Contents
- What these lessons are based on
- Make the value of your work visible
- Take work off the client’s plate
- Bring ideas before you’re asked
- Turn feedback into concrete change
- Make sure the feedback was understood correctly
- Hear from the people who decide whether the partnership continues
- Leaders with a working process
What these lessons are based on
The client-side decision makers we interviewed described IT and marketing services partnerships they had ended or deliberately scaled back. Along the way, they compared them with partners they worked well with and wanted to keep. All of them used several partners at once and could tell which ways of working suited them and earned their trust. Sometimes they already knew which partner they could move the work to if needed.
So the lessons draw both on what went wrong and on what clients valued in the partners they kept.
We have also included what professional services leaders told us about client relationships that work well. The interviews revealed another important point: clients didn’t switch partners after the first problem. They gave feedback and tried to fix things together with the partner. That gave the partner time, and a chance, to respond.
“These can almost always be won back. It depends entirely on how the agency itself reacts.”
In Bain’s research, clients themselves rated their suppliers’ expertise and responsiveness, so what mattered was what the client noticed. In the meta-analysis by Palmatier and colleagues, communication was, alongside expertise, the most effective way to build a client relationship. In our own interviews, too, clients began to doubt the value of a partnership when they couldn’t see what the partner was doing. Expertise and fast responses strengthen a client relationship only when the client can see them.
Make the value of your work visible
Clients judged a partnership as a whole: what it delivered relative to its price, and relative to how much of their own time it took. When clients couldn’t see what the partner was doing, they began to wonder whether the work matched what they were paying for. This could happen even when the work itself was fine.
“If no reports or active suggestions for changes come from them, just ‘everything’s fine’, it feels like they’re not doing anything for us.”
“Our responsibility is tied to the business. The money we invest in marketing has to pay back.”
Expectations set at the start mattered too. One decision maker described how disappointment builds when the picture painted during planning is bigger than the result:
“If during planning we get the impression that we’ll get more out of a project than we actually do, it can lead to longer-term disappointment, especially if it keeps happening.”
Other research has seen this too
Bain & Company asked more than 2,300 corporate decision makers in two industries how their suppliers performed on different elements of value. In both industries, the strongest predictors of loyalty were product quality, expertise and responsiveness. The results were based on the decision makers’ own assessments, in other words the value they felt they received from their suppliers (Almquist, Cleghorn & Sherer: The B2B Elements of Value, Harvard Business Review, 2018).
Take work off the client’s plate
Clients bought expertise so they wouldn’t have to do the work themselves. Value dropped when they had to chase status updates, repeat instructions or coordinate the partner’s work. What they valued was a partner who runs its own part of the work.
“A partner has to be self-directed and good at running the project, because our people can’t spend time on it.”
“The project manager is the most important person at the agency for me. One person who holds all the threads, who answers for things and knows what needs to get done.”
One small habit made a big difference: the counter-brief. When the partner explains in its own words how it understood the client’s need, misunderstandings surface before they become expensive to fix.
“We usually hope the agency comes back with a counter-brief. Sometimes an agency has started working straight after the brief and spent two weeks doing it wrong.”
Staff changes on the partner’s side also created extra work for the client, because new people had to learn the client’s business and goals.
“Onboarding new people is a lot of work for us, but the agency has to do it too.”
Other research has seen this too
In the same Bain study, seven of the ten strongest predictors of loyalty belonged to the ease-of-doing-business level of Bain’s model, for example expertise, responsiveness, simplification and time savings. Our own research supports this: the partnerships that were scaled back or ended were preceded by everyday friction. Ordinary parts of working together became unclear or difficult, or needed constant reminders (see When do clients start considering a new partner?).
Bring ideas before you’re asked
Clients were buying expertise they didn’t have in-house, and they expected the partner to use it. A steady flow of ideas was one of the clearest signs that a partnership was alive. When the ideas stopped, clients noticed.
“If we’ve done a lot of groundwork, the agency should have the courage to make proactive proposals.”
“We’d like a perspective from outside our own bubble.”
Professional services leaders saw the same opportunity from their side. Many said they could offer existing clients more if they knew the client’s plans and had time to stay in touch.
“We have a lot of potential, a lot of additional sales and services we could offer, if we had time to be in touch more often.”
“Sometimes a client who has left says they would have wanted consulting from us, but we didn’t know.”
Turn feedback into concrete change
The clients we interviewed gave feedback as a normal part of working together, because they wanted to improve the partnership. Feedback is often a sign that the client is committed. What mattered to clients was that their comments were taken into account.
“It’s a great thing that the client cared about our relationship enough to give feedback.”
Feedback often went to whoever the client happened to be dealing with: in a meeting, on a call or in passing to someone on the team. But the client can’t see whether the feedback is passed on or acted on. That’s why they need an acknowledgement: the feedback has been received, and it will be acted on.
“Feedback is given only to the account manager, one to one on the phone, even though the work is the responsibility of the agency’s whole team.”
“The window for reacting to feedback is really short.”
Make sure the feedback was understood correctly
A change is only complete when the client notices the difference. So it’s worth asking whether the client’s feedback was understood correctly and whether the change has helped. The clients we interviewed said they were prepared to go a long way to solve problems, because they were committed to the partnership themselves. When you come back to it together, a well-handled situation can even strengthen the partnership.
“Once we went through the issue thoroughly, it actually turned into a win for us.”
“Sometimes we get feedback about goals, for example, and that feedback has helped us develop.”
Following up also shows the client that their feedback led somewhere. That makes it easier to raise the next thing early, while it’s still small.
Hear from the people who decide whether the partnership continues
A client is rarely one person. Professional services leaders described their clients as networks of people, where the day-to-day contact and the person who decides whether the partnership continues may be different people. The more people you have relationships with, the better you understand the client’s needs and how decisions are made.
“The client is like a network, with several points of contact on the client’s side.”
“As personal relationships develop, your understanding of decision-making grows.”
In client relationships that work well, contact happens at several levels. One leader described holding operational and tactical meetings with the client, sometimes strategic ones too, which gives them information first-hand. For the client’s decision makers, it mattered that the partner understood their goals and kept pace with them.
“Good partnership is when it feels like we’re on the same side, working together for the long term towards the same goal.”
Other research has seen this too
A meta-analysis by Palmatier and colleagues combined 94 studies covering 38,000 client relationships. Relationship building improved sellers’ results and worked best when the relationship mattered to the client, as in services and business markets. Relationships between people had a stronger effect on results than a relationship with the company alone (Palmatier, Dant, Grewal & Evans, Journal of Marketing, 2006).
How leaders with a working process improve client relationships
“At the very start of a partnership, we have a big discussion about what the client expects from it.”
“Feedback is reviewed once a month in the management team. We go through feedback cases quite thoroughly and look for the root causes.”
“Team leads make sure client feedback is reported every month.”
About the research: This article draws on the same interviews as our article on when clients start considering a new partner: 12 interviews with experienced buyers at large companies about IT and marketing services partnerships they had ended or scaled back, and 50 interviews with leaders of firms that provide IT and marketing services to businesses. The buyers also compared those partnerships with partners they wanted to keep. The lessons are practical conclusions from their accounts, not a promise that a client will stay. The material is qualitative.