It Starts With Clients

Your 100-Day Plan to Build Lifelong Relationships and Revenue

Andrew Sobel

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119619116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Consulting
• Index: Business

World-renowned client relationship authority shows you how to dramatically grow your business by mastering fourteen critical client development challenges

Andrew Sobel, author of the international bestsellers Clients for Life and Power Questions, offers a proven, 100-day plan for conquering 14 tough client development challenges and growing your client base in any market conditions. He's encapsulated 25 years of unique research, including personal interviews with over 8000 top executives and successful rainmakers, into a practical roadmap for winning more new clients and growing your existing relationships.

You'll learn specific strategies to move confidently and predictably from a first meeting to a signed contract, and discover the agenda-setting techniques that create a steady stream of sole-source business. You'll master the art of reframing client requests, leading to broader, higher-impact engagements. You'll dramatically sharpen your ability to ask the powerful questions that can transform your client relationships. And, you'll learn to develop advisory relationships with influential C-suite executives. Andrew illustrates each weekly challenge with real-life examples drawn from thousands of executive meetings. He shares success strategies from having grown and led three highly successful professional service businesses.

Andrew has taught these strategies to over 50, 000 professionals around the world, and they're now available to you in this highly readable, portable masterclass. Whether you are early in your career and need a comprehensive guide to grow your client base from the ground up or are a seasoned practitioner who wants to accelerate your business growth, It Starts With Clients will take you to the next level.

Day 1
The Star of Your Show

On the third day at my new job, something stopped me dead in my tracks. It happened as I walked to the coffee machine.

I stood in the hallway outside of Scott Cunningham's office, entranced. Staring through the half-open door, I watched Scott take a phone call from the CEO of one of the firm's best clients. His feet were up on his desk, bathed by the morning light from his window. He was like a confident jungle cat, basking in the sun. For Scott, work wasn't just interesting—it was downright fun.

I had just finished business school, and that August I began work for a leading management consulting firm in Boston. Scott was a senior partner and former Harvard Business School professor. Still in his 40s, he had big bushy eyebrows and an absurdly thick head of unruly, dark hair. He oozed relaxation. As he spoke on the phone, he periodically crumpled up used Post-it Notes and pitched them into his waste can.

Why was I so taken by this scene? Because Scott was a supreme rainmaker. He had been instrumental in growing the firm from its early days. He knew lots of CEOs and other top executives, and they frequently called him for advice. When Scott wrote proposals, the project was already sold—the proposal was just a memorandum of what he had already agreed upon with the client. No competitive bids, no torturous “Requests for Proposal” (RFPs) to endure.

Scott's office was a nexus of important people who wanted to hire him and our firm. No wonder, as he had an uncanny ability to quickly grasp clients’ key issues and conjure up an incisive, original strategy for them. Once a project was sold, he then marshaled other consultants to help deliver the work. These included young associates, like me, as well as other partners who—sadly—just could not attract enough of their own clients.

I immediately knew I wanted to be like Scott, not one of those partners who was consigned to execute what Scott sold. I coveted his mojo. I recognized I had to first learn the business and become a skilled consultant. But I never took my eye off that picture of Scott: thrown back in his chair, fielding important calls, and shooting little yellow basketballs as he gave sage advice to powerful businesspeople.

This is your playbook

I became a student of Scott's playbook with clients, and carefully watched others like him. I made a lot of mistakes, for sure. But by intentionally putting what I learned to work, I became the youngest partner in our firm at age 31. By 36 I was a senior vice president and country chief executive officer. Then, I started my own successful management consulting company, and embarked on over 20 years of proprietary research to codify the strategies, skills, and techniques that enable you to consistently succeed with clients. Along the way, I've published nine books on developing enduring client relationships, including the international bestsellers Power Questions and Clients for Life.

