9
O P I N I O N
Deep client engagement Friendships are not only good for the soul, they’re good for business, so make as many of them as you can if you want your firm to prosper.
P ersonal engagement with clients determines so much of a firm’s success. A client’s satisfaction with the personal relationship with you and your team affects the recommendation they will give to other clients or prospects. It affects whether or not they turn to you for additional work. It affects what they’ll say to their friends about the experience they had, and it even affects the degree to which they pay your bills on time or argue about changes to your scope of services that require additional fees.
Ed Friedrichs
you’ve been engaged to do. Start by learning what’s important to your client. Determine what will make their business perform at a higher level. Are there aspects of what you’re going to do with them that you never talked about in the interview, or wrote about in the contract, that can change their organi- zation’s life? 3)Become friends. Learn about your client’s family, likes and dislikes, fears and hobbies. Share your own. In my career, I became very close to almost every client, remaining friends long after our business had been concluded. I’m reminded of Stephen Ambrose’s book, Undaunt- ed Courage , which follows Lewis and Clark’s journals “Become friends. Learn about your client’s family, likes and dislikes, fears and hobbies. Share your own.”
Here are some recommended rules of engagement: 1)Mirror your client. Learn how they learn. Be a stu- dent of their personality traits, values, and attitudes. You don’t need to be a chameleon, adopting their mannerisms, but you do need to understand who they are and where they come from to avoid offend- ing them or getting into unnecessary arguments about things that have nothing to do with what you’re working on. Learn how they absorb information. Are they visual or verbal people? Would they rather see or be told? Do they rely heavily on the opinion or advice of oth- ers because, secretly, they have difficulty translating something they see pictorially into how they are going to experience it in real life? Field trips to, or photos of, solutions similar to what you’re present- ing can help a great deal. Do they struggle with technical information? Can you find a peer of your client, whom they trust, to endorse what you’re rec- ommending? 2)Innovate. Think beyond the scope of the work
See ED FRIEDRICHS, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER May 30, 2016, ISSUE 1154
Made with FlippingBook Annual report