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7 Steps to Stronger Client Agreements:
How to Prevent Hidden Expectations from Driving Away Good Clients

Early in my career, I worked for a man who admitted that he kept a lot of his expectations and needs in his head. To his and his company’s detriment, he kept these from his employees as well.

In a moment of candor, he described how he often started conversations with me in his head. He would have dialogue with me—in his imagination—as he walked out of his office and toward mine. He would actually share his thoughts with me only during the middle of his conversation. Then as he responded to a distraction, he would walk away, completing the conversation—again in his head.

As you can imagine, I often found myself working under unclear mandate.

The Perils of Internal Dialogue

Get to the heart of most decisions by clients to leave vendors and it will boil down to failed expectations. The most productive opportunity for you to uncover your client’s expectations is when you are negotiating the initial service agreement.

One of the most significant obstacles to developing robust and effective service agreements is internal dialogue.

Internal dialogue is deadly for client retention. Internal dialogue represents uninvestigated expectations. If left within the mind of your client, without a crystal ball, you have little chance of meeting these expectations. You can perform brilliantly in all criteria you are aware of. But if you fail in one, even if it is unstated, it will doom the relationship and you will never know why.

To take the guesswork and magic out of client retention, you need a method of inviting the full measure of your client’s expectations into the discussion.

There are a number of reasons why your client may not be able to reveal her full array of expectations and needs:

  • She may infer that you share her assumptions,
  • She may only become aware of a need when her failed expectation calls attention to it,
  • She may be conditioned to past client relationships that did not probe for the totality of her needs,
  • She may be too distracted by standard day-to-day issues to recall all relevant details at the time you negotiate the agreement,
  • Or, without the benefit of hindsight, her perceptions of the problem might change as she experiences your solution to it.

Bringing the Hidden to Light

Your goal, then, is to help your client bring their hidden assumptions, expectations, and needs out and incorporate those into your discussion.

Handled properly, this process can help build a lasting, substantive agreement. Ultimately, it provides the best chance for you and your client to enter into your service relationship fully aware of each other’s needs.

Helping your clients express their needs requires the following steps:

1. Manage Your Internal Dialogue

You are going to ask your client to focus on details that may be difficult to remember. You will need to model that focus. A new client relationship will challenge your focus as well. Among the many issues that will distract your attention:

  • Your enthusiasm from landing a new account,
  • Your unfamiliarity with the client,
  • Your feelings of overwhelm as you attempt to comprehend the intricacies of your new client’s culture and business,
  • The potential revenue from the account, and
  • Your preconceptions or judgments based on your history with other clients.

The biggest mistake you can make is to live in assumption based on your past experience. Avoid taking the limited information you have and projecting your assumptions to fill in the blanks.

Challenge your assumptions. Sublimate your needs and issues. Be aware of how you manage information. It is significantly easier to get in the head of your client, if you are out of yours.

2. Be Mindful of Your Purpose

Your purpose in this exchange is discovery. Share that purpose with your client. One way to frame this dialogue with your client is to say, “In order to best serve your needs, I would like to make sure I have a thorough understanding of the issues.”

It will be significantly easier to establish a working rapport if you let your client know where you are going with this dialogue. Recall that your client is likely to have her own distractions. Giving your client a roadmap of this discussion is an opportunity to model the consistency of your behavior with your actions. By stating your purpose up front, you are demonstrating that your actions follow your words.

It is not uncommon for this process to be uncomfortable. Bringing your mutual assumptions out into the open requires rigor. Being mindful of your purpose will carry you beyond your mutual discomfort.

3. Do Not Settle for Early Conclusions

In many client-vendor relationships, it is common that the client will have concluded what they need. There is nothing wrong with this. However, the conclusion your client is drawing may be based on her processing.

Processing is highly present in orientation. The conclusions drawn in one moment may shift as your client has more time to ponder the problem, or begins to experience the effect of your product. Commonly, expectations and assumptions will shift.

It is important to test the conclusions. Compare them to observations, past results, needs, and exigencies. The conclusions you settle for should be verified with available evidence. If conclusions are based, in part, on assumptions, test.

4. Draw Out Observations and Experiences from Your Client

Compose a set of open-ended questions that lead your client to review her experience. This is where you draw upon your client’s history with the problem, and specifically how that problem interferes with optimal operation.

Some of the questions you might compose could start with, “Tell me about . . .” or “What is the effect of this on . . .” Compare the effects of these problems on solutions that your product or service provides. Examine what those solutions will look like with your client.

5. Listen Actively

Bear in mind that you are providing your client relief from a problem. Of course, the relief comes when your delivery corresponds with your client’s expectations. Listening actively provides her a vision; a preview of how you will engage your responsibility toward the solution.

This is also where you diminish her perceived risk of engaging you. Demonstrating a responsive method of working together is an important step towards eliminating “buyer’s remorse.”

Acknowledge how your client experiences the problem, and it’s ultimate consequences. Clarify your understanding of the details.

6. Look for Distinctions in Behavior

Everyone has an individual speaking pattern that is natural for him or her. This is what I call baseline behavior. Once you have established your own experience of that baseline, you can identify changes in their behavior.

Noticing an enthusiastic person speaking excitedly or a quiet person speaking softly will not reveal much. Look for changes in behavior. They will be the most valuable for identifying subjects for follow up that will uncover hidden expectations.

There may be some aspects of your client’s experience that she is not presently aware of. Calling out how you experience those changes, allows her to process the totality of their feelings and experience of the problem.

7. Use Your Observations to Frame Follow Up Questions

Collect and share your observations. Then ask questions about the consequences and desired outcomes of the engagement. Your observations should provide clues about the manner and method of how your client negotiates this and similar problems.

In order to bring the hidden expectations out, you want to provide your client with an opportunity to recite the problem in a manner that mirrors their experience: from beginning to end. Start with observations, rather than drawing and starting from conclusions.

Sequence is Key

Just as with syntax in language, the sequence of these steps is important. Starting with observations allows you to ensure that conclusions do not prematurely close avenues of exploration.

The most trustworthy individuals and organizations are the ones that are consistent in their communication and actions. They do what they say, and say what they do. Building agreement has the benefit of laying the groundwork needed to communicate the standards by which you will work with your client. It also provides the ready evidence of the integrity of your actions when they correspond to the agreement.

In a sophisticated service or product exchange relationship, building a client agreement is necessary for satisfaction, and imperative for continued retention. If you follow these steps, that agreement will be much more robust and effective.

Happy Client Retaining,

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© 2004-2007 Jeff Simon Consulting. All Rights Reserved. Wouldn't you love to peer into your client's head and know what they are thinking and feeling? Could you have better success at keeping and choosing your best clients if you could decode their behavior? Check out the Happy Clients Newsletter at: www.happyclientsnewsletter.com.

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