In building your own client or customer base, you will invariably face a series of difficult challenges. Many professionals get discouraged and even broken by them. I've selected the 14 most important ones, and I'm going to share with you exactly how to overcome and master each of them. As we go through them, you'll learn proven strategies to consistently develop, grow, sustain, and multiply your client relationships. I've worked with over 50,000 professionals around the world who have successfully used these very same techniques. Put them to work yourself, and they will have a dramatic impact on your success.

If you apply the ideas from each week of this 100-day program, no matter where you are starting from today, you'll grow your client base and revenues. You'll also be in huge demand as a “bankable star” who can reliably start up, grow, or resuscitate any kind of business. You will be indispensable. A rainmaker.

Remember, however, that the real star of this movie is your client, as shown in the illustration at the beginning of this chapter. You become a bankable star only because you've put your clients in the footlights on center stage, and helped them succeed. As soon as you start making it all about you, and how clever you are, people will whisper behind your back. And what they say won't be pretty.

It starts with clients

Whether you're in the early stage of your career, starting your own business, or are already an experienced practitioner who wants to work more at the C-suite level, this book will save you years of time.

In 100 days you will develop a plan and sharpen your skills to build lifelong relationships and revenue. The core content consists of 14 weeks, one challenge per week. If you spend a day on the introduction and conclusion, and a week on each of the 14 challenges, this adds up to 100 days of reading, analyzing, planning—and acting. Regardless of your level of experience, I am certain you will discover meaningful opportunities to grow your business.

Each week can be read on its own, so feel free to gravitate to those sections most relevant to your particular development needs. As the book progresses, the challenges become more advanced.

The bar is now much higher

Simply put, selling to and serving clients, especially large corporate clients, is a challenging business. It requires a higher level of skill and business acumen than it used to. Clients are growing increasingly more sophisticated and demanding. So no matter how good you are today, tomorrow you will have to be just a little bit better to get the same results.

The mindset shift that yields remarkable results

Your expertise and domain knowledge are essential to your success with clients. They are your ticket to entry. They help you add value in the very first conversation with a prospective client. And they often earn you the right to a second meeting. If your clients perceive you can help them, then they will be drawn toward a relationship with you.

However … an excessive “expert” or “product” focus can get you into trouble. For example, a very successful firm asked me to coach one of their executives. Every year, her sales had been declining, and she was now at risk of being demoted or even let go. She was highly intelligent and very personable. When I asked her about her approach to client development, she said, “My clients know what I do and if they need me, they'll call me.” That was my first clue that she had a self-limiting mindset that was the cause of her deteriorating performance.

Another client of mine started out each meeting with a new prospect by walking through a very slick, detailed PowerPoint presentation of his company's background and services. If the client interrupted or tried to shift the conversation away from his presentation, or asked too many questions, he got flustered. He would just obliviously power on with his slide deck. He believed that more product information and more displays of expertise would build more credibility and trust with his clients. But they didn't.

The limitations of the “expert” mindset

Both of these individuals had what I call the “expert-for-hire” mindset. It is a narrow, me-centered, limiting mindset that will hold you back and even sabotage your success. It can lead you to overwhelm clients with breathless serenades about your products and services, your methodologies, and the details of your resume.

It also gives you tunnel vision. In 1980, for example, the old AT&T commissioned a top consulting firm to estimate the market for cell phones in the year 2000. Their answer: there would be 900,000 cell phones. They were only off by 108 million! The experts lacked the imagination to see the potential for mobile phones, and AT&T missed a huge opportunity to be an early entrant in this fast-growing business.

Harry Truman, who was president of the United States after Franklin D. Roosevelt, foreshadowed this when he quipped, “An expert is a fellow who's afraid to learn anything new, because then he wouldn't be an expert anymore.” This gets at the notion that when we're experts, we want to stay within our narrow expertise at all times.

The expansiveness of the “advisor” mindset

To see possibilities, you need the wide-angle lens of what I call the advisor mindset. With it, you provide clients with an expansive outlook on their problems and the potential solutions. Experts see themselves as specialists. Advisors also have deep expertise, but they layer breadth on top of their depth. They develop a robust knowledge of their client as an individual, of the client's...