Andrew Sobel is the leading authority on the strategies and skills required to create consistent revenue growth through lifelong client loyalty. He is the most widely published author in the world on this topic, having written or co-authored eight acclaimed books on building clients for life, including the international bestsellers Power Questions and Clients for Life, which have been translated into 18 languages. He has also published over 170 articles and contributed chapters to four books on leadership, strategy, and marketing.
Andrew's Client Relationships Re-Imagined® programs have helped over 40,000 professionals in 53 countries improve the depth and breadth of their client relationships. His clients have included leading public companies such as Citigroup, Cognizant, Hess, and Lloyds Banking Group; and also many privately held professional service firms, including Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Andrew spent 15 years at Gemini Consulting, where he was a Country Chief Executive Officer, and for the last 18 years has run his own international consulting firm, Andrew Sobel Advisors.
ET: As the leading authority on the subject of client relationships, with over 30 years of experience in advising firms across the globe, what are the keys to building long term relationships with clients and customers?
AS: First, we have to recognize that there are a number of trends making it tougher than ever to build strong client relationships. These include:
- Client demands for more value in their relationships with external providers.
- Increased executive sophistication and information transparency.
- The growing use of procurement to buy, not just products, but also to purchase intangible services.
- More restricted, limited executive access. Everyone wants to meet with the c-suite, and they have less time than ever to spare.
- Competitive Expansion. The same attractive markets are being targeted by a growing list of competitors.
- Consolidation. Corporate clients are dramatically consolidating their use of external service providers and advisors.
Yet, notwithstanding these powerful trends, client relationships are more important than ever to success. Client executives still gravitate towards external suppliers and service providers they know and trust. They stick with partners who have proven their ability to deliver.
There are four especially important things you need to do to build your clients for life.
First, you have to add value very early on in the sales process. It used to be that you built a relationship so you could have the chance to add value. Now you have to add value to earn the right to build a relationship. The ability to immediately share best practices, describe how other clients have solved the same problem, describe solutions that can work rapidly, and have a point of view about the client's issues is critical. Then, you have to continue earning the client's loyalty by adding more value-year in, year out.
Second, you have to layer trusted advisor skills around your core expertise. It's essential to be a deep expert-but expertise just gets you in the door. Clients hire experts, but they tend to keep advisors who have broader skills and can show how they are enabling the client's most important business goals.
Third, you need to be a proactive agenda setter. This means learning more than your competition about your client's priorities and needs, and proactively engaging them with ideas and points of view about how to solve those issues.
Fourth, you have to build personal relationships. That doesn't mean becoming your client's friend-it means getting to know them as a person. Remember, we don't root for someone until we feel a personal, emotional connection to them! The real, deep loyalty comes not just from doing a great job for the client but also from creating that personal connection.
ET: Can you say more about the "mind-set shift" from the expert to the advisor, which is needed to build clients for life? What exactly is this, and why can thinking like an expert be a barrier to building strong relationships?
AS: The first step to building clients for life is a mind-set change. Most professionals are subject matter experts-as they must be. But that deep, narrow expertise can become a major barrier to building great client relationships. Experts often become myopic and cannot see the forest for the trees. They focus on their own solutions and expertise at the expense of building a deep understanding of the client's issues. They often burrow so deeply into their own specialty that they are unable to see the broader context of the client's business.
The American President Harry Truman once said, "An expert is a fellow who's afraid to learn anything new, because then he wouldn't be an expert anymore." This hints at the narrow mind-set of the subject matter experts. And the famous Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzucki wrote, "In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's, there are few." When you have the advisor mind-set you see many possibilities.
Here are some of the differences:
- Experts tell, advisors ask great questions and listen.
- Experts are specialists, advisors are "deep generalists" who have both deep expertise and broader business knowledge.
- Experts are for hire, advisors are selective. They are willing to say "no" and push back.
- Experts have professional credibility, advisors build deep, personal trust.
- Experts are reactive, advisors are proactive agenda setters.
- Experts sell, advisors create an eager buyer.
ET: What are the benefits of long term relationships? Are there any risks, and if so how should firms overcome these?
AS: Long-term relationships reduce risk for both the provider and the client. Because you know each other well and trust each other, you can work together very efficiently and with little, if any, friction. In a long-term relationship, your sales costs as a percentage of revenue go way down. Many studies show that large, stable relationships are more profitable.
Long-term clients can also be a source of important innovation. A client who trusts you may very well let you do something for them that-if they didn't already know you-they wouldn't normally hire you for. You can stretch yourself in these types of relationships. Many companies in fact develop some of their most innovative products and services in the context of their most trusted relationships.
