In the New Year, resolve to use 11 minutes a day to seriously understand your top clients. The operative word being seriously.
Demonstrating the deepest understanding of your clients’ business is a proven method to win new work and increase client retention. Yet too often we get caught up in everyday tasks and projects. We have so many legitimate reasons to defer the investments needed to truly understand how clients think, make decisions, and where they are headed.
A consistent and systematic 11 minutes a day will transform you into a walking encyclopedia about your client; giving you the ability to approach your client and start a conversation targeted at solving their most pressing (and often undisclosed) issues.
Finding data enabling you to divine insights—and opportunities—others miss takes going beyond visiting company websites, conducting Google searches and setting up client news alerts.
- Listen in on the earnings calls of your top clients
- Read what stock analysts are predicting for your client’s company
- Scour competitor annual reports for their future strategy
These publicly available sources of information often disclose growth strategies, market challenges and financial performance. Your expertise coupled with this knowledge puts you in the unique position of answering your client’s unasked questions:
- What risks am I not considering?
- Are there unexplored opportunities?
- How can we outmaneuver the competition?
Pose the unasked question, and pose the answer with it. Your client receives no value if you think this through to the end and never share it.
And if you can’t possibly find 11 minutes to set aside for your new resolution, break it into 2 5.5-minute segments. What better way to start and end your workday than thinking about your clients’ problems—and how you can help your client solve them.
MBR/JPD
We will be discussing client service opportunities like this and more in our upcoming webinar on January 16 at Noon Eastern. You can learn more or register here.