over 9,000 stores and $3 billion in revenue. By 2010 it was bankrupt). The ideal situation is one where the client views you as a partner in helping to address these threats and turn them into opportunities, but even then you need to be aware and cautious.

What strategic threats does your client face? Could these debilitate their business? Can you help them proactively navigate some of these threats where they may impact the areas of the business you have expertise in?

10. There is a lot of M&A activity in the sector. A merger or acquisition often results in the consolidation of suppliers and advisors. Audit firms, investment banks, consultants, law firms, technology suppliers, and many others are often casualties of M&A transactions. Another type of threat is a dissident shareholder who demands major changes that will in turn negatively affect your relationship with the client (often, this means radical cost-cutting).

Could an acquisition, merger, or hostile shareholder negatively impact your position with your client? How can you prepare for this eventuality?

11. Your client is in crisis right now. If your client is in financial trouble—either due to external shocks or a lack of leadership—your relationship will also likely be threatened. On the other hand, a great relationship can actually be forged during a crisis. Nonetheless, you must carefully take this into account in your assessment of the risks to the account.

Is your client having a financial or operational crisis? Is it temporary or one-off, or might they be in a long, downward spiral? How can you play a role in their recovery? What contingency plans should you make?

12. Detractors. If there are important executives in the client’s organization who do not like you/your firm, that can be a warning sign. In any complex organization, you will, of course, have detractors. But are the detractors growing in number, and/or do you have very senior executives who would like to see your backside? Not good.

Review your top clients. Do you see any of these signs?

*****

Two resources to help you dramatically improve your relationship-building skills and develop your clients for life

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The post 12 Indicators of Relationship Decline appeared first on Andrew Sobel.