Connecting with Clients: For stronger, more rewarding and longer-lasting client relationships

By Paul Cowan

CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS
Finding some clients difficult to understand?
Confused when they say one thing but mean another?
Need better, more useful feedback?
Sometimes feel on the back-foot?
Have trouble managing client expectations?
Wonder why they seem impossible to please?
Concerned about being blind-sided by unexpected client loss?

THIS BOOK IS YOUR LIFELINE
Connecting with Clients contains new ideas derived from the world’s leading relationship experts
Insights from over 500,000 pieces of client feedback worldwide
With tips and guidance from an adman, organisational change agent, couples’ counsellor and co-founder of The Client Relationship Consultancy
Dip into short chapters and discover a valuable insight on every page

REJUVENATE YOUR CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS
With the help of this book, you will be able to:
Evaluate your client relationships and diagnose issues
Recognise your part in a problem
Obtain useful and clear feedback
Understand, relate to and communicate with your clients
Manage yourself and your team members
Get the best from your clients so that they get the best from you

CONNECTING WITH CLIENTS WILL SAVE YOU TIME, EFFORT AND MONEY AND MAKE LIFE MORE ENJOYABLE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harriman House
• Release date: Mar 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9780857198600

Paul Cowan

Paul Cowan is a relationship specialist. He had a successful career in leading international advertising agencies and opened his own agency. Fascinated by the effect of the interplay of internal and client relationships he studied at the University of Surrey Business School and Metanoia/Middlesex University, becoming a change agent and psychotherapist. He worked with individuals and couples and consulted with teams and organisations. He specialises in client relationships and works internationally to facilitate change between agencies and their clients. He co-founded the Client Relationship Consultancy and the Customer Relationship Consultancy. This is his first book.

Book preview

CONTENTS

CONNECTING WITH CLIENTS

Tomorrow’s client relationships

AS YOU USE THIS BOOK, REMEMBER THE PRINCIPLE OF MARGINAL GAINS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALREADY LISTENING. But Not Hearing.

ANNUAL REVIEWS. What’s Not to Like?

AVIATE, NAVIGATE, COMMUNICATE. Managing More In Less Time.

BAD NEWS STICKS.

BEST BOSS. WORST BOSS. The Importance of Emotional Intelligence.

Self-awareness

Self-management

Social awareness

Relationship management

BRILLIANT BASICS.

BULLSHIT. The Fastest Way to Undermine Your Relationships.

BURN CALORIES, BUILD RELATIONSHIPS, CREATE NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND ENJOY A COFFEE. The Benefits of Walking the Corridors.

CALL YOUR CLIENTS EVERY DAY AND KEEP THE OTHER AGENCIES AWAY.

CHANGE BLINDNESS. How To Drift Into Trouble.

CLEAN LANGUAGE. How To Understand What Your Client Means. And How To Help Them Understand What They Really Mean.

COMMUNICATION IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD. The Impact on Us and Our Client Relationships.

1. Communication is a surprisingly complex process.

2. Virtual presence is useful. But not that good.

Effect on us

Practical considerations

Impact on relationships

Practical considerations

CRITICAL VOICE IN YOUR HEAD? Four Liberating Questions.

DAVID OGILVY’S ADVICE FOR CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS.

EFFECTIVE LISTENING.

Some of the barriers to effective listening

Listening styles

EMAIL. The Everyday Opportunity to Miscommunicate With Your Colleagues and Clients.

EVERYTHING IS OK. Is Your Client Telling the Whole Truth? Diagnostic Inquiry.

You believe that the client feels negatively

You believe the client feels positively about the agency

EXCELLENCE OR WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?

EXIT INTERVIEW YOUR CLIENTS. It’s Never Too Late to Get Feedback.

EXTRAVERT OR INTROVERT? Getting the Best From Yourself and Others.

Practical implications in any type of business

Finding your preference

FEEDBACK OR FEEDFORWARD. Why Look Back When You Can Look Forward?

GLOBAL ACCOUNT GAIN, LOCAL OFFICE PAIN. Forced Relationships.

Here’s what to do

Low local agency income and high client expectations?

GOOD WORK IS NOT ENOUGH. Care In Relationships.

Meetings

Information

Communication

Stay close

Think ahead

HIDDEN COMPLAINTS WILL BITE YOUR ARSE IF YOU MISS THEM.

HOW TO ALIENATE YOUR CLIENTS. Top Tips From Real Life.

INTUITION. Aka Trust Your Gut.

JUST PICK UP THE F*****G PHONE.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS.

MEETINGS. Meetings. Meetings.

