The Art of Client Service by Robert Solomon

40 minute read

Part One: The Work

At the Start of an Assignment

1. Define Success

“You need to begin every client relationship, and every client advertising effort, with a clear understanding of what the client wants to achieve.”

“When it comes to goal setting, you should pay attention not just to your clients’ company goals, but also to their personal goals.”

“Remember that your first duty is to deliver on the clients’ company goals.”

2. Be Multilingual

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

Know how to use each and every tool at your disposal. At the start of your career, you are tasked to master and hone a set of skills which will define your style of leadership and expertise. Once you’ve mastered these skills, it’s best to branch out to what’s near you and try to learn the ropes. You won’t need to understand and master everything, but just the basic understanding of a skill will do. What’s important is you’ll know someone who is a master of these and can help you through their own mastery.

3. Live the Client’s Brand

- Know the history of the company. Know the people who work there. Observe the culture.

- Talk with other people who buy the brand. Ask them why.

- Read what the press says. Understand what Wall Street thinks. Pay attention to opinion leaders.

- Form a point of view on the company and the brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

- Always be open to new sources of information and insight. Think about the new ways your client can address a problem or capitalize on an opportunity. Present those thoughts whenever appropriate and in whatever form and forum are most effective for your client.

At the end of it all, you would want your client to be confident that you can represent them anywhere. Today, it’s not just enough to be good at what you’re doing to land you a business. Business is all about building rapport and relationships with your clients and this can be done if they are confident that you are thinking what’s best for them.

4. Agree on a Strategy, a Budget, and a Schedule

Be aligned in everything that you need to do and want to do. Clients love to get everything that they think is available to them, until they can’t. As the one providing for the client, there should be a clear boundary or agreement on what the client can and cannot do within a set budget and schedule. This will help in solidifying your client’s expectations and keep your clients at bay for the whole project.

5. Always Manage Client Expectations from the Outset

“I did two things wrong: First, I missed the client’s signals about his lack of full endorsement of the choice of illustrator and the associated cost. Second, I didn’t manage the client’s expectations about what the finished illustration would look like, and how it would differ from the creative director’s sketch.”

“Manage your client expectations from the outset. Make sure your clients understand how you and your colleagues approach a given assignment: What the steps are. What the agency will deliver at each step. When they will see the work, and in what form. How to interpret the storyboard or comp. Who will present the work, and where you would like to conduct the meeting.”

“Listen carefully for client concerns, even when they are not stated overtly. Especially when they are not stated overtly. Ask questions. Probe for answers. Draw the client out.”

“If you observe and listen to your client, you can do better than I did.”

6. Take the Word Brief Seriously

Brief - A one-pager that summarizes all the key points, objectives, recommendations, and actions for all the stakeholders involved.

“The key to achieving brevity lies not in the initial writing, but in rewriting to distill the brief to its essence. There should be no wasted words. If the brief is not clear, then the client won’t embrace it, the creative team won’t follow it, and the work will suffer because of it.”

“A good brief is critical to achieving great creative work. And a good brief is brief.”

7. Know When to Look It Up; Know When to Make It Up

“You can spend weeks, even months, immersed in research, but insights often come in a flash of recognition. One clear insight is worth a thousand data points. Of course, you need to do the heavy lifting in the market place — the customer research, the competitive analysis, the field visits — but there comes a time when you should put the research away and go with your instinct.”

8. Make the Creative Team Partners in the Brief

“You get the strategy right by recognizing that developing the strategy is a team sport, and everyone is a critical team member.”

- It helps the creative team become immersed in the assignment and take ownership of it. The creative team’s active participation ensures that the brief that emerges from the development process actually will assist in the creation of effective advertising.

- The creative team will help unearth issues or gaps in knowledge, which gives you an early opportunity to address the issues or fill the knowledge gaps.

- The creative team will help uncover insights or help make connections that otherwise might be missed. Writers and art directors generally see things from a perspective different from yours. You want to capture that perspective early on in the creative process, during the development of the brief that will drive the work.

9. In Writing the Brief, Provide the Client’s Perspective

Make yourself an expert on your client's products, people, and culture. Here’s how to do that:

Spend as much time in your client’s offices as you do your own: Know the in order to understand your client, you sometimes have to be one of them and immerse yourself

Get out in the field: Get the 10/20/70 rule where 10% of what you learn comes from the materials you read. 20% comes from the people you work with that help you. 70% of what you know comes from experience.

