The Hidden Laws That Build Client Relationship Success
The Hidden Laws That Build Client Relationship Success
by Dan Capobianco
In today’s fast paced business world there are many elements that are forgotten when thinking about how to continuously work at building stronger client relationships.
Trust
A handshake deal still goes along way with people. In this day in age it’s unfortunate that the simple acknowledgement of a handshake and commitment is superseded to the commercial elements in a business relationship. Many clients value the fact that you can commercially align and at the same time be a person of your word to the commitments you make and deliver. Trust is not an old friend, it’s been refreshed in this modern age to a more sophisticated way of building a stronger relationship with the simple form of a handshake.
Ethics
Ethical business interactions requires each person or group in relationship to act and speak with integrity to several ethical core values:
- Personal responsibility and accountability
- Respect
- Care and value for the well-being of the other as much as of self
- Justice/Fairness
- Integrity
- Collaboration
We as business professional seek in this modern age of fast paced environments, elements that we can latch on to and create environments that has many of the attributes listed above. As business partnerships get stronger and competition is at the for-front of every company, our clients seek a business interaction that ethical in nature. The old way of thinking has not gone away, rather it’s modernized itself to be more progressive with the ability to collaborate and drive ethics to a higher degree in relationship management.
Outcomes
It’s important we define with clients the difference between outputs and outcomes, as they have two separate meanings. Our fast paced business world has a tendency to focus on what is included in the outputs such as “what we do or what did we reach as a metric”. While in building a stronger client relationship the real managing of the partnership comes with the right Outcomes the client wants to achieve. This element of the unknown could potentially make us anxious in relationship building, it’s because what our clients really want to see is “What difference did we make on the OUTCOME.
Relationships today are filled with data and the result it drives. In order to strengthen your relationship, you need plan and prepare yourself with the right analytics to manage social styles of your clients, the buying behavior in the relationship and the outcomes they are looking to achieve. Working on this is a journey and requires the right level of discipline in order to achieve short, medium and long term goals when managing a relationship and your actions.