THE KEYS TO CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS
- Walk a mile in their shoes!What follows high quality and successful work for clients as the top relationship building tool? Understanding their business! Understanding their business is the key to building a long term client relationship. Know how their business makes profits, what market places they focus on, what new products are coming down the pike, what their competitors are up to, what court decisions might impact them, what pending legislation will affect them. Each law firm team member should be aware of this information, ask questions, and continually let their clients know how aware your team is of their business.
(Walk a mile in their shoes and then "Ask Your Clients for Their Business.")
But there are other subtle tactics to use in improving client relations. For example, look for ways to help your client impress the boss. Can you suggest something new to offer beyond assurances of work quality and cost control – something substantially more strategic that in-house counsel and senior executives can use as an internal selling tool for themselves?
(Impress the boss
by not counting on high quality legal service alone as your client retention effort. Start by working with this client retention program.)
Another client retention tactic is to look for ways to help your client make friends. The in-house department is bombarded with requests for guidance from business unit executives as well as departmental managers (HR for example) who want to “get things done.” without exposing themselves or the company. Look for opportunities to communicate how you would efficiently support that guidance.
- Stay ahead of the curve and turn liabilities into assetsClient retention also means you can anticipate generic problems, not just specific ones. Your client expects you to be ahead of the curve and this provides a solid opportunity to communicate how you might help the client become an internal problem-solver. If there is a liability identified, help your client transform it into an asset. Understand that your client has an institutional liability; they are viewed as a cost center. Make them an asset.
- Make your firm an indispensable networkHelping them actually generate business is another approach to building long term client relations. Make introductions, suggest alliances, and find new relationships that could add to their corporate bottom line. You have other clients and you know people throughout the client’s industry or in industries the client has targeted for expansion. Use this benefit for them and your firm. If you invite them to luncheon programs, sit them next to people they can develop a mutually beneficial relationship.
In conclusion, when looking at client retention, remember your clients have careers too. They need friends to help them advance and you should be it.