Spend time with your clients away from the office: Get to know your clients in and out of the office. This builds a relationship as well as opportunities you won’t be able to see in the office.

Read the trades: Read your client’s annual reports and understand their business compared to others.

Watch the competition: Gather insights as to how your client’s competition works so you can do a better job in helping them stay ahead.

Be a customer: Buy the products and experience being a customer. There is a powerful insight gained if you are at the other end of the receiving line.

10. Get the Client’s Input and Approval on the Brief

Brief Amnesia: Amnesia about approving a creative brief. It happens when your client approves a brief, but then after development suddenly forgets that they’ve approved it.

This happens a lot especially if your client is managing multiple briefs and projects at the same time. They may skim through a few parts of your proposal, but at the end of the day, they won’t remember approving or going ahead with the project until it’s there.

One way to overcome this issue is by making your clients add in their inputs on the project proposed. This way, they’ll be more accountable and have a shared insight as to how they can have their personal touch on the turnout.

Here’s how you do it from the book:

- Make sure the client does a full-scale download at the start of the assignment through a face-to-face meeting.

- Get 3 things from your client:

— Clear statement of what the client wants to accomplish with the project

— All the facts related to the product or service that is the subject of the project

— Any mandatories the vendor must take into account in developing the project

- Take the finished brief to the client and run the whole thing step-by-step, then revise if needed.

11. Ask, “What Do My Colleagues Need to Create Great Advertising?” Then Deliver It

Be there for your colleagues in times of need. It may not be giving them the exact help that they need, but providing emotional support and encouragement will help them in realizing that they are not doing their projects alone. This will help in establishing better work relationships and relationships outside of your work.

Looking at Creative

12. Always Ask, “Does This Advertising Pass the ‘So What’ Test?”

The “So What” Test actually lets you in on an important task to find the relevance of your work/project in other people’s lives. If you are not able to point out which pains your project is trying to decrease or cover, then there’s no point in continuing your project at all.

13. Don’t Fall in Love with Good Work

“Good Work is on strategy. It’s smart, respects the viewer, and is well-crafted. You can produce it on time and on budget. Your client can green light it. It makes you comfortable.”

“Good Work is the enemy of great work. If you are satisfied with work that is merely good, you will never deliver great work for your clients.”

“Great Work like good work, is on strategy. But it’s beyond smart; it’s something else. Something rare and special. It doesn’t just respect the viewer, it connects with the viewer.”

“Great Work might make you uncomfortable. It might be something startlingly new. It might take risks. You might not be able to produce it on time or within budget, and your client might not readily say yes to it.”

“If the work is truly great, and right for your client, your job is to support it and to help your client see its potential and choose to buy it.”

14. Don’t Fall for Bad Work

“You need to explain why the work doesn’t deliver on the strategy, why it will fail to engage viewers, why it doesn’t deliver the message clearly, or whatever else might be wrong with it. It’s not enough to simply say, “I don’t know why, but I just don’t like it,” or “The client won’t buy it.””

15. Choice is Good

“It’s better to have more ideas within your team before the client presentation, than to go to the client with only the thinnest of presentations.”

- Before you present to the client, agree among yourselves what the agency recommendation is among the options, why it is the recommendation, and why the others are not.

- Decide who will speak for the agency on the recommendation

- Make sure you would be proud to execute any of the concepts you show.

- Eliminate any straw meen before the presentation. If it isn’t good enough to execute, it isn’t good enough to present.

16. Fight about the Work with Colleagues, For for it with Clients

“You and your colleagues won’t always agree. You will argue; this often is part of arriving at the right solution.. It’s fine to fight about the work in private, but once you’ve agreed on what to present to the client, never throw the work, or your colleagues, under the bus.”

17. Do Not Sell

“Too often, a creative-driven agency will try to force their own ideas on a client, rather than working in a spirit of collaboration. It takes a very strong account person to maintain the client’s interest, and not take the easy way out by simply selling work.”

“The account person who has established credibility with a client is in the best position to challenge, when necessary, that client’s assumptions, demands, and opinions.”

