Client Relationship

How would you rate the quality of the relationship between your business and your clients? Do you really know, or are you assuming that with no negative feedback landing in your mail box or on your desk, everything is just fine – the clients are happy, the relationship is strong and they will be signing on the dotted line again next year, hopefully with more business.

The relationship between any business and its clients is based on a hard-headed, carefully constructed commercial arrangement to achieve agreed specific and measurable results. But the fact is that day to day, week to week, it comes right down to the working relationship between two or more key players from each side. Human relationships can become fragile and difficult for lots of reasons, from a genuine misunderstanding or a missed email to a ‘bad day at the office’. And the chances are that you will be the last to know when things are going wrong. And when you do, how much expensive senior client entertainment will it take to repair the damage? And will it last?

While your own client audits, if you do them, may go some way to monitor how things are going, it takes a robust, professional and neutral approach to give you a clear and ‘no holds barred’ assessment of just what your clients think of your business and whether this is a lasting mutually fulfilling relationship or a short, difficult affair. And that, in part, is what I do…