Reduce meeting time by 10%

Ban laptops and mobiles

Outcomes not agendas

Mood

Start in silence

Stand-up meetings

Walking meetings

Manage the room

Get feedback. Give feedback.

Length and start time

The biggest irritant

Recurring meetings. Or any meeting.

MICRO-EVENTS. How They Form a Narrative.

Oct 2019, Boston

MINDSET. Fixed or Growth?

MISTAKES AND LEARNING GO TOGETHER.

The four stages of competence, or levels of learning

NEVER GIVE UP. There is Always Another Option.

ONE MEETING. Two Contrasting Realities.

OPENING THE JOHARI WINDOW.

The open quadrant

The blind quadrant

The hidden quadrant

The unknown quadrant

Getting diagnostic with the Johari Window

Teams, clients and agencies

OPTIMISM BIAS. How to Feel Good and Make Poor Decisions.

OWNERSHIP. Aka a Sense of Agency.

Merger?

Holding-company building?

Only four and a half

PARENT, ADULT OR CHILD? Ego States – The Hidden Dynamic Affecting Your Relationships.

The ego states

The Parent ego state

The Adult ego state

The Child ego state

Transactions

Ego states in client-agency relationships

PARTNERSHIP WITH YOUR CLIENTS?

PEOPLE. Too Important to Leave to the HR Team.

PERCEPTIONS ARE REALITY.

PROBLEM A AND PROBLEM B. Why Agencies Get Hired for the Work and Fired for the Relationship. And the Real Reason that Emma and Jason are in Couples Counselling.

Problem A: The tasks at hand

Problem B: The underlying relationship

The problem with Problem B

What can we learn from Emma and Jason?

PSYCHOLOGICAL GAMES.

Why don’t you – Yes, but

Blemish Blemish

Now I’ve got you

See what you made me do

Gotcha

RED ZONE OR BLUE ZONE?

It’s your choice

REDUNDANCY EFFECT. What Happens When You Overload Your Client’s Mind in a Pitch or Presentation.

SELF-DEVELOPMENT AND PERSONAL GROWTH. Once You Know Something About Yourself, You Can’t Unknow It. That Leads to Growth.

Autobiography in Five Chapters

SEPARATED BY A COMMON LANGUAGE. Why You and Your Client May Use the Same Words But Mean Different Things.

Adaptors

Innovators

STOP MOANING. Start Motivating.

TARGET FIXATION. How to Avoid It Hurting You, Killing You or Simply Wasting Your Time, Energy and Money.

TEAM CHANGE. The Masters and Disasters.

THE AGENCY DOESN’T LISTEN. Real Clients. In Their Own Words.

Hearing but not acting. Aka, failing to step into the clients’ shoes.

Perceptual positions

And when agencies do listen...

THE FINGER OF BLAME. Easily Done in a Pressurised Agency World.

THE HOLOGRAM. Understanding a Client Organisation.

Meaning making with the hologram

A brief encounter

THE SOUND RELATIONSHIP HOUSE.

Tank of Goodwill

The contractual foundations

The seven relationship pillars

THE TELEPHONE LIST. Overcoming Avoidance, the Easy Way.

THE UNWRITTEN CONTRACT WITH YOUR NEW CLIENT. It’s Psychological.

THE VIRUS INFECTING YOUR CLIENT TEAM. Contagious, Airborne and Damaging to Health. And Spread by Even the Most Junior Client.

THE WORKING ALLIANCE. Aka the 60-Second Relationship Check.

TRAINING YOUR CLIENTS. And Possibly Your Partner.

TRUST. You know it when you feel it.

1. Reliability or trust?

2. Who is doing the trusting?

3. Development of trust

4. Blanket trust?

5. Impact of trust

6. Trust or control; two routes to confidence.

7. Media, creative and other agencies. Global and local accounts.

TZUR NSTINK, SHITAK KHOSINK. Let’s Sit Crooked But Talk Straight.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CLIENT’S ORGANISATION. Use a Metaphor.

The client. Organisation as machine.

Agency. Organisation as organism.

WASH UPS. Get the Dirt Out Before It Sticks.

WHAT YOU LOOK FOR YOU WILL FIND. A Buddhist Tale.

WHEN THE S*** HITS THE FAN. The Importance of Staying Calm When Things Are Hot.

WHO ARE YOU? An Opportunity to Stop Wasting Your Energy.

Consulting room. London. 2007.

Singapore. 2012.

WHY CLIENT-AGENCY RELATIONSHIPS ARE ALWAYS UNSTABLE. Hello Agency Theory.