18. Bring Your Clients into the Process Early

“Advertising isn;t just about collaboration within the walls of the agency; it’s about collaborating with the client.”

“The agency is going to work incredibly hard on this, but we’re going to ask you to work hard with us. We need you to be actively involved. We can’t do great work for you unless you help us.”

19. Respect What it Takes to Do Great Creative

“No matter what we presented, no matter how great, how good, or how average it was, this client invariably expressed respect for the work and the people who made it.”

“My job was to improve the work, not approve it.”

“While it takes emotional commitment to make creative work, it takes emotional detachment to make it better.”

“If you’re looking at a range of ideas and some are killers, some have potential, and some need to be killed, start with the killer ideas. Acknowledge them, praise them, and explain what you love about them and why.

Then with the ideas that have potential, start with what’s right about each of them. Praise what’s working. Then talk about what’s not working and why. Suggest how these ideas can be made better.

Tackle the ideas that deserve early death last. Even here, with ideas you think are marginal at best, there probably is something you like about each of them. Find that one thing and acknowledge it before explaining why you think the ideas should be abandoned in favor of the stronger ones.”

Making Presentations

20. Client Presentations Are as Important As New Business Presentations

Always remember to treat every client presentation, whether they are old or new clients, as new business presentations. Reason for this is because you want to show your clients that your team is consistent and capable in providing their needs in every single project. One other reason is because you’d want to also learn from your previous presentations and provide a much better one for each and every client.

“A good presentation is not an accident. It requires proper casting, with an eye to who can best deliver the material. It requires thoughtful preparation, with particular attention paid to anticipating client concerns and how best to address them. Above all, it requires sufficient time to rehearse, to ensure everyone understands his or her role and how to play it.”

“Rehearsal helps you discover holes in your argument. It helps you anticipate the questions and concerns the client might raise. It polishes yourdelivery. It allows you to work out the hand-offs among team members. It builds your confidence.”

21. No Understudies on Presentation Day

I’ve heard a saying from one of my managers and mentors recently, “The best presentation is yourself. Your slides are just a support.” Presentations for the client are very important in any business review as well as the person the client trusts with it. Only you are capable of presenting your work to anyone else as you will know it 100% and only you are able to fully convince your clients of the same.

“You are not only presenting work, you are representing the agency. Every presentation offers an opportunity to validate the client’s confidence in the agency, or to undermine it. So there should be no understudies on presentation day. That’s when the veterans, the stars, should perform. That’s what the client has a right to expect. That is what the client is paying for.”

22. No Scenery Chewers, No Dead Bodies

“Advertising is about collaboration. So is the presentation of advertising. It is not a one-person show; it’s an ensemble performance. There should be no scenery chewers who have all the lines, and who completely dominate the stage.”

“If a person doesn’t have a role, he or she shouldn’t be in the room. You don’t want the clients asking why they are there.”

23. Be Prepared to Throw Away the Script

This goes in-line with what my manager has talked about in preparing for an effective business presentation. Be prepared to throw away your script and never take it personally. One of our lead managers should be a great example of this. While setting up a 1:1 meeting with him, you’re supposed to expect that you will be walking back and forth outside the office for 15 to 30 minutes for that meeting. No slides, no presentations. Just you and what’s on your mind.

“Just because you’ve prepared to present a certain way doesn’t mean you’ll get to do it exactly the way you intended. Clients have their own agendas, and you have to be ready to bend yours to theirs.”

24. The More Informal You Want to Be, the More Rehearsed You Need To Be

Some of the best professors I’ve had in school are the ones who can present in class without bringing anything. These are professors who bring only themselves and their chalks that they will need to write on the board.

“If you’re talking with your audience, rather than presenting to it — without computer slides, without boards or notes — you are working without a net. It’s harder and riskier, but it’s often more effective. In some cases, it’s necessary.”

“What you choose to say is most important, buy how you say it is a close second. The ability to talk about the set-up with a combination of confidence and informality tends to work best.”

25. Know Your Opening Cold

Don’t panic at the start of your presentation. A good start can often lead to a good finish, especially in a presentation. Your confidence builds up as long as you start on the right foot.

“If you’re going to falter, it is likely to happen in your opening, and a screw-up in the opening is likely to compound itself. YOu feel bad about the mistake, it throws you off, and you make another mistake. Before you know it, you’re tripping all over yourself.”

