Building Client Relationships is Harder Than You Think

I’ve had all sorts of client relationships over the years. Some have come naturally to me; others have taken time while each side slowly learns more about each other. People are complex, after all, which causes the power balance between agency and client to be endlessly fragile.

What goes into a client relationship, and how do these evolve?

As I’ve grown in seniority over the years and since becoming a business owner, I’ve found that my relationships have morphed, much like my relationships with our team.

Nowadays, I connect on a far deeper emotional level with clients because I understand first-hand their pain points – from nurturing people and paying the bills to communicating a vision or simply learning how to enjoy our journey.

All of this creates a sense of deep camaraderie. You only have to look at each other and utter, “Running a business is hard, isn’t it?” and an unspoken agreement is shared as your eyes meet and a curt nod is given.

Beyond bonding over business, getting to know each other as people has produced the most surprising outcomes for me.

In the past, this wouldn’t come naturally to me. I’d worry about overstepping the mark, intruding into someone’s personal life or simply looking nosy. When you operate in a leadership position, you slowly learn you have more space to ask curious questions than you realise.

I’ve learned about clients’ struggles, fears, joys, weekend plans, losses, and wins—all of this and more. We’ve shared tears at funerals. We laughed until it hurt on conference calls. These are the moments that stand out.

All of this sounds quite intense and reflects where I am now, but I accept this isn’t helpful for someone earlier in their career who can’t walk up to a CEO and say, “Hey, do you have imposter syndrome like me?” or “What happened with that challenge you had?”.

Boundaries are essential, after all, to maintain respect, watch over employee care, maintain clear lines and allow for privacy. As a company, we have a duty of care to protect our people from unwanted conversation, and sometimes it’s incredibly challenging to put our people first without harming a client relationship.

Care comes first

So, power dynamics aside, how do you foster an effective relationship?

Care. Care more than others. Care more about the person than yourself. Care. Care. Care.

The first step is understanding a client’s motivations, stress points, behaviour, working environment, team dynamic, what their manager is like, working patterns, and so on.

Once you understand how they operate, you can start thinking like them and find ways to ease their burden.

• What can you do to help them?
• What decision can you make for them?
• How can you solve a problem before they’re aware of it?
• What do they need to succeed?
• How can you make them more effective in their jobs?

This is all very functional advice. It’s the “operator” approach to client relationship building. The crutch they’ll lean on—the mechanics of their engine.

The alternative is to find ways to bring them joy. You want to make their life brighter. You want to make them laugh. Work can be wearisome sometimes, especially for marketers.

Often our clients are solo practitioners – it’s lonely. No one else understands marketing in their companies. Often, they are under constant scrutiny. They need an outlet to vent their frustrations. They want colleagues to laugh with. They need creative and experienced people to soundboard off.

They want someone to say, “We’ve got your back, and we’ll have fun along the way.”

When you focus on the client, they focus on you, and the relationship begins to blossom.

Insightful Insights

Here at Bamboo, we use Insights Discovery to discover more about ourselves, our team members and our company. We also use the program to speak a common language when dialling up energies for different scenarios.

The concept is that there are four colours, and everyone has a mix. Clients are no different. For some people, you can see certain behaviours as clear as day. Others, it’s a little murkier.

Insights teaches you how to tailor your communication and relationship-building skills to certain energies.

Someone might prefer lots of time to reflect and plenty of detail to decide. Others want the answers NOW. No faff. No pleasantries. Minimal words, maximum action. Some clients enjoy energetic in-person brainstorming sessions, while others want everyone to be OK.

Once you decipher a person, then you can build a strong relationship.

All of this takes time and dedication. For some, it’s natural; for others, it’s learned through extensive coaching, training, and guidance.

Above everything else, be authentic, show vulnerability, and stop trying to be the smartest person in the room – those qualities will stand you well with everyone you meet, whether they’re clients or not.

If you like how we build our client relationships and are considering our services, get in touch. Let’s build a strong relationship together.