In the last couple of weeks, we have talked to several clients who got some bad news from their clients, which was that we’re not renewing contracts. We’re not happy. We want a new account exec. We are going to another agency. Some level of “we are unhappy” news.
Several times, when the agency owner jumped on a call, picked up the phone, or sent an email to that client to find out what happened, the message they got from the client was the same. Which is why you are asking now? Why haven’t you asked over the last three months, six months, nine months, a year? Why is this the time that I’m hearing from you now that I’m ready to cancel my contract or cut back my budget, or in some way impact you financially?
Now all of a sudden you care. And you know, at AMI, we always talk about how agency owners need to invest a certain amount of their time in what we call “Client Love.” That’s just cultivating relationships with the clients, spending time with the clients, as high up the food chain as you can go, but that you’re having conversations that only business owners or business leaders can have with other business owners and business leaders.
If something’s not quite right, you want to hear about it on the early end, not on the way out the door end. And that doesn’t happen if you don’t cultivate the relationship before there’s trouble. So if you don’t have booked into your schedule client-love time, today is the day to start booking that time with all of your clients.
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Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from Lincoln City, Oregon. So in the last couple of weeks, we have talked to several clients who got some bad news from their clients, which was we're not renewing contracts. We're not happy. We want a new account exec. We are going to another agency. Some level of “we are unhappy” news. And several times when the agency owner jumped on a call or picked up the phone or sent an email to that client to find out what happened, the message they got from the client was the same. Which is why are you asking now? Why haven't you asked over the last three months, six months, nine months, a year? Why is this the time that I'm hearing from you now that I'm ready to cancel my contract or cut back my budget, or in some way impact you financially? Now all of a sudden you care.
And you know at AMI we are always talking about how agency owners need to invest a certain amount of their time in what we call “Client Love.” That's just cultivating relationships with the clients, spending time with the clients – as high up the food chain as you can go, but that you're having conversations that only business owners or business leaders can have with other business owners and business leaders. And it's not about the work. It's not about billing. It's not about anything other than, hey, how's how's business going? Tell me what's going on in your space. How's my team doing for you? Is there anything else we could be doing that you wish we were doing better or different? And having those business owner to business owner conversations about trends, about things that are going on in the industry. We need to cultivate those relationships when the relationship is good, and we need to invest in those relationships on an ongoing basis so that we have built up some emotional currency. And when things go bad, that CEO or president or board director, whoever it is, knows you well enough to pick up the phone and go, you know what? Something's not quite right. You want to hear about it on the early end, not on the way out the door end. And that doesn't happen if you don't cultivate the relationship before there's trouble.
So if you don't have booked into your schedule client-love time, today is the day to start booking that time with all of your clients. And yep, some of them are hard to get ahold of. And yes, some of them are going to resist having coffee with you, or a drink with you, or meeting you the day before a conference or whenever you're trying to get with them. But you need to be persistent, and you need to be consistent in spending that time with them so that the relationship has some foundation, so that when things get rocky, because sooner or later something's going to happen that's going to make it rocky. You get a phone call and you have time to fix it rather than try and replace it because they've walked out the door.