“After you nail your opening, you’ll relax. When you relax, the rest of your presentation will flow. You will enjoy yourself. It will show, and the presentation will be a success.”

26. Better to Have it and Not Need It, Than Need It and Not Have It

My manager had recently shared a presentation from a colleague of mine in a critical meeting to gather inputs from key decision-makers for a particular project. While my manager was presenting, we could see how concise the whole slides were. Mainly, what the person needed, recommended, and needed help on. After presenting, the lead team would often ask about background or supporting evidence from the presenter. It was a great thing that the appendix of the presentation contained twice the slides than the original presentation to support the facts discussed.

“Umbrella Theory” where if it looks like rain, carry an umbrella and there won’t be any. The theory applies not just to rain, but to account management. The idea is to anticipate what might happen and prepare for it. Chances are it won’t happen, but if it does, you’ll be ready. It’s the way to stay out of the rain in dealing with clients.”

“Remember that it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not to have it. Even if you have to walk into the meeting with a shopping bag bursting with background material.”

27. Support What You Say

Working in a corporate set-up, I often find myself facing clients that would talk about the root cause of issues we are having with our application. In most cases, they are answerable and you can get away with a quick response on a thought-process. On other days, you will be having clients that will really know what they want to see in the application and intelligent guesses just aren’t enough.

“We just assumed the client would agree with us. So when the client asked us for some data or research to support our recommendation, all we could do is offer more opinions. We found ourselves saying ‘we think this’ and ‘we feel that’ when what the client wanted to hear is ‘here’s what we know, and here are the facts to back it up.’ Our lack of supporting data made us look unprofessional.”

“If there’s an opinion that won’t stand up to a client’s challenge, make sure you go back and build a case for it. If you find you can;t build a case for that opinion, you’re better off keeping it to yourself.”

28. Listening Is More Important Than Talking

“We came off as arrogant and tone deaf. I later learned the client felt browbeaten and excluded. If, at the end of your presentation, you and your colleagues have done all the talking, you will know that you have failed.”

“The goal is to be effective, and that means engaging the client, as early and as often as possible, in a discussion that leads to a sharing of ideas and opinions, and that ultimately leads to a meeting of the minds.”

“In one of the best new business pitches I ever participated in, my colleagues and I never actually got to present. We certainly prepared, but the client preferred to talk, and we let him. It led to a freewheeling, wide-ranging discussion. We went well over our allotted time. It was the presentation I never made.”

Running a Meeting

29. Start on Time, End on Time

One important part of work is respecting other people’s time by showing up and ending meetings on time. This goes for other occasions or relationships as well.

“If it’s your meeting, start it on time. If it’s someone else’s meeting, show up on time. If the meeting leader isn’t there, or isn’t ready to start, give him/her ten minutes, then leave. Do that a couple of times and people will get the message.”

“The idea is to respect your colleagues’ time, which allows you to ask for the same in return.”

30. Have an Agenda and Stick to It (Most of the Time)

The best part about attending a meeting is knowing what the leader will be talking about. The worst part is not knowing that you will be asked to talk about a topic you haven’t prepared. Having an agenda gives both you and the participants a chance to prepare and not waste anyone’s time by going around with the topic at hand.

“This is particularly important when preparing for client meetings. You want your client’s input before you get in the conference room. Nothing undermines effeciency worse than convening a group, only to find there is disagreement over the meeting’s purpose and content.”

“The agenda provides focus and helps keep you on course. The agenda should be your guide, but don’t let it control you — you should control it.”

31. Be Brief, Be Bright, Be Gone

“The way to shorten those meetings and conversations is to come to the table prepared. Know what you want the outcome of the meeting, the conversation, or the presentation to be. Say what you have to say quickly, clearly, and concisely. Don’t waste your clients’ or colleagues’ time.”

32. Lead the Meeting, Don’t Tyrannize It

“Your role is to guide the discussion, to keep everyone on track, and to ensure you efficiently accomplish what needs to get done, while leaving room for productive detours and digressions. You want to make sure all voices are heard, and actively seek participation from those who are more inclined to listen than contribute.”