Issue one

Issue two

Issue three

Issue four

WHY RELATIONSHIPS HAVE BECOME INCREASINGLY TRANSACTIONAL.

YOUR CLIENT IS NOT CRAZY. He is Just Different From You.

YOUR CLIENT SPEAKS. You Remember It Differently.

YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT.

ZZZZZZZZ. Staying Alert With the Ever-So-Dull Client.

AND FINALLY. This Book Could Not Have Happened Without…

NOTES AND REFERENCES

CONNECTING WITH CLIENTS.

AS YOU USE THIS BOOK REMEMBER THE PRINCIPLE OF MARGINAL GAINS

ALREADY LISTENING. But Not Hearing.

ANNUAL REVIEWS. What’s Not to Like?

AVIATE, NAVIGATE, COMMUNICATE. Managing More in Less Time.

BAD NEWS STICKS.

BEST BOSS. WORST BOSS. The Importance of Emotional Intelligence.

BRILLIANT BASICS.

BULLSHIT. The Fastest Way to Undermine your Relationships.

CALL YOUR CLIENTS EVERY DAY AND KEEP THE OTHER AGENCIES AWAY.

CHANGE BLINDNESS. How To Drift Into Trouble.

CLEAN LANGUAGE. How To Understand What Your Client Means. And How To Help Them Understand What They Really Mean.

COMMUNICATION IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD. The Impact on Us and Our Client Relationships.

CRITICAL VOICE IN YOUR HEAD? Four Liberating Questions.

DAVID OGILVY’S ADVICE FOR CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS.

EFFECTIVE LISTENING.

EMAIL. The Everyday Opportunity to Miscommunicate With Your Colleagues and Clients.

EVERYTHING IS OK. Is Your Client Telling the Whole Truth? Diagnostic Inquiry.

EXCELLENCE OR WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?

EXIT INTERVIEW YOUR CLIENTS. It’s Never Too Late to Get Feedback.

EXTRAVERT OR INTROVERT? Getting the Best From Yourself and Others.

FEEDBACK OR FEEDFORWARD. Why Look Back When You Can Look Forward?

GLOBAL ACCOUNT GAIN, LOCAL OFFICE PAIN. Forced Relationships.

GOOD WORK IS NOT ENOUGH. Care In Relationships.

HOW TO ALIENATE YOUR CLIENTS. Top Tips From Real Life.

INTUITION AKA TRUST YOUR GUT.

JUST PICK UP THE F*****G PHONE.

MEETINGS. Meetings. Meetings.

MICRO-EVENTS. How They Form a Narrative.

MINDSET. Fixed or Growth?

MISTAKES AND LEARNING GO TOGETHER.

NEVER GIVE UP. There is Always Another Option.

OPENING THE JOHARI WINDOW.

OPTIMISM BIAS. How to Feel Good and Make Poor Decisions.

OWNERSHIP. Aka a Sense of Agency.

PARENT, ADULT OR CHILD? Ego States – The Hidden Dynamic Affecting Your Relationships.

PARTNERSHIP WITH YOUR CLIENTS?

PEOPLE. Too Important to Leave to the HR Team.

PERCEPTIONS ARE REALITY.

PSYCHOLOGICAL GAMES.

RED ZONE OR BLUE ZONE?

REDUNDANCY EFFECT. What Happens When You Overload Your Client’s Mind in a Pitch or Presentation.

SELF-DEVELOPMENT AND PERSONAL GROWTH. Once You Know Something About Yourself, You Can’t Unknow It. That Leads to Growth.

SEPARATED BY A COMMON LANGUAGE. Why You and Your Client May Use the Same Words But Mean Different Things.

STOP MOANING. Start Motivating.

TARGET FIXATION. How to Avoid It Hurting You, Killing You or Simply Wasting Your Time, Energy and Money.

TEAM CHANGE. The Masters and Disasters.

THE AGENCY DOESN’T LISTEN. Real Clients. In Their Own Words.

THE HOLOGRAM. Understanding a Client Organisation.

THE SOUND RELATIONSHIP HOUSE.

THE TELEPHONE LIST. Overcoming Avoidance, the Easy Way.

THE UNWRITTEN CONTRACT WITH YOUR NEW CLIENT. It’s Psychological.

THE VIRUS INFECTING YOUR CLIENT TEAM. Contagious, Airborne and Damaging to Health. And Spread by Even the Most Junior Client.

THE WORKING ALLIANCE, AKA THE 60-SECOND RELATIONSHIP CHECK.

TRAINING YOUR CLIENTS. And Possibly Your Partner.

TRUST. You know it when you feel it.

