Power Questions to Build Clients for Life: Nine Strategies for Success

By Andrew Sobel

Use the power of questions to deepen and grow your client relationships

The right question can shift a conversation from the analytical to the emotional, from the details to the big picture, and from the past to the future. The result? Deeper client knowledge, more intimate relationships, and a clear understanding of how you can add more value. Power Questions to Build Clients for Life shows how to use strategic questions to implement nine essential clients-for-life strategies. You’ll learn:

• How to select the right clients to begin with
• Growth strategies to broaden your relationships
• Techniques for building personal relationships with your clients
• Powerful questions to help you connect in the C-Suite
• Ten questions you must ask your clients every year in order to assess your relationship health

Power Questions to Build Clients for Life gives you both the strategies and the key questions to develop trusted partnerships with your most important clients.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Apr 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781118657133

Book preview

Chapter 1

You Can Build Big Relationships with Little Questions

The auditorium is packed. The company's top 200 executives have flown in from all over the world for their annual senior management retreat. That morning I have given a speech, and I am invited to stay for another hour to hear the CEO's talk.

Standing at the podium, the CEO, Roger, has concluded his overview of the company's strategic plan. We have about 20 minutes left. I'd be happy to take questions and have some discussion. After a pause, a few hands go up.

Roger, can you go back to that slide on the forecast? one of the seated executives asks. What are the assumptions about GDP growth for next year?

Another question follows: Can you say more about the field reorganization that we implemented last spring? I'm not sure people fully understand it. I think there's still some lingering concerns about the way it was done.

Roger is being forced to review old decisions. He's being asked to parse the fine details of his financials.

And more: Roger, can you go back over the decision to outsource our benefits management?

The backward-looking, nitpicking questions go on for another 15 minutes. Roger keeps checking the clock on the wall. I can see his frustration steadily rise. I raise my hand. I don't know Roger very well—we've met a few times. But I'd like to build a relationship with him.

Yes—Andrew. You have a question?

I do. And it's a genuine one. I want to know what is really on Roger's mind. What motivates him. As you look ahead to the next year or two in your business, I ask, what are you personally most excited about?

Roger looks up. He's been hunching his shoulders, but now he stands up straight, stretching his large, six-and-a-half-foot frame. He smiles, and takes a deep breath. Well, he begins. Well, there is something. He describes an initiative that was not prominently featured in the formal plan. It's clearly the thing he is most enthusiastic about. The program he cares most about. He waxes on, now upbeat and energetic in his speech.

As we leave the auditorium, I walk with the crowd toward the door to the street. Suddenly I feel a large hand slap my back. Really—like a baseball mitt, whacking my shoulder. I turn around, ready to confront the perpetrator. It's Roger, the CEO. He is striding by me, heading out to jump in a car.

Andrew, that was an excellent question. Thank you. He's now past me, heading to the exit. He looks back and continues talking: A very revealing question. I am so surprised I can't manage anything more substantial than a smile and an Oh, sure.

Call me, were his final words as he hurried away.

And I do call him. And that is the beginning of an ongoing relationship with his company. The catalyst was a simple question that's little yet big. It was a question that shifted the conversation from the analytical to the emotional, from the details to the big picture, from the past to the future.

That day, I wasn't particularly smart or clever. I didn't try and show off my expertise. I just asked a question.

Chapter 2

The Secret to Building Clients for Life

People often ask me, What's the one, single key to developing great client relationships—to becoming a trusted advisor? I wish I had a magical answer to that question. Sometimes I think I ought to. After all, I've interviewed hundreds of executives about their most trusted relationships. I've studied many of the best professionals in the world at building clients for life, and I've written five books on the subject.

But it's like asking, What's the secret to raising children? or What's the one thing that makes a marriage last? Any single, all-encompassing answer you come up with is incomplete, and in and of itself could even be harmful. Endless love! could be a response to these two questions, but it's not so simple. We all know that love