How do you create lasting relationship with clients who buys your professional skills? Here's some learnings to take away.
Backround intel: Know the company, people, current methods, media investment model, internal capabilities, market situation and direction, clients emphasis in general.
Get engaged: Know customers personality, listen, listen, ask questions and listen! Adapt customers style and mindset, create business relevance by sparring and show that you have more to offer than just a standard idea or model.
Move around: Get to know clients internal decision makers, make more questions and adapt their agenda. At best you can join their agendas together and create more meaningful learning space and synergy.
Become trusted: Next round of discussion is about opportunities, joint discussion of how to make most out co-operation. Discussion can be directed with research, case studies and success stories. In the end you should have a clear offer to be delivered for the customer. Set next appointment.
Make proposal: Connect proposal to everything you have found out. Make proposal for a process, not a single shot. Process enable more face time and result real co-creation. Close the deal.
Create scalability: The key people who hold most insights must be constantly on the move. You need other people who are always available and make certain that there is reaction capability. Expand trust by introducing new people who hold different knowledge than you do. This is the only way to scale the relationship wider and deeper. Make small projects to show your capability and scale them bigger in to major client relationship
Stay in touch: Call and ask how’s everything going. Meet clients in order to keep things going and growing.
CARDINAL RULE: Only propose something that you would do your self and what you truly believe in. This business is about TRUST. Honesty pays back. Professional is as good as his word.
What we believe in is co-operation that is almost symbiotic. This is actually how we have trained our clients sales teams to operate. This is also what we believe in our selves. The external insights on the business and the internal knowledge of the current operation enable business design which takes away blind spots and makes it possible to break status quo in the market. Creation of NEW business is only possible when you change your perseption of the market and the company. Create customer insight that reveal customers sacrifices in their choices and ways of creating long lasting and valuable customer relationships. What ever you suggest, it must pay off for the client.
There is no free consulting. There's only creation of trust and relationship. Each encounter with the client should add relationship capital. Instead of doing one shots, the business comes from co-creation and learning together. External professionals value increase when he has knowledge about the client corporation mindset and still keeps the distance that enable avoiding the blindspots of the internal management. The best possible ROI for the client is an outcome of such a relationship. It's also the best place to be in for the professional him self.
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