TZUR NSTINK, SHITAK KHOSINK. Let’s Sit Crooked But Talk Straight.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CLIENT’S ORGANISATION. Use a Metaphor.

WHEN THE S*** HITS THE FAN. The Importance of Staying Calm When Things Are Hot.

WHO ARE YOU? An Opportunity to Stop Wasting Your Energy.

WHY CLIENT-AGENCY RELATIONSHIPS ARE ALWAYS UNSTABLE. Hello Agency Theory.

WHY RELATIONSHIPS HAVE BECOME INCREASINGLY TRANSACTIONAL.

YOUR CLIENT IS NOT CRAZY. He is Just Different From You.

YOUR CLIENT SPEAKS. You Remember It Differently.

YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT.

WHAT NEXT?

PUBLISHING DETAILS

CONNECTING WITH CLIENTS

Get the connection right and you can develop mutually rewarding, long-lasting client relationships.

Get it wrong and margins are lost, effort wasted, teams demotivated and revenue put at risk.

Connecting sounds easy.

But connecting with clients is surprisingly difficult. Especially with today’s increasingly transactional relationships.

This is a problem for all professional service businesses.

Especially in the highly pressurised world of advertising, media, PR and other specialised marketing services agencies.

Whatever business you are in the answer is in your hands.

This book is full of ideas derived from the world’s leading relationship experts and over 15 years of research results¹ from clients across the globe.

Follow the ideas in these pages and you should have happier clients, better work and a more profitable business.

Experiment with the ideas. Change them, play with them. Make them your own. Find an even better way.

Most importantly, have fun doing it.

Tomorrow’s client relationships

Whatever business you are working in, there are few certainties in the future.

Continual change. Greater competitive pressure. More to deliver in less time with smaller budgets.

You have two options.

Work harder.

Or think and act differently.

This book is about option B.

Thinking differently often requires looking outside your business.

This isn’t a new idea. Fine needles and the dexterity of traditional French lace makers helped to solve the problem of sewing up veins and arteries.¹ Intravenous fluid bags influenced the design of basketball shoe cushioning.² Studying ant behaviour helped overhaul an airline freight operation.³ Adopting processes used during Formula One pit stops enabled flight turnaround times to be slashed.⁴

This book draws on what I have learnt and the ideas I have had after my career in advertising.

Running my own ad agency, I had become fascinated by what makes people do the things they do. Why, for example, would one of our teams go through fire and work all night for one client and yet couldn’t be bothered to get off their bar stools for another? How come smart, high-functioning adults – those that could hold down jobs and stay in relationships – seem to collude unconsciously with each other, as joint client and agency teams can do, to make the very worst of each other?

Those and other questions led me to study the psychology of individual, team and organisational change, as well as psychotherapy.

I became a Change Agent alongside an individual and couple’s therapist.

I wish I had known at the start of my career what I learnt from my study and work after advertising. That’s why I’ve written this book.

Tested and refined over years, these ideas will transform your client relationships.

Arranged in an A-to-Z format, you should be able to scan the contents and choose a subject of interest in less than 20 seconds.

All topics can be read independently and in less than ten minutes. Most can be covered in under five.

From recognising where you might be going wrong to altering how you interact with others, this book will guide you through how to transform your client relationships for the better.

As you practise and master each of the topics you can teach others your new skills.

Names and sometimes genders of those to whom I refer are changed to protect confidentiality. I use he and she interchangeably.

This book was written before and completed during 2020. And some suggestions are most definitely for application post-pandemic.

AS YOU USE THIS BOOK, REMEMBER THE PRINCIPLE OF MARGINAL GAINS

In 1998, Dave Brailsford was appointed programme director for British Cycling.

Two years later, in Sydney, Great Britain’s cycling team won a single gold medal.¹

A year after that, Brailsford was elevated to director of performance for British Cycling.

He faced a big task: transform the performance of British Cycling.

By the end of the Athens Olympics in 2004, the team doubled the number of medals. Two golds.

In 2008, at the Beijing Olympics, the British team ended in first place with 14 medals. Eight were gold.

Brailsford added to his workload by also becoming the general manager and performance director for Team Sky – the British professional cycling team.

He faced an even bigger task: win le Tour.

No British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France.

His objective for the team was to win in five years. They won it in less. Much less.

In 2012, Bradley Wiggins took the maillot jaune, the winner’s jersey.

In the same year, British cyclists walked away from the Olympics with six golds, two silvers and four bronzes – 12 medals in total.