“If anything is unclear, your job is to make sure it becomes clear by probing the other people in the room or on the phone. It’s important to grasp not only the text of what people are saying, but also the unspoken subtext.”

“Every meeting should have a well-defined ending, where you recap any decisions reached, next steps to be taken, and who owns them. This requires not only that you listen well, but also that you take careful notes.”

33. Always Follow Up

“I meet with a client to go over a creative brief or something similar. We discuss, negotiate, agree. Or so I think. The next time we meet, I hear ‘That’s not what we agreed to.”

One important takeaway here is that for every meeting, there should be a clear next step and clear minutes on who will be doing these steps. This will ensure all participants are aligned with the expectations and no one misses out on anything.

“That’s why it’s critical to follow up every meeting, every call, every decision. Never assume there is closure; secure closure. Immediately after the meeting concludes, follow up with an email conference report. You should do this for all meetings, but it is crucial for client meetings, because it provides an audit trail. Should a dispute arise later in the process, the conference reports will quickly confirm who agreed to what and when.”

Part Two: Relationships

“No, Thursday’s out. How about never — is never good for you?”

Attitude

34. Judgement Overrides and Rule

“The deeper challenge is to have the judgement needed to do and say exactly the right thing in exactly the right way to exactly the right person at exactly the right time.”

35. Credit Is for Creative Directors

“If you’re worried about getting the credit, I suggest you think about another line of work. As an account exec, your job is to give the credit — to your clients, to your colleagues — not to take it.”

Give credit where credit is due. Don’t take credit of other people’s work and don’t force to get those credits. In the end, you are one team, and if the clients acknowledges the team, then it acknowledges you as well.

36. You Cannot Lead an Account from Your Desk

“That’s how I would fill my calendar. In between the meetings I scheduled I would walk the halls to say hello to my other contacts. Many times I’d get pulled into an office for an impromptu conversation.”

“Account work is fieldwork. You need to visit your clients regularly, no matter if they are on the next street or in the next time zone. Phone calls and e-mails don’t replace face time.”

37. Avoid the Dark Side

“Your job is to build a strong client relationship on behalf of your agency, not on behalf of yourself. You do not own the client relationship; you are merely the keeper of it.”

“You’ll be known as a person of integrity. In the context of a long career, that is far more valuable than any short-term gain you might derive from an account you are able to transport to a new agency.”

38. Great Work Wins Business; a Great Relationship Keeps It

“We thought if we did great work, the relationship stuff would take care of itself. I don’t mean relationship like doing lunch. I mean relationship as in doing all of the things, and being all of the things, that build trust with the client. Listening. Asking the right questions. Anticipating and solving problems. Meeting commitments. Managing expectations. Eliminating unpleasant surprises. Taking ownership. Acting with integrity.”

“A relationship is like a brand; you have to invest in it, and understand that it gets built over time. You na’t rush it; even the slightest hint of insincerity, dishonesty, or manipulation will kill a relationship before it has a chance to develop.”

“Advertising is about the work, but remember that advertising is a business. Business is about relationships, and a great relationship allows great work to flourish.”

39. We are Smarter Together Than We Are Alone

No man is an island.

Take a combination of all the brains in the group and the unique ideas of each and every individual in your team, you’ll definitely come up with a great project at the end of the day — or you don’t. The most important part in any project is to see a team working together to accomplish one goal.

“To get your colleagues to hang together, remind them that the enemy is the competition. Te enemy is never having enough time to do the work. The enemy is whatever stands in the way of making great work.”

“Remind your colleagues that you need one another in order to create the best possible advertising in the most efficient and cost-effective way. Remind them you are smarter together than you are alone.”

“Above all, remind them that if you don’t hang together and help one another, you will hang separately, soon after the client replaces your agency with another.”

Communication

40. Make No Commitment without Consultation

We all take pressure differently from one another and having a angry client definitely puts a lot of pressure on our plate. There will be times when your clients would want certain deliverables to be on their hand at an impossible rate, but don’t commit to any deadlines if you’re not sure how long it can be done.

As tempting as it sounds to hear your clients pleased with a deadline that you’ve agreed on without consultation, it will most definitely backfire on you and both your team members and the client will not take your decision-making capabilities in the future. You’ll lose their trust if you don’t deliver on the results you’ve promised.

