SUMMARY
Your relationship with a client is as important as having a service to provide a client. Without one, you’ll never survive the stormy waters of the business environment. If you’re a professional service provider (IT consultant, CPA, attorney, marketing or branding expert, etc.), then your whole business is based on relationships. Yes, you have to be good at what you do, but you must be great at interacting, engaging, nurturing, and connecting with people. The ability to do so makes you either a tremendously valuable asset to your firm and/or a powerful threat to your business’s competition. To that end, this book is dedicated to helping you initiate, build, and maintain a relationship with clients.
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Don’t have the time to delve deep into the aspects of building and maintaining business relationships, check out the accompanying book of business quotes taken from Converting Customers to Clients. Great for that business owner who think s/he doesn’t have enough time to read a whole book. Check it out.
MORE ABOUT CONVERTING CUSTOMERS TO CLIENTS
CONVERTING CUSTOMERS TO CLIENTS, published in June, 2013, discusses various ways a business person can initiate, build, and maintain strong business relationships. As a small business owner for a decade, Chris was able to work with many business owners. He was able to connect to them and develop strong relationships. When he sold his business in 2012, he wrote down the philosophies he used to make him successful. Additionally, he incorporated the hundreds of conversations he had with other business owners about the same topic. As a result, Chris has developed a winning philosophy of building rapport with new customers, stabilizing current relationships, and maintaining them far into the future. In Converting Customers to Clients, he shares those ideas with you, so you can participate in proven ways of building relationships with clients.
WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?
(Excerpt) Originally, this book was aimed at the Information Technology industry because that’s where my experience showed the biggest need for assistance in turning customers into fully humanized clients. However, after speaking with business owners in various professional service industries, I found a common desire for these providers to build relationships with their customers. I noticed a trend among the providers, consumers, and even advertisers for human connection, authentic interaction, and genuine exchanges. Yet more and more our society (through technological advances and economic limitations) is moving further away from this model; these advances and limitations are moving us away from our most basic commonality—being human.
So who should read this book?
Sole Proprietors. The sole proprietor is usually the entrepreneur and the technician. S/He is the subject matter expert and the business owner. S/He is the person running the business and the one performing the expert work for which the business is being paid. Without the sole proprietor, the company makes no money. The system of business is totally dependent on her/him.
Business Owners. These are men and women who own a business but by and large do not go out on calls to clients’ offices and/or homes. Maybe they go on sales calls, but they don’t perform the daily technical functions of their provided service. They have staff who interact regularly with clients.
Technicians/Staff. Wouldn’t it be great if every client you interacted with called your business and asked for you specifically? Maybe it occurs occasionally, but what if you could hone your people skills (your soft skills) and increase the number of clients who call and only want you to service their account? Your supervisor would take notice. I think it would put you on the fast track to better company exposure— promotion, increased salary, and/or more prestigious clients! Apply as many of these principles as you can, and you’ll set yourself apart from your colleagues and/or your competition.
Anyone who manages or works inside a professional service business. This book isn’t really written for the sandwich shop chains or the convenience store chains where customers are interchangeable. Although, it could help them as well. No, it’s written for the professional service provider who desires to understand the criticality of repeat business, imperativeness of service, and, most assuredly, the importance of the client.
Believers in Relationships. Relationships branch out from every part of our lives. Some start through personal means, others business, while many are formed out of convenience, necessity, or other serendipitous methods. In all of these types of relationships, the parties involved must work together to make them succeed. Additionally, not everyone is proficient at relationships. For example, some people may be wonderful relationship partners personally but not in a business setting. Whatever your natural inclination toward relationships, this book can assist you in (1.) making your current ones stronger or (2.) helping you start new ones.
(For the full excerpt of Who Should Read This Book, click here to view/download the PDF.)
To purchase the eBook for Amazon, click here. To purchase the book in paperback, go to: click here.
INTRODUCTION
(Excerpt) Your relationship with a client is as important as having a service to provide a client. Without one, you’ll never survive the stormy waters of the small and medium business environment. I owned an IT consulting company in Florida for almost a decade. During that time, I was lucky enough to build relationships with the majority of my clients. I never claimed to be the best IT technician in my geographic region, but I think I was the best at building relationships.
I have listened to dozens of clients negatively describe their past experiences with other IT technicians, and each experience confounded me. I never have, and still don’t, understand how independent IT consultants expect to stay in business and keep clients without providing premier service and building relationships. The two go hand-in-hand. One without the other doesn’t work, yet so many businesses consistently either don’t relate well with their clients or they provide terrible customer service. Worse, they don’t do either well. I realized, by listening to those described experiences, how I could set myself apart from my competition. I continued to learn my trade and develop what I believed to be the best practices for building relationships with my clients. And, it worked! I have many relationships that are ongoing even though I have sold that business, which is something I am very proud to say.
If you’re a professional service provider (IT consultant, CPA, attorney, marketing or branding expert, etc.), then your whole business is based on relationships. To that end, this book is dedicated to helping you initiate, build, and maintain a relationship with your clients. Yes, you have to be good at what you do, but you must be great at interacting, engaging, nurturing, and connecting with people. The ability to do so makes you either a tremendously valuable asset to your firm and/or a powerful threat to your business’s competition.
