Top 7 Ways To Make Your Client Fall In Love Tips
Format by Donewille How do you make a client fall in love format?
With Valentine’s Day just passing and spending some much-needed quality time with my beautiful wife Karen, I came upon a revelation. The exciting, scary, life-affirming and sometimes exhausting experiences happening in my life at home as a new husband and father had new- found relevance for me as a senior user experience professional at Motivate Design.
1.We are Equals. With this
sentiment of equality in a
relationship, I felt like this
seemed like a good place
to start. ...
2 Think Positively about your
Partner. ...
3 Spend Time Together. ...
4 Express Affection. ...
5 Say You're Sorry. ...
6 Find Compatible Partners.
...
7 Fall in Love Every Day.
After more than a decade of working within an in-house design team, I hit a point where I felt the need to take the next phase of my career in a new direction.
This desire to go from a large, multinational financial firm that housed its own internal UX team to a smaller, more nimble and surprisingly more diverse environment was for me like moving into a whole new world.
From the start, the language and day to day vocabulary was new. For example, the word “client” took on a completely new meaning.
Within my previous in- house experience, clients could have been considered more akin to a familial relationship–kind of like siblings.
Depending on the engagement, sometimes my team and I needed to play the older more responsible role in order to demonstrate thought leadership and direction.
However in other projects working with internal client/partners, we were looking to shake things up and so we were viewed as the snotty, bratty young’uns.
When I moved to an agency setting, I came to realize that relationships with our clients were different. Things felt more professional in that there was less of the older versus younger sibling power-play dynamic but rather, more of a courtship type of story arc.
Upon reflection, I began to wonder if that love-based relationship parallel could best describe the agency/client interaction. In true user experience fashion, I began to analyze and compare the ups and downs of this relationship.
Out of this exercise, I think I found a way new perspective on how I am now managing the exchange and work that I’m currently doing for our clients and thought it would be helpful to share:
1.We are Equals
With this sentiment of equality in
a relationship, I felt like this
seemed like a good place to start.
From a business perspective, I’m
not saying that if you are a small
agency the only way to establish a
true partnership is to work with
small clients. Rather, the angle
from which I am thinking aligns
more in terms of attitude. If your
client is treating, you like a “paid
subservient” then you are not
working as equals towards a
solution.
2. Think Positively about your
Partner
This can often be a tough one. In
any relationship personalities and
points of view can encounter
some friction. Similar to a
courtship, it means that over time
you find things about your client
that may irk you which if left
unaddressed can then be a point
of distraction. As these bumps in
the road happen, it is imperative
that they are seen as
opportunities for improvement.
3. Spend Time Together
While it is not fully clear who is
responsible for the famous quote:
“Absence makes the heart grow
fonder” , I can say for sure that he
or she never had a bi-coastal
relationship much less ran a user
experience agency. In the few
hundred years since this quote
first came into modern
consciousness, everyone from
Sigmund Freud to Dr. Phil would
attest that the best way to foster a
relationship is through face-to-
face interaction.
4. Express Affection
Ok, let’s not get too weird here…
Just like a romantic relationship, I
am not suggesting you go tell your
client that you love them right
away (wait until at least after a
couple of dates and the check
clears :-)), but I would encourage
that you go out of your way to
show how excited you are to be
working with them. At Motivate
Design, our core values stress the
importance of this mindset
WE ALL DRIVE — Speaks to the importance of shared responsibility for all relationships both among team members as well as with our clients YES, AND… — Draws inspiration from improv through working with each other and looking for ways to over-deliver and delight
EXPLORE, DESIGN, REFLECT & REFINE — Demonstrates the core of what we do and the joy that we derive from delivering it to our clients
DELIVER EXCELLENCE — Encourages us to always be proud of who we are and what we are about through our end results
GROWTH THROUGH POSITIVE INTERACTIONS — Leans on age-old belief systems that building good relationships and doing right by people isn’t just good karma — it’s good business
5. Say You’re Sorry
As previously established, things
don’t always go smoothly in life
and everything is not always
going to be hunky-dory. Having
been in my fair share of
relationships in the past, humility
was a hard-earned but extremely
valuable lesson that I’ve since
adopted in my life. As a user
experience professional, you need
to be mentally and emotionally
prepared to pivot so that when
issues arise you have support
systems to lean on and you don’t
do or say something that will sour
the relationship irreparably.
As a general rule of thumb, we try
to establish ground rules at the
outset through kick-off meetings
so that everyone starts off on the
right foot. Then, abide by them
and be prepared adjust and
recognize mis-steps when
appropriate in order move past
the issues together.
6. Find Compatible Partners
Ask any love expert and they will
say that chasing after the wrong
type of person for you is the first
mistake of any soon-to-be
relationship. All of the points
covered above can only lead to
something successful if we start
relationships with clients that we
are compatible with and for the
right reasons.
The first step in doing this is
something that the team here at
Motivate Design has been working
on which is based on the ancient
Greek maxim “know thyself.” Over
the span of a person or business’
lifetime, it is important to take
into account who you are and
what you represent. In our case,
Motivate Design has gone through
great change in the nearly seven
years of its existence. We needed
to identify how we had grown and
if what we had been trying to do
was still reflective of our values.
7. Fall in Love Every Day
We’ve all seen them, the television
segment every Valentine’s Day
where a local news broadcast
spotlights an 80 year-old couple
that has been married for over
fifty years.
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