Fire-Proof Your Client Relationships

By Carroll C. Conklin

The potential for losing a valued account is in direct proportion to the gap between what a service provider most often thinks about and what the client most often thinks about.

What do most service providers think about? Doing the job right. Solving the clients’ problems. Providing an appropriate solution within the best of their abilities.

So what’s wrong with any of that? Isn’t that what a service provider is supposed to be thinking about?

That would be fine and sufficient if your clients were thinking about the same thing. They aren’t. Or if your clients’ highest priority was your performance in meeting their needs. It isn’t.

What do most clients think about? Themselves. It’s not the same thing as thinking about getting their problems solved. In fact, they don’t want to think about the problem that needs to be solved. They wish they never had to think about it at all.

If you focus on their problems and how to solve them, and even solve them with unparalleled efficiency, the best you can expect long-term from that client relationship is eventually to be fired.

How to Guarantee You’ll Be Fired.

It’s very simple. If all you do is what is needed and do it as promised, consistently, chances are that eventually you will be fired.

If you’ve been in a service business for any time at all, you have experienced this. It’s the client who decides that it is time for a change, and the reason has nothing to do with your performance in terms of solving the client’s problems.

Maybe there is a management change, and the new management wants to go with someone they are more “comfortable” with. Or they want to sweep away any vestiges of the old regime, and that includes your firm. Or they believe that somewhere out there is a service provider who can deliver more than your firm has been doing, even if the client’s inefficiencies have been the primary reason your firm hasn’t done more—or been allowed to do more.

Or they are just looking for a way to get the services your firm has been providing at a better price. (Translation: they didn’t see enough value in the services you provided.)

Regardless of the reason (or excuse), the real motivation for replacing you is this: doing the job right just wasn’t enough. It never is, even if you should have the “metrics” to prove that the client is better off now than before hiring you. It’s not logical. It’s not fair.

It is, however, very predictable. And almost always avoidable.

How to “Fire-Proof” Your Client Relationships.

It can be done. But not by striving to do what you do better.

Clients hire and fire based on what they know best: how they feel about you. If they believe that your firm is more interested in the work than it is in how they feel, they will eventually replace you. If they believe that their feelings are less important to your firm than your ability to get billable work out of them, they will eventually replace you, no matter how talented you are or how effective you have been.

They aren’t qualified to know how good you really are at what you do. They are qualified to know how they feel about working with you.

Quite simply, if you make them feel important—consistently—they will find every reason to stay with you, even when you occasionally fall short on a promise. If they don’t feel important around you, they’ll find every reason to replace you.

When you consistently make clients feel important through appreciation, enthusiasm and communication, you’ll discover an entirely new working relationship with them. They will be less hands-on, less interfering, less judgmental. They will look to you for guidance and not simply immediate tactical solutions. They will let you perform up to your capabilities, and invite you to do more for them.

Focus on the clients first, and then the work: that’s the formula for “fire-proofing” your business relationships. And the irony of this is that the more you focus on the client as a person who deserves to feel important consistently, the easier it will be to do what you do best: solve his problems without compromising your expertise and capabilities.