Giving Your Clients What They Want (In a Way That Is Also Good For You)

Building trust and respect with a client is key to a positive long relationship with them. The question here is: how do you go about doing it?

A boss of mine and I were debating this one day. I posited the importance of starting with good, active listening; confirming the points that they were stating; and getting the flow of communication off on a good footing. All of which would be in the spirit of strong collaboration between us. In the middle of it, my boss cut me off to shriek, "No, you give them what they want!"

I replied, "Of course, you give them what they want, but there is more to it than just that." However, to her there wasn't more to it than just that. Her strict focus was on giving them what they wanted formally, in a way that was very reactive to them. The dangerous side effect of this was that it put us in a position of being a servant to the client, rather than a leader. (This began long before I joined the team.) In my opinion, it was detrimental to any reputation that we would want to develop.

It is important to a relationship with any client that you never voluntarily give up the stature of leadership with them. In other words, good service does not mean being servile to the client.

Of course, you intend to give the client what s/he wants. (That is fundamental for obvious reasons.) Focusing strictly on it is risky though. Giving them only what they want, and not managing the expectations around it or adding value to it, can undermine the effort and result in you not getting called back for a second project. Or, in Federal contracting, it can result in your company not getting the contract renewed for the next option year.

The following story will illustrate my point. In any state capital there are a variety of not-for-profit agencies which support state and city government initiatives. One of them, that I was familiar with, had an executive director who I will call Jennifer. Jennifer was rather good at meeting her formal goals and advancing her organization's formal interests. However, she was also good at ruffling feathers in the process. Finally, at a strategic review session, the board of directors gave her kudos for meeting her goals, exceeding some, and then asked for her resignation anyway.

Apparently, meeting the group's stated goals by themselves did not make her a "golden child". She had rubbed enough people the wrong way that she also held the organization back in intangible ways. (A member of the board of directors, who I was friendly with, laid out enough of the story for me to understand what Jennifer had done wrong.) Soon thereafter, she did resign from her position.

While I was not privy to the concrete details of this, I can speculate. Jennifer may not have respected some of the confidentialities within which she was given some information, not have respected the dynamics of some third party relationships, or just not have managed expectations for delivering results that worked with everybody's comfort levels. All of which would be important for maintaining her board of directors' satisfaction.

It all comes down to building a good, flowing rapport with the client before working on the actual deliverable, and developing it further throughout the process. By respecting the nuances of trust that go beyond just delivering the desired end results, you will deliver your objective in such a way as to develop that trust further as you get called back to handle more of them.