Insights

Your client is someone else’s prospect

Sometimes we might forget our client has a choice and can choose to go elsewhere to another agency. I wonder if this is more likely the longer we work with a client? Are you still delivering your best work? Does your client see your work as fresh and the best they can buy? Could they do better elsewhere? Is your client delighted with your work? Does the client still feel loved by you?

The challenge is that over time it’s easy to move to a ‘business as usual’ mode with our clients. We deliver everything we are asked to deliver, but is that sufficient? This can be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as complacency by your client. This can become more likely to be a problem when one of five different triggers happen.

• Your client’s business experiences a downturn
• The overall economy contracts
• A new senior person joins your client’s organisation
• Your client is overtaken by a competitor
• Your client’s company is acquired by a bigger business or organisation.

In each case the spotlight will probably fall on your agency/business and senior clients will question if they could do better elsewhere. They will be looking at a whole range of different options they could choose to improve the situation. Could they get a ‘bigger bang for their buck’? Should they spend their money differently?

Could your client do better?

How can you safeguard against losing your client?

1. Make sure you are measuring and tracking the impact of your work on the client’s business. (I know it’s hard to measure some types of work but it’s vital to find metrics that matter to the client)
2. How well connected are you to the senior decision makers within your client’s organisation? Are you having reasonably regular conversations with those decision makers? Ideally face to face.
3. Are you being proactive and showing your insights and thinking over and above your client’s immediate requirements?
4. Can the client see your energy, enthusiasm and curiosity for their business?

It’s so easy to assume our business with our clients will remain the same or grow. Hopefully it will continue… but only if you take steps to secure those clients.

Should the worst happen, and you do lose your client, how dependent are you on their business? Ideally no client bigger than 12-15% of your business.