How do your clients spend their time?
Do you know how your clients spend their time? You should. That information can help you in numerous ways. First, it will reveal their priorities, and to a large degree, their priorities are yours, too. You want to work on things that are most important to them. And knowing how the client spends her time will sometimes reveal opportunities to cross sell other services your firm offers. A lawyer I know, who was trying to schedule a meeting with a client, learned as a byproduct that the client was planning a trip to Boston. “What takes you to Boston?” asked the lawyer. “We’re thinking of acquiring a firm up there,” responded the client. The Boston office of the lawyer’s firm ended up doing the legal work associated with the purchase. If the lawyer hadn’t been curious about how the client was spending this time, this never would have happened.
Knowing how a client spend her time can also tell you when your priorities are out of sync with hers. A management consultant I once worked with couldn’t understand why a client delayed authorizing a project that would save his company over $40 million. When he finally asked the client what was holding things up, the client replied that he was currently working on two projects that would each save over $100 million. He would get to the consultant’s project once those efforts were completed and he had more time. With this knowledge, the consultant was able to shift his own priorities away from making an immediate sale.
The way a client spends her time has implications for how she interacts with us. A client who spends ten percent of her time meeting with service providers to keep abreast of what is going on in the marketplace will respond differently to your calls and requests for meetings from one who rarely does so. One who spends all his time in internal meetings will want to interact with you quite differently from one who prepares legal documents, crunches numbers, writes reports or creates drawings under deadlines.
Knowing how a client spends leisure time can also be helpful. An accountant learned that an executive he wanted to do business with teed up at the golf course at the same time every Saturday morning with three friends. The accountant, a member of the same golf club, took to hanging around the first tee at the right hour on Saturdays. Sure enough, one Saturday one of the foursome failed to show, and the executive and his friends invited the accountant to join them. The executive ultimately became a client.
So how do your clients spend their time? If you don’t know, you had better find out.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Excellent blog …
I ask clients what they like to do during the summer.
Some answer that they enjoy golf … many of these say they are not good golfers, but like to play.
I take them out to play golf in a nice setting … sometimes not even keeping score … most of the time not talking about business. By the time we are through 18 holes of embarrassment plus some good shots … and we survive, we are ready to work better together and know that if we make mistakes, we can still survive working together and being successful.
A round of golf opens the door to turning relationships into economic value.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Good blog. Taking as much honest/genuine interest in what a client does with time can be critical. But I’ve an unrelated question of style.
I’ve noticed in this blog and several recent business books an almost wholesale rejection of the traditional male pronoun “he/his” in favor of female pronouns “she/her”. Is this just a polite or PC concession to feminism — or are most rainmaker client now suddenly female? Does this not risk offending tradional/older rainmaker prospects, male and female? Maybe its regional, or the nature of my work (leveraged charitable giving) but several ladies I’ve asked say they much prefer the traditional use of english. (Of the men asked, most just roll the eyes and wag their heads in resignation, but a couple seemed a bit aggitated as what they called “reverse-sexism”.) I wonder if in our rush to appear modern and cool, we might be offending more prospects than we think?
David
June 29th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Gary
You work wonders on the golf course, so your comment warrants close attention from golfers.
Ford Harding
June 29th, 2009 at 11:28 am
David
I first encountered the issue you write of when the manuscript from my first book came back from the editor. I had used the traditional male pronoun throughout and the edited draft came back emasculated. I conducted a small survey as you have, though mine came back with a preference for balance. I have wrestled with the problem ever since with no great success.
When you refer to two hypothetical people, using two genders has the distinct advantage of making it clear which person you are talking about without a lot of clumsy or additional verbage. For no particularly good reason, I tend to make clients feminine and professionals men. (This is probably from a distinctly old-fashioned respect for women. I still hold doors for women, for example. Clients out rank professionals who serve them in matters of etiquette.) Because I often write of clients, this can result in posts, like this one, where the the female pronoun predominates.
I do have a modest proposal for resolving the whole mess. By fiat rigorously enforced with stiff fines and long jail sentences, all men should be required to always use the female pronoun and all women the male pronoun. This approach has three advantages: 1) it will force men to become sensitive to women’s issues, 2) because there are still more men in positions of authority, it will give the female pronoun a needed short-term advantage, but naturally reach a balance in the use of male and female pronouns over time as more women get promoted, and 3) it will infuriate both extreme male chauvinists and the most radical feminist by forcing them to write using the gender pronouns they abhor. What do you think?
Ford Harding
June 29th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Ford,
I think it very clever.
I’ll not beat this horse more though I suspect our zeal to give nod to trendy Cultural-Correctness might appear a bit silly in a decade. Whatever, I’m probably sooo whacked on this!
David