Agency owners should be aware that it costs less money to keep an existing client than to bring in a new one. Therefore, they should focus on managing clients well, asking for referrals, and maintaining positive relationships with both current and potential clients.

It is important to have good customer relationships so they will want to use your service.

You need to develop a client management system for your company. However, before we begin, let’s clear some basic concepts.

The Key Tenets of Client Management

If you’ve been struggling to keep up with all the different client management advice out there, don’t worry. Here are three essential tips to make sure your client relationships are healthy and strong.

Maintain Transparency

If you’re not transparent with your clients, they’re going to assume things, and you’ll lose control of the narrative. This makes you look unreliable to management.

It is critical to manage client relationships effectively through transparency. You don’t need to bog down your client with petty details and problems, but do provide them with information in the broader sense. Make no key decisions without clearly consulting and communicating with the client. For instance, if there is an issue during the project discovery phase, notify them right away.

Communicate Clearly

It is important to communicate clearly and consistently. Keep the communication channels open with your client and make sure someone is available to answer their questions.

Don’t try to give the client too much information at once – they’re trusting you to take care of most things on your own. However, you need to make sure that you give the client all of the essential information using an appropriate method of communication, such as a phone call, email, or personal visit. Good communication with clients also means giving them regular updates.

Stay Aligned with the Clients’ Goals

The information you share with the client must be tailored to their needs. Do you know what metrics the client is looking for? Your reports need to focus on their concerns. It’s all about understanding what the client wants, and then providing that information in a timely manner.

1. Establishing trust with a new client

How do you establish trust with a new client?

You will also want to be clear and upfront about what you can (and can’t) do for them. We’ve all had a “bad” experience with a service provider at some point. By communicating openly and honestly, you can help ensure that your new client doesn’t become a horror story for someone else. The most important thing you can do in order to establish a positive and lasting relationship with a new client is to establish trust. It is essential that they feel confident that their project is in good hands and that you are able to deliver what you have promised. Being open and honest about your capabilities from the beginning will help to ensure that your new client doesn’t become a negative story for someone else.

The sentiment of this text is that it is important to build trust with your client from the beginning of the project. If they trust you, they will be more likely to work with you to solve problems. However, if you seem unsure of yourself or dishonest, they will not trust you and will always be skeptical of your work, even if it is good.

Here are some ways to establish trust quickly:

• Be proud of your past work and share it with potential clients. Show off your digital portfolio and similar projects you have completed. Confidently present yourself as the experienced and capable individual they should choose for the job.
• Make sure to include testimonials from previous clients on your website and share them with potential clients as soon as possible to help build trust.
• When you are communicating with someone professionally, it is important to be polite and friendly without being overly familiar. You should use your social intuition to gauge how formal or informal the relationship is and mirror that level of formality in your own communication.
• Always be honest with your client. If you’re not honest, they will never trust you.

First impressions are important because they determine how the client will feel about you and the project.

2. Educate your clients

Saheen Najeeb, a digital marketing analyst at Fingent, believes in a two-pronged approach. They use the following strategies:

1. Educate Clients Through Outbound Campaign: Clients love to know about product updates, changes in your business, new trends in their industry, etc. We have to educate them through these campaigns to keep them engaged.
2. Periodical Client Service Team Reach Out: Once in a while, ensure your client service team schedules a call with the clients to know more about the issues they face. The main purpose is to get the client’s responses to these questions and empower the service team to triage the customer’s needs/wants and suggest solutions (up-selling). It will allow them to understand any potential issues faced by the client that they have to address.

3. Learn to manage time

Shiv Gupta, the CEO of Incrementors Web Solutions, believes that it is of the utmost importance to respect the client’s time. According to him, time management is the most precious and finite resource both you and your clients have when you are managing multiple clients. If you want to build healthier relationships, you have to respect their time. This means that you should set deadlines to complete projects that are important to both marketers and clients. While clients may sometimes have unrealistic expectations and demands about timeframes, you must also be realistic when estimating how much time you need to complete them. It is therefore essential that you set clear deadlines so that your team members know how much time they have to complete specific tasks.