Many professional service providers have notorious reputations/stereotypes for not being able to connect with people, not being able to communicate well with people, and not being able to ease people’s concerns about their respective troubles. So, for the few who have the natural ability to connect with people and build relationships, congratulations. For the rest of you, this book will help.
(For the PDF version of this excerpt, click here to view/download.)
To purchase the eBook for Amazon, click here. To purchase the book in paperback, go to: click here.
WHAT MAKES A RELATIONSHIP?
(Except) It’s generally accepted that relationships are founded in the following characteristics:
- Honesty
- Communication
- Care
- Respect
- Trust
- Commitment
Honest Communication leads to Caring and Respectful Trust, which then culminates in Commitment of service quality (on your part) and of continued service contracting (on your client’s part). Therefore, every act of service quality must be founded in honesty, open communication, care, respect, trust, and commitment. Every interaction—every phone call, email, text, face-to-face occurrence (be it social or professional), invoice, report, social media post, every piece of marketing material, and even every word-of-mouth comment people make about you when you’re not even present—needs to contain these six elements of relationships.
It may seem daunting, and I don’t like using absolute words, like “every” or “always” or “never” or “none.” I hesitate to use them because no one can do any one thing “always” or “never” (Oops, I did it!). How can you foster this type of consistency?
By changing.
Read the Core Principles in this book. I believe if you change how you view your job, yourself, and your clients, then you will change your understanding of how each is connected to the other; then the subsequent principles, philosophies, and ideas in the book should be easy to implement. Plus, you don’t have to implement every idea in the book and certainly not all at once. The more you can implement, the better your relationships will mature. Find and focus on the ones that work best for your personality. Start by implementing ten. Use them in the field with your clients and monitor the progress. Then implement ten more. Keep that progression until you have all these philosophies as part of your professional personality.
Good luck!
(For the PDF version of this excerpt, click here to view/download.)
To purchase the eBook for Amazon, click here. To purchase the book in paperback, go to: click here.
THE CORE PRINCIPLES
(Excerpt) This section of Core Principles details the philosophies which allow the remainder of the book to work. Without fully integrating these ideas into your thoughts, lexicon, belief system, heart, and soul, you won’t authentically adopt the methods illustrated herein. The only way to build or strengthen business relationships is through authentic, honest interactions. These Core Principles are meant to change your perspective on interacting with clients. They are the foundation of initiating your relationships, as well as maintaining them for a long time to come.
(For the PDF version of this excerpt, click here to view/download.)
To purchase the eBook for Amazon, click here. To purchase the book in paperback, go to: click here.
CORE PRINCIPLE: WORK ETHIC
(Excerpt) If your client perceives a positive impression of you from your physical appearance and provides you the opportunity to perform your professional service, then you have passed the first impression test. You have been granted the ability to (1.) prove your client’s impression correct (that you’re a fine, upstanding member of society who can be looked upon as a professional resource) or (2.) prove your client’s impression wrong (that, despite how professional you appear, you are not very good at your job).
To succeed in creating relationships with your clients, you must perform the functions of your duties comprehensively, authoritatively, and with your client’s best interest at the heart of your every task. This section (and book) cannot cover every aspect of every industry’s job duties. It does attempt to point out very specific steps you can take in order to create the highest percentage of successful opportunities to facilitate the initiation, building, and maintenance of client relationships. Implement the following work practices and ideas into your overall perspective, and they will help you earn and keep client relationships.
(For the PDF version of this excerpt, click here to view/download.)
To purchase the eBook for Amazon, click here. To purchase the book in paperback, go to: click here.
CORE PRINCIPLE: APPEARANCE
(Excerpt) If you’re the book that’s judged by your cover (Appearance), then the topics in this section are your book’s contents. Appearances don’t tell the whole story, but they are accompanied and furthered by your behavior. Business professionals who strive to create and maintain client relationships have to continually impress their clients with loyalty, commitment, thoughtfulness, and service, which are four things most companies and technicians can do. That’s why this section is so important. It gets to the human side of doing business, which is something not most companies and technicians can do. Conducting yourself in the ways outlined herein can win you honest and genuine clients for years. Remember, these topics don’t have much to do with your professional skills; they have to do with your ability to connect with people, which is the foundation of every relationship.
(For the PDF version of this excerpt, click here to view/download.)
To purchase the eBook for Amazon, click here. To purchase the book in paperback, go to: click here.
CORE PRINCIPLE: INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
(Excerpt) If you’re the book that’s judged by your cover (Appearance), then the topics in this section are your book’s contents. Appearances don’t tell the whole story, but they are accompanied and furthered by your behavior. Business professionals who strive to create and maintain client relationships have to continually impress their clients with loyalty, commitment, thoughtfulness, and service, which are four things most companies and technicians can do. That’s why this section is so important. It gets to the human side of doing business, which is something not most companies and technicians can do. Conducting yourself in the ways outlined herein can win you honest and genuine clients for years. Remember, these topics don’t have much to do with your professional skills; they have to do with your ability to connect with people, which is the foundation of every relationship.
(For the PDF version of this excerpt, click here to view/download.)
To purchase the eBook for Amazon, click here. To purchase the book in paperback, go to: click here.