Team Sky continued to win le Tour. Chris Froome won in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017. In 2018, Welsh cyclist Geraint Thomas beat Froome into third place to take the jersey.²

The difference in performance?

Brailsford’s relentless commitment to a strategy of marginal improvement.

The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.³

No big changes. Just continuous determined improvement to everything, no matter how small.

With the help of this book, you too could make the marginal gains that would make a big difference.

For you, your client relationships, your colleagues and your agency.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

There are three distinct periods to Paul Cowan’s life.

Early period:

Dropped out of school.

Traced missing debtors for a debt-collection agency.

Messenger in ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather.

Print production exec in another ad agency. Fired.

Worked for a plant-hire company. Fired.

Untrained mechanic. Fired himself.

Junior account man at a creative consultancy.

And at another ad agency.

Account man, back at Ogilvy & Mather. Fired.

Striving period:

Married.

Account man to group-account director at Saatchi & Saatchi. Almost fired for running other private businesses concurrently. Stayed 12 years.

Three daughters.

Co-founded an advertising agency, Cowan Kemsley Taylor. Left after 7 years, when the company merged.

Almost fired by his wife.

Reflective, study and growth period:

Master’s degree in Organisational Change, aka Change Agent Skills and Strategies. University of Surrey, School of Management.

Change agent practice with government bodies including the British Army, fast-moving consumer-goods organisations, banks, company boards. Worked on projects covering mergers, motivation and inter-team dysfunction and then client/agency relationship turnarounds.

Masters in Gestalt Psychotherapy. Established a private practice for individuals and couples.

Co-founded the Client Relationship Consultancy, working exclusively with all kinds of advertising and marketing agencies, in 2004, and the Customer Relationship Consultancy, working in the B2B sector, in 2011. Both operate globally.

Still married. Same woman.

ALREADY LISTENING. But Not Hearing.

As a couples’ therapist I heard about the private, intimate lives of my clients.

This allowed me to identify issues in agency-client relationships that I might otherwise have missed.

In their mid-thirties, the couple in front of me are bright, articulate, affluent and look like board directors from the media world. They had recently postponed their wedding and came to try and work through their relationship problems.

At the end of the first session the couple had been holding hands. Now, at the start of their second session, they sit apart and lean slightly away from each other. I notice that James’ smile of greeting seems rigid and immediately fades.¹

I allow a silence to build and Anna speaks first, telling me about an argument that ended in yet another stalemate and sleeping in separate rooms. The disagreement focused on a recurrent argument. As Anna speaks, James turns his head away, closing his eyes and taking a large breath. His face becomes fixed until she finishes her account.

I ask James what was happening for him while Anna was speaking; he says that he has heard it all before. Many times. I ask him to tell me exactly what he heard Anna say. Immediately it becomes apparent that he failed to listen. Instead, he has substituted his own generalisation of all her previous complaints on the issue.

This is already listening.

Stop. Pause for a moment.

How many times do you ‘already listen’ to your partner, relative or acquaintance?

By ‘already listening’, James has missed the opportunity to hear anything new or to step into Anna’s world. By doing so, he effectively blocks the opportunity to understand and work with her to create positive change in their relationship.

Observing a client and agency team whilst helping them to improve their relationship, I hear the senior client say: I have just one problem.² I notice the attention of the agency team shifts away from the client on the other side of the table, their shoulders hunching slightly. One team member picks up a notepad, another an iPad, and the planner reaches for a copy of the presentation.

My hunch that this is a familiar pattern for this client/agency team is confirmed when the agency team continues to put forward its recommendations rather than explore the client’s one problem.

They were ‘already listening’ to their client.

Afterwards I ask them about their experience of the client: He is so negative and cautious; he always says that he has one problem and then spills out the same old litany of problems whatever the proposal.

I later ask the senior client about his experience of the agency. He simply says: They don’t listen to our feedback so I try and focus what we say under one major topic.

I subsequently play back my recording of the meeting and match it against the agency’s follow-up. The disconnect between the challenges raised by the client and the response being developed is clear. The potential damage to the relationship, margin, work and morale were yet to unfold.

TOP TIPS

Notice your reaction and that of your colleagues to your clients. Are you really open-minded or are you ‘already listening’ to what you have heard in the past?

When in a meeting with a client team with whom you regularly work, try listening for the differences between what is being expressed in the moment and what has been said previously.

Imagine that you’re hearing something from your client for the first time. You can be sure that this is what a rival agency will be doing if your team’s ‘already listening’ hands them an opportunity.

Postscript

Client-agency relationships are often referred to as being like a marriage. It is a simple metaphor that slips off the tongue easily.

But that does not make it a