“Even with seemingly simple requests, a unilateral yes is not the right answer. It does a terrible disservice to everyone — your colleagues, yourself, and most of all, your client.”

Try answering like this: “I think it will be fine, but give me a minute to check, then get back to you.”

“Go to your colleagues, gain consensus, then get back to your client, without delay. The client needs an answer, quickly, that all of you can live with.”

41. There is No No in Your Client Vocabulary

“Discuss, negotiate, collaborate, solve the problem together. Even difficult clients will usually accept a reasonable solution, especially when you’ve made every effort to give them what they want.”

Understand that if the clients think you’re prioritizing them and giving your all to make sure they get what they want, they’ll not escalate or turn on you. Instead, they’ll try their best to work together with you in order for both of you to achieve your goals.

42. Before you Tell Clients or Colleagues What You Think, Tell them What You Know

“Remember that your job is to be an expert source on the business — a source not just of opinions, but of facts. So get the facts on the table first. What you know that has bearing on the discussion.”

“Everyone else has opinions, but as the facts you present demonstrate, yours is an informed one.”

43. Before You Give Clients What They Need, First Give Them What They Want

Similar to giving a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in a start-up case, clients would also want their most pressing needs addressed first before anything else. In an operations standpoint, it could mean delivering on the expected outcome and then finding any root cause affecting the issues you have at hand.

“This is the problem I need you to address.” To “Here’s how I want my problem solved; now go execute some advertising.”

“Do not give in to the temptation to save clients from themselves. If they make a decision, if they give you direction, respect what they say. Be prepared to give them what they’ve asked for. However, if what they’ve asked for is wrong, or if it falls short in any way, you have an obligation to go above and beyond what’s called for.”

“After you’ve done everything possible to execute thee client’s direction effectively, you should present other possibilities. Make sure you give the client what they wanted first, then show the client what you think they need.”

44. How to Write a Letter of Proposal

(A) It’s an agreement, not a contract: So don’t try to over-complicate everything by hiring lawyers and writers to come up with the best proposal in the world.

(B) Write the way you speak: Don’t use complicated words. It just makes everything so much harder.

(C) Tell them what you are going to tell them: Writing a proposal doesn’t ned to be elaborate. It doesn’t need a word count for it to be a proposal. Write what you need to write and get your message across effectively.

(D) Use short paragraphs: No one likes reading long paragraphs only to find themselves re-reading them again because they got confused. Make everything digestible.

(E) Write it, then rewrite it: The key to giving a great letter of proposal is to make it clear and concise. The easier it is to read, the better.

I remember how P&G used to write these kinds of letters — through One-Pagers. The idea is to write a whole letter of proposal, recommendation, and report in just a piece of paper highlighting all the major points needed to be discussed. This way, everyone reading the paper will be able to digest the document and be able to decide on the next steps after that.

45. The Zen of Powerpoint

(A) Start with a template you create and own.

(B) If you’re confident and the audience is receptive, open with a joke.

(D) Think in Headlines: The ones where your audience can remember what you’ve said.

(E) Be Visual: the less words, the better.

(F) Produce your slides: Try to do a slide animation inside your slides to make it seem like it has a life.

(G) Handwriting helps: Try drawing your slides by hand and scanning them. It may be faster.

(H) With a presenter or without: “Many of the best presentations serve as visual support for the presenter. In cases like these, slides should be a prop, not the central focus.”

“Presentations like these must also stand on their own, without a speaker. They must tell a story yet still be structured like a PPT.”

47. In a HIgh-Tech World, Be Low-Tech

“And therein lies the problem. As voice mail and email replace live, in-person contact, you find yourself more in touch but less connected with the people you serve. So in a business that is all about the 21st Century when it comes to communicating. I urge you to remain firmly last century. Use Hi-Tech to help, not replace, face-to-face.”

It’s easy to get lost with tons of emails, chats, and voice calls throughout the day that you forget where your real job lies.

Trouble

48. Always Think Endgame

“Working with clients and colleagues is a never-ending process of negotiation and compromise. Always think endgame. Remember that an argument won can become an account lost.”

49. No Surprises about Money or Time

‘I made a commitment to myself that I would always adise clients up front about the cost and timing implications of their decisions, so they could make fully informed decisions.”

