Description:

This one-day course covers an important general topic which can have important implications in client relationships.

Businesses exist for one purpose only and that is to satisfy the clients. However, in spite of the fact that business and its customers need each other the relationship is not always mutually satisfactory. There can be many tensions and conflicts which can be expensive to manage with possible consequences for years to come. The clients never seem to be satisfied and the business never seems to provide quite what the clients are expecting. This situation is played out in almost every business-client relationship to some degree.

This one-day course on managing the clients is intended to shed some light on the relationship between the clients and the business. The behaviour of businesses and clients towards each other is important to understand at the organisational and individual level. Understanding the nature of the benefit each provides the other is important to the understanding of the value of the transaction. The quality of the transaction is often to do with expectations, especially in professional services where there is no clearly articulated specification of either the day to day contribution or the final deliverable.

Once again, with professional service providers, there is a need to contract on trust. The clients are hoping for the best,but very often when a casual interface indicates something ordinary something extraordinary is anticipated. As expectations are involved, there are many reasons why tension and conflict can arise.

This course explores these issues over a day and looks for a strategy of managing the client in a way which is mutually beneficial. Expectations are managed to a reasonable level of market capability and then the service provided adjusted to marginally exceed that level, thus creating an environment of satisfaction against a background of meeting the clients’ real business needs.

This is an essential skill in projects and in business.

An Attendance Certificate will be provided at the end of this skill course.

Vital Benefits:

Managing your clients will ultimately provide a longer term relationship and it will also present the opportunity for a natural business development. This course provides the following vital benefits:

• Recognising how the customer decides what he wants
• Understanding how the client judges success for his acquisition
• Understanding how business influences customers
• Understanding the dynamics at the interface
• Understanding the importance of clear and honest communication
• Understanding professionalism and ethics
• Recognising how your business can benefit the customers business

Objectives:

Managing the clients can provide substantial benefits to your business and security to its future. It is a vital skill. In this course, it is our objectives to:

• Help you understand the clients business and where you fit in it
• Help you understand customer-centric business
• Provide you a strategy of customer interaction focused on developing more effective business benefit to the customer
• Help you manage and influence customer expectations of quality and value
• Provide good case studies to anchor the learning
• Help you develop longer term relationships by saying No

Topics:

The course covers the following topics:

• Sales strategies which create better expectations
• Understanding the clients’ business case and their success criteria
• Understanding how the clients do business
• The interface dynamics and representative selection
• Personality profiling – an introduction
• Frontline customer relationship
• Managing customer interaction including complaints
• Technology and professionalism – two great tools
• Requirements of staff training
• A strategy for the future

Who to Attend:

A good management of the client strategy is the foundation of long term relationships. We would recommend the course to the following groups:

The client staff
• The project managers
• The project staff
• Line managers
• The professional services teams
• The senior supply chain managers
• Business leaders
• Business executives
• Business managers
• Marketing and sales managers
• Operations managers
• Those who face the clients or customers
• Those who want to develop their business skills
• Everyone who wants to know more about managing the clients