You only do good work with intelligent clients. That’s the observation I made last week, when Nathalie, a client, called me to thank me for the work accomplished and the results achieved.
Getting to the point
The intelligent client gets to the point. They are interested first and foremost in results and keep value judgments to themselves. When they go from 15 quote requests in 6 months to 15 per day on their website, they don’t come and nag you about the color of the banner font. They call you to say thank you (they don’t have to, they pay for that), and you immediately want to find them 5 more contacts per day.
Others would tell you that their website generates contacts because their company is becoming increasingly well known, and that your role in that is very marginal.
Knowing how to anticipate
When told that it is never too early to start a customer relationship management (CRM) approach, the intelligent client immediately understands why. A year later, they have a structured database and thousands of qualified prospects in reserve. They can distribute them to their business partners in three clicks, while retaining control of their sales process. They can manage their campaigns themselves without necessarily always buying lists. They know how to find the history of all exchanges with customers, and they have a tool to provide quality customer service.
Others will tell you that they don’t have time or money to waste on tools as complicated as they are useless, that Excel and Access are perfect for managing a customer database, and that we’ll see in a few years whether success is there (spot the mistake in this reasoning).
Keeping an open mind
When offered the idea of taking photos at trade fairs to publish on Twitter, the intelligent client wants to know more: what does it bring them, how does it work, is it time-consuming? When they understand the benefit for them, they surprise you with their creativity and sometimes become a social media star (when we tell you to never hire social media experts).
Others tell you that Twitter and Facebook are for children, that they are serious people and that they have much more important things to do.
One question remains: how do you make sure you work only with intelligent clients?
