Building Relationships with Clients as a Team

Over the past 20 years in market research, many project issues I've seen stem from mismanaging client expectations. Whether you work for a research firm, an agency, a consultancy, or any other business that involves regular client discussions, here are 4 pointers. 1️⃣ Communication—Regularly communicate, candidly ask the client how often they want updates, and never let a week go by without touching base, regardless of the project stage. Anticipate questions and answer them before they ask. A client sending an email asking, "What's the status of...?" is a failure on your end - within reason. Lack of responsiveness leads to mistrust, even more micromanagement, skepticism, and other issues that can be snuffed out by communicating openly. 2️⃣ Be Realistic—We all want to say "yes" to clients, but there are often ways to showcase your experience and expertise by being honest about what can be achieved with a given timeline and budget. The expectation could be a lack of understanding about the process or industry norms. Underpromise and overdeliver versus overpromise and underdeliver. Those honest conversations may appear inflexible, but they're often more about setting expectations and setting up both parties for long-term sustainable success. Saying "no" to this project could be a better long-term decision for the account than saying "yes" and failing with no second chance. 3️⃣ Understand Perspective—Take the time to actively listen to your client's needs, goals, and priorities. It goes beyond listening and includes asking smart (and sometimes bolder) questions to get a complete understanding. What drove the need for research? Why is receiving results within 2 weeks crucial? What happens if you don't receive results in 2 weeks? Understanding what's pushing the decisions behind the scenes can be a game changer. 4️⃣ Solutions Over Problems—Never present a problem or an issue to a client without a path forward. "This happened, but here are 3 things we can do to fix it." You need to be more than someone who relays information, you need to be a true consultant. Be able to justify each recommendation and explain the pros and cons of each path. -------------------------------------- Need MR advice? Message me. 📩 Visit @Drive Research 💻  1400+ articles to help you. ✏️ --------------------------------------

✈️ I used to live on planes. Flying cross-country to be onsite with customers was just part of the job—and I loved it. But the world changed. Offices emptied. Now, many of our customers don’t even have a headquarters to visit. So how do we build real relationships in a remote-first world? Here are some creative, intentional strategies we’re using at ClientSuccess to stay connected in person: ✅ Meet them where they are. Even if there’s no office, there’s always a coffee shop or a lunch spot in their hometown. ✅ Ask if they’re coming to you. They might be visiting your city for vacation, conferences, or family. If so—grab coffee or dinner while they’re around. ✅ Leverage conferences, meetups, and field events. Even if you’re not exhibiting, go. It’s often the best way to see 5–10 customers in one trip. ✅ Piggyback on their team offsites. Many companies still gather their remote teams quarterly. If you catch wind of a team offsite, ask to swing by and join for a session or a meal. ✅ Host small customer dinners. Pick a city where you have 2–3 customers and plan a relaxed evening. It’s efficient and meaningful. ✅ Set up a “customer city tour.” Pick 3–4 cities where your customers cluster, then plan a short in-person visit rotation. (Bonus: make it an annual or bi-annual tradition.) ✅ Attend community events they care about. Sometimes, attending their speaking engagements, user group meetups, or local panels shows support far beyond business. ✅ Invite them to your HQ for a strategy session. Even if it’s just a few people—some will welcome the chance to get out of their home office and collaborate in person. In today’s remote world, in-person connection is more rare—and more valuable. It just takes creativity and intentionality. What’s working for you and your team? 👇 Share your favorite in-person strategies below. #customersuccess #relationshipbuilding #SaaS #remotework #CX #fieldstrategy #customerexperience #clientengagement #postsales

You don’t build something great alone. Even if you have to start that way. When I founded Westwood International, it was just me. No partners. No funding. Just me, competing for opportunities against the largest consultancies in the world. And trust me... none of the success I've enjoyed over the last 32 years would be possible without this key insight: 'Solo' does not mean 'in isolation.' Teamwork isn’t about how many people are on your payroll. It is about how many people you are building and growing with. As a solo founder, these are the most important things I’ve learned about teamwork: 𝟏. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. If they are your teammates, interests are more intimately aligned, the focus will be on growing together, and your relationships will live past the scope of projects. If you look at them as transactions, you'll be looking to wrap things up, promote profitability over performance, and they are just another fish in the sea. I can't tell you how important it is to treat your customers, your clients, your personal relationships, and your time with gratitude and love in order to protect and maintain them. If you don't, and it's all business, then you'll lose your customers, clients, relationships, and opportunities because there was no bond holding them together. 𝟐. 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥-𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐬. Build with contractors, freelancers, friends—anyone who shares the mission. Many of the most talented and ambitious people would love to work with you, but as is their nature they also want to reserve enough autonomy to do things on their agenda. Make it work for everyone. You want to work with the best, and if they aren't available on a full-time basis, take what you can get. People think they don't want to do this because they want to lock in a predictable lower rate, or because they want someone available all the time. No. What you want is to work with the best. 𝟑. 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐮𝐩. Keep your vision clear and your values visible. The difference between teammates who can't wait to see you next and teammates who are looking at other jobs and wishing they could leave if given the chance isn't money. It's about belief and purpose. I used to think that not everyone can share my belief or purpose, so it's my job to find good candidates and their job to figure out their purpose. Wrong. It's your job to be as clear as possible with your purpose and vision, and ask people to join you only if they share it. If they don't, it will be a disservice to both of you. Leadership isn’t about directing a team. It’s about making people feel like they’re part of one, even if they’re scattered across time zones.

We're closing a logo per week so far this year at Sales Assembly. We're not blessed with inbound, and we don't do traditional outbound. Here are the 3 things that have worked well for us: 1) In-person stuff If you wanna break through the noise, it's best to break through the screen. We host dinners for VPs of Sales and CROs in different cities every month. Usually 30 people at a time. These dinners arent to talk about Sales Assembly.  In fact, I actively avoid talking much about us at all. Nobody wants to spend their evenings hearing me talk about skills training.   That said, 50% of the people in the room tend to be existing clients. I'm sure they end up saying nice things about us, what we do, and the value we've brought to their GTM teams to the 50% of folks in the room who aren't current clients. So...what do we do with all of these prospects in the room? We take the opportunity to shake peoples hands and just build relationships. We'll then hop on a call a week later and see how we can add value to them. If it makes sense for them to explore Sales Assembly at that time, great. If not, we'll try to add value where we can anyway. Some of them convert quickly. Some convert 2 months later. Some 6 months later. Some never. Even if they don't end up becoming clients, at least they end up becoming friends (whether they realize it or not). 🥹 2) Social engagement When I'm talking about this, I'm talking about #samsales Consulting. Not just following Samantha's SMYKM frameworks and stuff. I'm talking about actually using their team. They provide invaluable guidance around profile optimization, content ideas, and outreach strategies. That's why we've been engaging with them over the past year. LinkedIn is one of our most productive lead channels (both in quantity of new opps and # of closed won deals), and Sam & her team have been instrumental in that. 3) Referrals Dunno what to say here. Just ask for more referrals, people. Kills me that people still don't do this. If you ask, folks will give them to you. It's really that simple. Anyway, the common thread that connects all of these is that they involve building solid, authentic relationships and, especially in the case of referrals, doing right by people. For those of y'all who are blessed with inbound, maybe explore adding one of these arrows to your quiver. They aren't hard to stand up (especially referrals). We're a small, bootstrapped company with a mid-markety sale. If we can make this stuff work, I'm sure you can too. PS - Isaiah Crossman yelled at me the other day for not doing more cold outbound. In the interest of not getting yelled at again, maybe we'll reconsider. 😬