The Art of Good Client relations: Every good dessert is a result of good recipe

I love sweet things, they somehow improve my mood. And in a similar manner, as a consultant, you would not want the mood to change to be bad between you and your clients.
Whether you have a long lasting relationship with the client or you just won the account, there are basic principles if I may say, to retaining the account. Firstly, what brought you and the client is business. And at the heart of that relationship is the word: DELIVERY. And you do not want heart-failure, because once that happens, you may not be able to have the same relationship again. So, you need to keep delivering, and that is the key to keep your relationship working and rewarding. There are four suggestions or rather areas that need attention, and if you can manage to do them well, you can be somewhat assured of a sweet and happy relationship. Here they are: 1. Ask the right questions. 2. Understand the brief. 3.Deliver on time. 4. Manage obstacles.
It is almost impossible for your company to deliver good work if you did not understand the brief in the first place, and again, you cannot understand the brief if you do not ask the right questions. Asking the right questions does not always mean asking too many questions, however, it means asking the kind of questions that allows you to get the information that you need, which information will allow you to execute you job accurately. Remember that, clients may not be experts in the specific field, so, they may know in their minds what they want you do for them, but somehow fail to convey their message in a manner that is easily understandable. However, the sad reality is that, whether they managed to get their message across correctly or not, they still have expectations from you to deliver exactly what they have in mind. In short, you have to be able to read minds, and you can only do this through asking the right type of questions. That is the key to understanding your brief. Even with you understanding the brief, you at time become unable to deliver on the expected / agreed time. Chances are, you will anticipate your delivery time not being met. Take the courage to communicate with your client on time. Missing deadlines is not fashionable, but, you are most likely to be understood and forgiven if you communicated on time. Whereas, telling the client that you missed deadline after he/she is already aware because the deadline time has already past, may be detrimental to your business and ultimately, you relationship with the client.
Once you have managed this expectation, and ensured that the services are delivered in a satisfactory manner, remember to be consistent. That is the only way you build a good reputation and a strong brand.

It takes 20 yrs to build a reputation: How long does it take to destroy it?

Warren Buffett is often quoted saying: "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently". To what extend is this statement true? Think about one of the world's renowned and reputable brand personalities, whom for one reason or another, had to fight to get their reputation out of the mud so to speak, the likes of Tiger Woods (One of the world's best golfer), Oscar Prestorius (Olympic blade runner), and, Bill Clinton (Former US President). All of these personalities at one point of their lives were revered highly by society at large, but their reputation took a plunge one point of their lives. and perhaps the BIG question we should ask ourselves is: What comes to mind, first thing when you see these personalities? When you think of Tiger Woods, do you see a womaniser or a cheat? Or so you see one of the world's best golfer? Well, to give you my answer, I see the best golfer. And maybe, someone may differ with my response.

The real crux of the matter is that, all the above mentioned brand personalities, have built such strong brands that their reputation or so-called bad acts that tainted their reputation at some point in their lives, are somewhat no longer as visible to the majority and may have fizzled out to some extend. What may serve as evidence of the strength of the brand personalities, it the time it takes for sponsorships/endorsements to pull out their investments from these personalities. We all now that there is no brand that would want to be associated to someone who would drag its reputation to the mud. However, with all the processes that are in place within large corporate entities, to issue urgent press statements with almost immediate effect upon hearing the bad news that cloud the personality who is their brand ambassador, in the case of the Olympic blade runner Oscar Prestorius, it took at least more than a day upon hearing about the alleged killing that Oscar committed, for the sponsors to confirm that they have pulled out their sponsorships.

When a brand is so strong, it takes more than a minute to destroy it. And the strength of a brand enables the some personal brand to return back to its full strength with ease. We may controversially conclude, that it takes more that a minute to destroy a strong personal brand. And it becomes easier for a very strong brand to return to full strength.

 

 

 

Brand Value: Personal Brand

A survey was published in August 2013 that had the following listing of South Africa's most valuable brands:
 1.     MTN
2.    Vodacom
3.    Sasol
4.    Standard Bank
5.    Absa
6.    Nedbank
7.    Woolworths
8.    First National Bank (FNB)
9.    Shoprite
10.  Mediclinic

Although it is clearly noticable from the list that two of the cellular phone network companies lead the pack, what is interesting to observe is SASOL being ranked number three in the survey. This observation proves that brand, is not subjective or limited to FMCG or retail products. Brand value can and is important in any sector of business or industry. The question then comes up. Can we then brand government? Is there any value in doing branding exercises for government even though the purpose of government is not primarily to do business but provide service. From politicians, CEOs, political parties and companies, the value of brand is ever important, and if brand is given proper attention, it could be the main reason for differentiation in any organisation. Merely focusing on effective sales and pricing strategies, distribution strategies can improve the business operations and ability to increase business, however, it will take a brand strategy to set-apart as it were, the products of one company to that of the competitor.
The age of branding is increasing widely, and more organisations are beginning to see the benefits even in those organisation or businesses that do not operate in FMCG space.

 

Brand is uniform without wearing similar clothes

We are all familiar with neat professional uniform that flight attendants wear. And if you are living in South Africa, you have seem different uniforms worn by various religious denominations. All the above mentioned, are examples of uniform. However, when we talk about uniform regarding brands, uniform is more than matching clothes worn by different poeple that work for the same organisation. Uniform is linked to consistency, alignment, synergy and the strategic direction that the brand intends to pursue in order to give customers a consistent experience that will make it easy for consumers to associate certain attributes, that will always influence the perception of consumers.
In short, although some brands mostly those operating in the airline industry have a specific way of clothing, the real uniform, happens in the mind. As consumers begin to associate certain colours and themes to a particular brand. For example, if you are liking in South Africa, should someone ask you, what comes to mind when you think about the colour Yellow, most if not all middle aged / adults will answer: MTN (which is the local network service provider). This is because the cellphone network brand has worked on ensuring the colour yellow has association to the MTN brand. I would also agree that uniform in design, layout and sometimes to the extend of sense of smell add great value in creating the kind of uniform that will eventually affect consumers minds, if done consistent enough and in a strategic manner. We can take for example the Woolworths brand that operates within the FMCG sector. You may be in any part of the country, the set up of the store, the sense of smell and often the customer experience is ussually the same everywhere, so long as it is the same store. Although this exercise may be for other reasons such as making the experience easy for customers to find items in the store, from a brand perspective, this kind of uniform, creates the consistency that customers know what to expect everytime they visit the store. And this makes their purchasing decision easy and as a result keep them coming back because they know what to expect. We may conclude that uniform in terms of appearance is important, however, uniformity in brand works better and best if it is mostly achieved in the mind of consumers due to a consistency in the brand experience.