Top 10 sales and client tips for 2021
The New Year is rapidly underway and now we’re all back into the swing of things, be they lockdown-restricted or otherwise, we wanted to give you our top tips for developing client relationships in 2021. Because although some things never change, the importance of some things to your clients do!
Stop client relationships becoming transactional - we banged on about this enough last year. It’s still true - beware the virtual erosion of the depth of your relationships. See previous blogs for how to combat this.
Stay on top of your relevance - your client has new goals for 2021. Do you know what they are and how you can help?
Efficacy v Effectiveness v Efficiency – focus shift for 2021. You had to ‘just get on with it’ last year. This emphasis is still here but slightly less this year. How much of an impact you have (effectiveness) and how you do it (efficiency) are creeping back up the charts.
Proactively build in thinking time/bring back the commute! For a lot of people at the moment your commute is walking downstairs. Bang goes your thinking and exploring time on your commute. But you still need this outlet; how will you rearrange your time to fit this in?
Pay heed to quality in innovation. There was a mad scramble to innovate last year due to the pandemic. There’s no excuse not to re-focus on the quality of innovation this year.
Be easy/simple to work with. The importance of this to your clients in wanting to work with you should never be under-estimated.
Know how to break through structured days. Back-to-back Zoom/Teams conversations and meetings means your unscheduled call is unwelcome. Unless you’ve got something important (to your client) to say. Do your research.
You still gotta be human. If there’s two facets to this to focus on, we’d say bring empathy and your own vulnerability to the fore of your client conversations.
Amidst all the task-based work, look after each other. Yep, this isn’t just your own personal struggle but your teams’ and colleagues’ too. Encourage a bit of social time and bring point 8. into it with them as well.
It’s even more important to bring value to every interaction than ever before. And to know how to do that, buy The Me Agenda :-)!!!
Even taking just one or two of the tips above and having a go at them will help you with your clients. When they become something you do automatically, try another. Hell, why not make it a personal challenge to do them all this year?
To your success,
