How We Roll
Amanda Evans
There’s no formula for building strong relationships with clients. It isn’t done with chatbots, AI or virtual assistants. Quality client-agency relationships develop over time and usually alongside strategic business wins.
While relationship-building starts during the sales stage, it takes significant form after working alongside a client over time toward pre-defined goals. Strong relationships build gradually as trust and respect grow through hard work and results.
We take great pride in our numerous client relationships, legacy and new. In a highly competitive business landscape, our results help differentiate us from our competitors. But, strong client-agency partnerships make those results possible.
Developing effective engagements doesn’t happen overnight. Like any good relationship, it takes work. It’s demonstrating responsiveness, research and respect that makes the difference.
From initial sale to service renewal, responsiveness sets the tone during any stage in the business relationship. A lack of responsiveness implies one of only two things: a lack of care or a lack of time.
Neither possibility engenders trust and confidence personally or professionally.
We usually hire the first plumber that answers the phone. And despite not every business decision having quite the urgency of a plumbing issue, we tend to appreciate and respect responsiveness. In fact, most of us expect it at a minimum.
Aim to be as responsive as you’d be if you were the plumber and if the plumbing issue belonged to someone close to you. And then hold on to this tenet to acquire the client and to keep the client!
In a world filled with so much hand-waving and misinformation, research and expertise can make all the difference in succeeding on a client’s behalf. Understanding their mission, vision and how they make money is the first step to working as their consultant and guiding them through their industry and competition.
Ample research conducted about a client and their industry provides insight into what drives a compelling return on investment. Every consultant enters a business relationship at a tremendous disadvantage, tasked with consulting a group of people that understand their own business better than the consultant. Only research can close that gap.
Ensuring strategies and recommendations are founded upon careful research and consideration eliminates doubt in whether initiatives are based on anything but research and expertise.
Not only can research close the expertise gap, but it goes a long way toward building rapport and respect with clients who know worthy recommendations and strategies make the cut. Clients welcome researched ideas far more than they do whimsical ones.
Most people prefer that their plumber carefully fix the actual problem.
My new book, “Average is Losing” is finally here! I created this playbook to help savvy advertisers close the gap between winning and run-of-the-mill paid advertising campaigns.
It’s filled to the brim with the latest strategies, tactics and tips our Closed Loop experts use to help our clients seek exponential growth.
Are you ready to rise above average campaign performance? Start your business on the path to PPC domination today!
– Lance Loveday
