Support pack: Outsider Insider Client Intimacy

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Question: What tools can I use to help me understand my client’s real needs, and to make sure that we deliver projects to meet those needs?

Answer: Over the years, we have collected a series of, to us, invaluable tools as aids to our understanding of what is really going on, and to what the client really requires from us. These tools give us an insight into winning projects, pleasing / delighting the client, and earning repeat business.

Key Points

If you work for a consultancy, you will know that it is very much more rewarding, both personally and commercially, to build up a base of on-going clients, rather than to spend inordinate time, frustration and expense trying to recruit new ones.

If you have worked client-side, you will know that working with a team of tried and tested preferred consultancies / agencies will result in far fewer glitches, thus allowing you to get on with the many other things demanding your time, and to be confident about the quality and political finesse of the final outputs.

Continuing "Outsider Insider" relationships between client and consultancy / agency are nearly always win-win, until complacency steps in.

If you work for a consultancy, you will also know that many projects dance to a political more than to an operational tune. Client sponsors want you to achieve something for them the nature of which is sometimes tantalisingly withheld.

If you have already been working with a client over several years, you may be in touch with the underlying politics. However, from our own experience, applying some key tools tends to reliably deliver dramatic "Aha!" effects - "So that is what is happening! That explains a lot!"

If you do not know the client that well, you tend to be swimming in the dark, and in relatively shark-infested waters. Were you hired to be the fall guys? Is there something key that you are missing? Why does such-and-such a person always appear disappointed with progress to date? (OK, so none of this ever happens to you).

To help you, we have compiled the "Outsider Insider" support package, which comprises an e-booklet written in PPT (but also available as a pdf file) and a set of Excel-based tools.

Here are the agenda items of the e-booklet:

1. Outsider Insiders – serving hidden agendas
2. Becoming an Outsider Insider
3. Prospecting
4. Pitching
5. Project Delivery
6. Partnering
7. The tools
8. Client Stakeholder Analysis
9. Client Problem Detection System
10. Business Standout
11. Client Laddering Tool
12. Client Consultancy Pitch
13. Alternative Conclusions Mapping
14. Client Review Process
15. Six Sigma C&E and FMEA tools
16. Process / Tools diagram

As clients, we have even insisted on suppliers using these tools frankly so that there is less chance of them messing up politically and operationally, and with those who refused we tended to scale down our business over time because we found that they were significantly more likely to make major political gaffes or to argue over what were or what were not within the original project scope - always a killer for supplier-client relationships.

The complete set costs £37.95 (currently $US 75 approx.), which is likely to deliver to you a ridiculously high ROI of quite possibly tens of thousands of percent.

If you opt for an additional 1.5 hours individual telephone support (we pay for the call), the complete package costs £74.95 (currently $US 150 approx.).

If you wish to discuss the support package further, please do not hesitate to contact us.

To order this (or any other) support package, please click here.

To order this (or any other) e-booklet only, please click here.

We can help you in two ways - we have a mass of smart strategic brand marketing tools, processes and workshop techniques for you to use, and a mass of smart brand marketing agencies as members across the world with niche knowledge and experience to support you thereafter.

Click here for free tools and know-how materials from the Mud Valley™ strategy & brand marketing.

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