4. Managing client expectations on a project

How do you manage client expectations?

It is important to get everything in writing when managing client expectations. This includes having a contract that goes over all aspects of the project, timeframes, and costs. It is also helpful to have an internal scope management plan.

Although precautions are taken, client expectations may still become a problem. Your client has invested their money into commissioning this project and they want to get the most value for their money, which can sometimes lead to intense emotions and expectations.

Some clients might not pay attention to the details in the contract and try to make the project scope bigger. Some clients might not know how limited your resources are. Others might just get excited about the project.

A client’s expectations may not always be realistic, and it’s important to manage those expectations in a way that is respectful and professional.

Dealing with unreasonable client requests

You need to be careful when managing expectations so that you don’t end up promising something that you can’t deliver. It’s important to be honest with your team about what they can realistically achieve so that they don’t become overwhelmed or frustrated.

Although it may be tempting to automatically decline requests that fall outside of the project scope, this can also create problems. Consultant Pat Brans recalls a time when he began saying no too frequently and the negative consequences that followed.

Brans said that it was difficult to know what his clients wanted because they stopped communicating with him after he said no to their requests. He often misunderstood their requirements or failed to understand their business issues because of this lack of communication.

This is why it is important to find the right balance when managing client expectations. You need to be able to tell the difference between a reasonable client request and an unreasonable one.

A request from a client that is reasonable is one that adds value to the result, is easy to implement, and does not take a lot of time or profit. Another possibility is an extra task that they are willing to pay for.

How to say NO to a client request

When you need to push back against an unreasonable request, you should first determine if the request is actually unreasonable. If it is, then you need to have a conversation with the person who made the request. Saying no is always uncomfortable, even for the most experienced account managers, so this conversation should be done tactfully.

Here are some tips for saying ‘no’ to unreasonable client requests:

Try to understand the reasoning behind the business request and then make a decision.

• If the client’s idea won’t work, tell them why it’s not a good idea. Give them previous examples to back up your explanation. remind them that you’re only trying to help them.
• If their request lies outside the scope of the contract, point out the exact part of the agreement. Explain the cost of adding this work on, and what fees will be incurred based on the value of your time.
• If you simply don’t have the resources to fulfil their request; be honest. Explain why you don’t have the capacity – then offer helpful advice or alternatives based on their needs.
• If their request is going to delay another aspect of the project – explain this clearly. You might ask them to weigh up their priorities, and only go ahead if they’re willing to sacrifice a different component. It’s all about compromise.

Manage client expectations by being considerate and approaching them calmly. Sometimes you will have to compromise, and other times it may not be in your best interest. The most important thing is to explain the reasoning behind your decision.

5. Be transparent

” Tom Crowe from Tom Crowe Digital believes that being transparent is the best way to go about business. He thinks that clients should know every detail about what is happening, when it’s happening, and how much they are paying for it.

Although it is good to keep in touch and update each other on progress, the best way to ensure confidence and happiness is to give them full access to the project tasks to be completed. This way, they can see everything that needs to be done and feel like they are a part of the process.

This allows them to have a say in what project is prioritized and launched next.

Prioritizing tasks with input from clients helps avoid conflicts that may have arisen from clients not understanding why other tasks were given a lower priority.

6. Offer amazing customer service

According to Leonard Parker, the key to success is providing great customer service. He believes that by going above and beyond for clients, he has been able to effectively manage their projects.

“I manage all of my client’s projects, making sure they are completed on time and effectively. I do this by understanding your business goals and building marketing strategies that will help you accomplish these goals.”

“I always do my best to communicate with my clients often so that I can give them feedback about the task I am working on.”

Wrapping it Up…

If you’re looking to build a successful business, you need to focus on client management. Keeping your clients happy will help grow your business; if one is satisfied, they’re likely to bring more business to your agency.

If you haven’t been focusing on consumer relations, now is the time to buckle down and provide quality services to your clients. You can use any of the provided client management tools or create one in-house. It’s important that you evaluate the quality of your service and find ways to improve it.