Darrick: Everyone, it’s Darrick and Walt here with Coach’s Corner a segment from Denver Business Coach. Basically, we have clients, we do one on one coaching with entrepreneurs, small business owners, we get a lot of questions and we wanted to share some of those with you through this forum. Figured it can benefit everybody and also give you a little bit of a taste of what one on one coaching is like and what it can do for your business.
Darrick: And so if you ever have any questions that you want us to answer, go ahead and send them in, to us, the information will be up there at the end of the conversation today. Let’s get right into it Walt, we’ve got a question here from a recruiting firm in Golden, and they say “We are doing well with sales, but recently have been losing clients more frequently than we would like. How do we build a better system for retaining existing clients?”
Walt: Yeah, in a recruiting environment, losing clients would be critical. Because they’re usually clients that have been nurtured over time and in that kind of environment each one is, of course, precious. So I think one of the first things we would probably talk to our client, the recruiter about, is what methods are they currently using to keep in touch with their clients to measure client satisfaction?
Walt: You can assume that things are going pretty well because people aren’t complaining, but when people start leaving, it’s too late, the horse has left the barn. What can you do as a company to stay on top of customer satisfaction? And we do have some tools and resources there to help you with that process. Regardless of your business, what kinds of things are you thinking out there Darrick? How can we build a better system for retaining existing clients?
Darrick: Yeah, I mean, one of the simplest ones we use is, net promoter score. If you haven’t used that before, it’s just one question and it just is “Would you refer my business to a friend or colleague?” and that’s all it is. And then how they rate you, there are ways to analyze how they rate you and how you get rated by a number of different clients. But it’s a great way to just delve into that satisfaction piece.
Darrick: And really, what I spent a lot of time with my clients talking about, is the difference between satisfaction and wowing your customers. Also about building this system for retaining customers, like figuring out how do you take it beyond just being satisfied and really make yourself invaluable to them. It’s this concept of entanglement. So you want to be a partner, especially in the professional services realm, you want to be partnered so tightly with your client that they really can’t even imagine doing business without you anymore.
Darrick: And so we’ve ha.d clients that do this really, really well. They understand their client well, they understand what the needs are and they evolve with the clients. And it presents opportunities for the vendor to expand their business, to provide new services as well as just staying in touch with a client so closely, that you can stay partner with them for four years and still have very productive relationships.
Walt: And I think that’s the key, what are the key factors that your clients are looking for in building a relationship in a professional services environment? What kinds of things can you create to tighten that entanglement, whether it’s assessment tools or ways for your clients to work with you on a more seamless basis?
Walt: Today’s COVID environment presents some challenges that are unique and that makes this recruiting process very challenging, whereas you might have been recruiting people who are a good team fit in an office environment, now you’ve got to make sure that these employees that you’re helping to recruit are self-disciplined and sustaining and can work in a more at-home environment, yet still, be a key team contributor.
Walt: So it’s an ongoing evolution of tools and resources that a client can build to tighten those relationships. And I’m sure in your client realm, Darrick, you’ve run across a number of situations where you had to be creative and help your client be creative to differentiate themselves. And that’s kind of what we do in every engagement, tailor the advice and guidance to your unique situation. But I don’t know if you have any examples of what you might have done in this kind of situation before Darrick.
Darrick: Yeah, I think I mean, a lot of it has been around the data piece of it as well. Because oftentimes in a professional services world, you’ll run into clients that don’t track data very effectively and they don’t understand really what it could do for them. And so because as a professional services operation like this recruiting firm, they become experts in that realm, and so they can bring a lot of the data and analysis to the client to help them make great decisions about the people that they’re hiring.
Darrick: I mean, you mentioned hiring someone for an office versus working from home. That cultural component is something that often gets overlooked when you’re looking at job descriptions and functions that people are doing every day, making sure they really fit the broader scope of who your team is. And really what you’re trying to create as an entity is such an important part because everybody’s made a bad hire. Everybody knows how poisonous that can be and how challenging that can be and how much time it can take.
Darrick: And working with a professional services firm in this area can really help you avoid that. It doesn’t mean it will never happen, but it certainly gives you a better chance of doing it well. And so as a services firm, you want to make sure that you go in selling that message and helping educate that potential client, and all the different ways that you can help them be productive.
Darrick: And so it’s a fun exercise. It’s fun for us to work with these firms and show them the value that they can really bring, because sometimes they don’t even realize all the different ways that they can help some of their clients.
Walt: Excellent point. That is a better system for retaining existing clients. Well, if this is the kind of approach that you would find valuable in your business in terms of getting guidance to help improve your operation, again, this is what we do. Please contact us, either call us or reach us at DenverBusinessCoach.com. We’d love the chance to work with you. And if you have a question that you’d like to submit to us, as Darrick said, please get on our website and present that to us.
Darrick: See you next time.