There are some risks, of course. You can become over-reliant on a few, large clients-and if one of them cuts their business with you, it can be devastating. You can also get stuck in long-term arrangements at prices that are too low-it may very well be that you are charging newer clients and customers higher prices. Finally, both you and the client can become complacent and stop pushing each other to improve.
ET: You talk about evolving through six levels of professional relationships. What are these?
AS: Client relationships evolve, and in my research I've identified six specific levels. The first two levels are pre-client.
Level one is simply a Contact. This is the starting point. We meet someone, have a brief conversation, and exchange business cards. The individual is primarily just a name in our contact database.
Level two is an Acquaintance. These are contacts whom we have gotten to know a bit better, or friends we have carried with us through the different stages of our lives. We know something about each other, and may have actually spent a fair amount of time together; but the individual has never become a client.
At level three you have a Client. Usually you are hired, initially, in a narrow, expert role. The client has a problem they want solved, and you have the specific knowledge and experience to deal with it. Almost all relationships begin in this way. At this point, the trust and mutual understanding that enable a relationship to deepen simply have not developed yet.
If you do a good job on the first engagement or transaction, you will probably be asked to do some follow-on work, and you will start to build a relationship. The relationship may broaden and you may become a Regular Supplier. Don't kid yourself, however-you're still in "request-for-proposal territory," just as you were when you were a solitary expert for hire. You are by no means part of this client's inner circle; you're more like a contractor who is managing many tradesmen or experts.
Some professionals are able to move up to level five, which is Trusted Advisor. You earn this coveted role by demonstrating a series of essential qualities that set you apart from the expert for hire or vendor. These include things like personal trustworthiness, independence, judgment, big-picture thinking, empathy, and others. You show the client that you can put your expertise in the context of their broader business. You show that you can be a proactive agenda setter. You get to know the client as a person.
There's yet a sixth level above Trusted Advisor, however, which I call Trusted Partner. At this stage you've built a firm-to-firm relationship-you've institutionalized it and built many-to-many relationships. You're providing a broad range of products or services. For a larger company, this is the ultimate goal: A trusted, institutional relationship that endures beyond any single individual's career. At this level, you're selling what the firm can deliver, not just what the individual relationship manager knows how to sell.
ET: Your book, 'Power Questions' is a global best-seller. What are 'Power Questions'? Can you recommend some to break the ice and create new relationships?
AS: I was once interviewing the CEO of a major US company about his most trusted advisors. He said to me, "When a potential service provider-a banker, consultant, or other type of vendor-comes into my office to pitch me on something, I can always tell how experienced and intelligent they are by the quality of the questions they ask." I've heard this same message from hundreds of top executives.
In fact, our greatest thinkers-scientists, artists, writers-have always been more focused on asking the right questions than having easy answers. The great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso was once asked about the new mainframe computers that came out in the 1960s. He told the journalist, "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
Power questions are open-ended. They help you understand a person's highest-level goals. Sometimes this is a simple "Why" question: "Why do you want to do that?" (or, "Why now?") can often uncover the driving motivation behind a proposed action.
They can help focus the conversation on the really important issues. For example, you might say to someone, "We've got a half hour this morning. From your perspective, what's the most important issue we should be discussing?" (or, "For you, what's the most valuable way to spend this time together?").
A power question can create engagement through self-reflection and self-assessment. So I might ask a client, "How would you evaluate your progress so far? What's gone well, and what are you concerned about?"
Other types of questions can build deep personal knowledge. For example, I love asking someone "How did you get your start?" I was once introduced to a CEO during an awards dinner in New York City. My host left us standing together, holding our glasses of wine. I knew nothing about the CEO's business. But I did know he was an immigrant. So I just turned to him and said, "So, how did you get your start? How did a young man from a small town in Latin America end up in the C-Suite here in New York?" He smiled, and told me his entire life story. We ended up talking for nearly 30 minutes, and later stayed in touch.
Good Power Questions also touch on the emotions, not just the analytical brain. So for example, you could ask a client "What are your top three priorities this year?" Or, you might ask, "As you look at all of your initiatives in the company, what are you personally most excited and passionate about?" You'll get a very different response! Other personal questions could be about dreams, aspirations, legacy, and so on.
Interestingly, Power Questions has hit a real nerve. It's become my bestselling book, and it has now been translated into 18 languages, which is almost unheard of for a business book!
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