“By doing so, you avoid the perils of scope creep, when a project grows beyond what initially was planned.”

As part of the DevOps team handling new developments for applications inside my company, I find this problem to be also personal. A few clients would come up with a business requirements document stating the needed changes or developments for the application, only to find out that the scope of those requirements have changed after getting the right cost and time estimations.

This is a problem to both you (the one who will be delivering the development) and the client (who has promised their business a certain money and time). If both parties are not aligned with the scope of work, then after finishing the project, both parties will face issues on their respective companies.

50. Deal with Trouble Head-On

“When something goes awry, get to your client with a ful explanation of what happened and why. Whenever possible, be prepared to outline one or more ways to address the problem. Move quickly; you want to deliver the bad news to the clients. You don’t want them to hear it from another source.”

“Above all, never; ever lie to your client. Once you’re caught in a lie, your single greatest asset — your credibility — will be gone forever.”

51. If Things Go Wrong, Take the Blame

Ownership. Every decision should have an owner that will take the responsibility if something were to happen. This is very important as it shows leadership and confidence in the decisions the person makes.

The best account people have such a profound sense of responsibility that they literally find a way to blame themselves for anything that goes wrong. - Steve Gardner

52. What Happens When I Screw Up?

“Do not ever assume anything, and never, ever be as glib or as cavalier as I was about money and budgeting. Check and recheck your claims, then check them again. Above all, remember your own advice, and follow it.”

Socializing

53. Remember the Personal Side of Business Relationships

“If you’re responsible for conducting a social event with your client, make sure you take it as seriously as any business meeting. Make sure you plan every detail, to ensure you get the maximum benefit from the event.”

“Generally follow the rule of having no more than two people for every client in attendance. You want the people to focus on the client, not on each other.

54. Take On the Coloration of Your Clients, But Do Not Compromise Your Character

“If you’re going to be good at account work, you ned to be insterested in whatever your client is interested in. That means being a vocarious consumer of pop culture.”

“No matter how friendly you become, remember that clients are still clients, not friends, and edit yourself accordingly.”

“Client service requires you to be flexible, open-minded, and able to handle the unexpected with grace. It also requires you to never compromise your integrity, honesty, or sense of fairness.”

55. No Matter How Social it Becomes, Never Forget That It’s Business

“No matter how many dinners you attend, no matter how friendly you become with your client, never mistake your relationship for personal friendship. Never forget that the person sitting across from you is always your client.”

“So watch what you drink, what how you behave, and watch out what you say. No tales out of school, no alcohol talking.”

I personally don’t like this point made from the book. Everything seems so superficial when you think about it. If clients are clients at the end of the day, should we really treat them so differently? That means we can’t be our true selves and all these relationship-building gatherings have motives.

When you think about it, it goes back to people just use each other and it doesn’t justify how a relationship can really be formed if, at the back of your mind, you think it is all just business.

56. Once a Client, Always a Client

“If you’re my client and are open to staying in contact after we’re no longer working together, I’ll make sure we do. If there’s a way I can be of help, I’ll do my best.”

“The client whom I had lunch with is now a friend. He’s recommended me to possible clients and potential employers. I’ve done the same for him. As i said, he’s not likely to be my client again, but it doesn’t matter.

Part Three: Style and Substance

57. Make an Investment in Your Personal Style

“I suggest you do what it takes to geet the styling details right, from a decent haircut to a decent pair of shoes, to everything in between. It’s more about investing time and attention than dollars and cents.”

(A) If you’re meeting with a client, adapt the client’s dress code.

(B) Casual is not code for slovenly.

(D) Think about wearing a suit, but dress down a bit.

(E) Suede is great.

(F) Invest in a few suits that are the best you can afford.

(G) If your cclient is out of town, or if you have to travel, buy clothes that travel.

(H) Ask for style help if you need it.

(I) Think in terms of a uniform.

58. Invest Some Time (Again) in These Books

Some book recommendations from the author:

(A) The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

(B) Watch This Listen Up Click Here by Bernice Kanner

(D) Juicing the Orange by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn

(E) The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley

One More Thing

59. Remember to Say ‘Thank You’

“People always seemed willing to go the extra mile for him, though. There were lots of reasons, but I’m convinced one of them was that he regularly acknowledged the contributions of his staff.”