How to Expertly Manage Your Client Relationships

Jan 27, 2020

Have you had trouble in the past with managing your client relationships? You start working with clients and maybe you end up not really liking them that much. You possibly ignored the red flags when you first talked to them.

Maybe over time, you feel disinterested and unmotivated to do the work on their campaigns.

Or somehow you started off on the right foot with certain clients, but after a couple of weeks or months, everything began to spiral downhill.

It happens to the best of us.

But one of the things I love so much about my own business is getting to choose who I get to work with. These relationships are so important because that’s who you’ll be dealing with every day. And you want your clients to be long-lasting. With clients you love, you will have reliable recurring revenue.

You also want to leverage the results from long-lasting clients to attract other great clients.

Three Tips to Expertly Manage Your Client Relationships

Follow these 3 tips so you can have amazing client relationships and ongoing contracts with them for many years. You want a business you love and work you look forward to. Isn’t that the whole point of starting your own business?

1. Choosing Your Niche

You want to choose a niche that you really love and believe in. If you don’t enjoy working within a niche you love, you won’t feel motivated to work hard for your clients. You want to be on the same wavelength as your clients and care about what they are doing.

When you choose a niche, think about whether you’ll enjoy that same niche in 5 or 10 years from now. The example I always give is the bridal industry. Maybe if you’re just getting married the bridal or wedding industry will really interest you. But after you’ve been married for 10 years, you probably won’t be interested in it any longer.

Pick niches and industries that are meaningful to you in some way. Then you can build excellent relationships because you genuinely care and are interested in what their brand is all about. You’ll care about the client and if they’re an expert, you’ll enjoy what they teach and how they make an impact on the world.

You’ll also want to be a deep expert in what they're all about so that you can start to see and use a lot of creative ideas and be excited about the work that you're doing. Once you pick a niche, it won’t be long before you’re an expert in it.

Watch Out For Red Flags

When you talk to new clients and if any red flags go off, be sure to listen to them. In my program, I have an entire lesson on what red flags to watch out for.

If you ignore them, you will not have a good relationship. It will only cause you lots of headaches and trouble. So be sure to listen to your instincts too. Sometimes you’ll know when a client you’re talking to won’t be a good fit for you.

2. Set Realistic Expectations

Most client relationships go off track because realistic expectations weren’t set or discussed. If you think you’re doing a great job and they think you’re not, there is definitely a disconnect in their expectations.

This could happen if you are enthusiastic about a campaign or a client. You oversell yourself and over-promise the things you’ll do for them, but you end up under-delivering which leaves the client disappointed.

It’s not worth it to over-promise in order to just land the client. It’s better to set realistic expectations and then over-deliver if possible.

Knowing that you’re on the same page with your client will build great client relationships.

Set Expectations For Yourself Too

The expectations that you want from a client can be in a document as part of the onboarding process. This will help them know what you need from them before starting work. You need to tell them what you need from them in order to be successful for them. You may need support documents or whatever else is necessary for you to do a good job for them.

3. Have The Client Buy Into The Strategy

After you’ve set the expectations with a new client, you want to put together a strategy showing them exactly what you’ll be doing for them. You want them to understand what to expect and the timeframe those things will get done.

Show them the support you’re going to offer and what you’re pitching so they’ve fully bought into it. Then show them when to expect things to start coming to fruition for them.

Keep Your Client Up To Date

After you’ve been hired, clients sometimes want to know what’s going on. Then they feel better about what you’re up to and give you more runway to do what you do because they’re hearing what’s happening from you. They want to know the approaches you take and what worked or didn’t work. And what approach you’re going to follow up with. Maybe you have a new angle. It’s good to keep your clients up to date on what you’re doing.

Sometimes clients don’t know the function of a PR so you may want to give them a quick lesson on what it is you do and what the value is that you’ll bring.

These 3 tips will help you with your client relationships. You’ll be able to run everything more smoothly if you practice these tips.

Working with clients and niches you love will make your work more exciting and fulfilling. As a new entrepreneur or someone who’s been running a business for a long time, always use these tips so you can have great client relationships.