Making Your Clients Love You

Making Your Clients Love YouA good, trusting relationship with yourclients—whether in-house or external—caninspire higher quality work, defuse argumentsabout costs, and overcome problems whensomething goes awry.Together we’ll look at ways firm leaders,project managers, and creative staffers canstrengthen their client relationships, including:Communicating the value of what your groupbrings to your clientHow to define success for a projectLiving the brand and getting to know the endcustomerBuilding a personal relationship with yourclientsHow to listen.

Making Your Clients Love You

Learn the secrets of creatinglong-term, trusting clientrelationships. Whetheryou're a freelancer orrunning a design firm or adagency, you'll pick uppractical advice on how todefuse conflicts,communicate the value ofyour services, and pave theway for better work.

Client love

Assignment

Introduce your selves

Interview notes

Preparation

Best chapter

The professionals

Client panel

Disappointment

Clients

NegotiationClients

NegotiationClients Strategy

“Triple Check” and “No Check”

Subtle signals

Ad agency

Design agency

Taking notes?

Those little nuggets

DesignStrategy PrintingResearch Production

DesignStrategy PrintingResearch Production

Trust

Rehearsals

Smoothing out the bumps

Client panel

“Don’t try to sellme anything”

“Give me anoverview so Ican get up to

speed quickly”

“Manage themeeting”

“How about something positive?”

“We changedagencies

because thenew guys knewmore about usthan we knew

our selves”

“I had an AEonce that was a

masterorganizer”

“He was at hisbest whenproblems

happened”

Mr. Insider

Dangerous distraction

From project to sales

Agency circle of life

What am I selling?

What am I selling? Myself

The New Business TeamThe heartbeat of the agency is new business.Targeting, planning the chase, the win. Thepower of it can be intoxicating.The best, the brightest, the most experiencedare on the team. They work as a group at thefastest pace in the agency addressing clientmarketing problems on the fly in a life anddeath competitive environment.They know how to translate the agencies pastexperience into relevant stories that captivateprospective clients. And the winners are very,very good indeed.Those who get ahead fastest in the agency doso by attaching themselves to the newbusiness team.I recommend doing anything to get on the teamand learning from the best.

Exercise 1List your findings