Managing expectations with your clients can be difficult. It’s important to know how to manage expectations in order to develop a strong working relationship for the long term. If you’re looking to build a relationship with your clients long-term, here are 4 ways you can manage expectations.
If you are looking to manage expectations with your clients, it starts with making sure you’ve defined the process for them. There are times when clients might be really excited and overzealous because they’ve seen your value and results for other similar companies. This is great, however, you want them to understand the process behind the results. To deliver the best results, time can be a factor... Make sure your clients know what to expect from your process. Never forget that your clients are reaching out to you because you are the experts providing the solution they need. Speak confidently about your process and make sure you & your client are aligned.
Setting a realistic timeline for you and your clients is important when managing expectations. Your timeline will give full transparency on what’s going to happen during your time of partnership. It will cover your process and when you estimate your clients will start seeing results. It also gives you the time frame to hit the deliverables you agreed to at the start. Have placeholders in your timeline for when you will be making updates or heading into the next phase of your strategy. Timelines are a great way to hold you and your team accountable to hit your targets by a designated deadline. It’s important to make sure your team has deadlines to work against.
As mentioned above, transparency is key when building a relationship with your client. Setting up recurring bi-weekly meetings is a great way to update all parties involved with the progress of your deliverables. Chances are your client needs to keep their executive board updated on the current status of the partnership. Setting up bi-weekly meetings will help your point of contact stay on top of things with their managers. Bi-weekly meetings are a great way to get to know your client as well. We all have lives outside of work and it’s refreshing to talk about life updates before jumping into the swing of things. Not every client is like this, but it never hurts to use your personality. Sometimes that can make all the difference when forming a business relationship, especially if you're looking to upsell or get a referral from your client.
If you are looking to provide full transparency through each step of your partnership, sending your client a weekly update can go a long way. Giving a weekly update provides transparency between you and your clients. Your client will be able to stay updated and can report back to their manager about what’s going on. Weekly updates can serve as the agenda for your bi-weekly calls. Weekly updates are a great way for your team to reflect on the work done in that designated week. It can be a great way for your team to find areas of focus for the next week.
Managing expectations with your clients will help both parties in the process. Your clients will be able to trust your solution and the process it takes to get quality results. As the product or service provider, you will be able to put all of your focus into helping your clients achieve their goals knowing that your clients trust your solution and your approach to their business. For us, it’s about our clients understanding how our sales development process works and what we provide as an outsourced team.
