Clients are the most important aspect of starting an architecture or engineering practice and sustaining it in the long term. Without clients, particularly ones that return to hire you over and again, you don't have a business. At best you have a hobby. When you’re faced with unreasonable requests or looming deadlines, it’s easy to wish for a much simpler job without client demands, but successful businesses learn how to manage client relationships, deliver exceptional services, and run projects profitably. Delivering value to your clients while maintaining a strong relationship is the most important skill and firm leader can build.
Having clients to answer to, can be challenging in any business. I know first hand the stress of communicating with clients, especially when challenges arise on a project, or a you have to be the bearer of bad news. It is tough and is skill that only comes with experience handling tough situations. As an engineer or an architect, there will be many occasions during which you feel there could be easier ways of making a living, and you are probably right. But you started your firm because you are passionate about the work and love making a positive impact on your community. Clients are an impotant part of the equation and when you have a good working relationship they can make projects better and the process more fun.
You get paid to do something you love while working with people that look forward to hearing from you, and that’s what makes the A&E industry so great. You have immense opportunities to make the world a better place and provide value to your clients and the users of your projects.
This is why it is important to be intentional with how you build relationships with your clients from your initial meeting to the completion of the project. From the moment your clients commit to working with you, you have a tiny window of opportunity in which to set the relationship up for success by making an unforgettable first impression. From that point on, the efforts you make to nurture the relationship will decide whether it will be sustainable or not.
How to Build Better Client Relationships
Some analysis show that it can be 15 times more expensive to forge a long-term relationship with a new client than maintain an existing one. This makes it crucial for you to have an effective client onboarding and management process in place to get it right the first time around. This should be approached as a design problem. As soon as you decide to start a firm, you should be planning out how you will meet, communicate with, and nurture relationships with the types of clients you want to work with.
You might wonder which secret formula some firms use to maintain impressive retention rates, while others can’t seem to nail down clients long enough to make the onboarding effort worthwhile. Trust and loyalty are the cornerstones of a stable working relationship, and they don't come automatically. You have to go the extra mile to earn them. Here are some effective ways to build sustainable relationships with your clients:
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Be Honest While Onboarding Clients
Client retention is all about honesty. Clients are accustomed to expecting architects and engineers to deliver a certain amount of immediate value in the early stages of their relationship with your firm. This becomes the justification they need to believe they made a smart decision hiring them. The simplest way to achieve this is to provide practical solutions to your clients' most significant problems.You need to show you can provide value.
However, you have to balance the desire to make clients happy, with your professional responsibility to analyze the problem, outline the challenges and opportunities, and be accurate in your assessment. Sometimes this means telling clients things they may not want to hear. But being transparent and honest from an initial feasibility study through the final construction of a project is the only way to build a trusting relationship. Sometimes this is hard as truth can lead to conflict. Still, long term relationships are built on working through problems together, and good clients will respect your professional opinion and ability to be honest even when challenges arise.
From the client’s perspective, they can’t fix things they don’t know are broken. Sharing the good and the bad, while providing advice for solutions that can create long term value for the client is in everyone's best interest.
When you demonstrate your honest approach to your client, they’ll realize you're offering something different, making the solution more valuable to them. This approach buys you some time to show them what your firm is really made of and how you are different from the ones they might have worked with previously.
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Anticipate Client Needs
You are the expert in the relationship. Often you have worked through the design and construction process more frequently than your clients and may know what their needs are before they do. You also probably have a clearer understanding of the challenges that often arise throughout a project. Armed with this knowledge gives you a huge advantage.
Using past experiences, and lessons learned from similar projects, allows you to anticipate what your clients needs are and how you can provide for them. You and your team should running After Action Reviews for each of your projects, and identifying what went well and what problems popped up. With that knowledge from each project, you can design your custom standard operating procedures and design process that guides future clients along a set process that avoids common mistakes or challenges.
Design the journey you will guide your customers along, and anticipate where common frustrations pop up and how you can smooth over that experience. Be very intentional about designing the customer experience to make it as smooth and predictable as possible.
When you dedicate enough time to understand your clients' requirements, you will be in a much better position to ensure they are satisfied with your services. It helps you anticipate client needs and make ongoing adjustments to improve your business in the long term. Plus, developing solid business relationships with your clients from the outset is also an excellent move from a marketing perspective. You can position yourself for new opportunities from your existing clients - repeat business is always easier to win than with cold opportunities. It also increases the chances of word-of-mouth marketing and referrals from your new client to their acquaintances. Again, this makes it easier to win projects from those new leads, but also great clients tend to lead to more great clients.
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Take The Time To Understand Your Clients And Connect on A Personal Level
Even if you believe you have a clear understanding of where your client is coming from and the services they need from you, there are many ways to get to know them better. Consider adding a personal touch to your conversations without being intrusive. Sharing non-work information occasionally, such as details about your family, things you do during off-hours, etc., helps strengthen client relationships.
Look for ways to engage with them outside of project tasks and meetings. Invite them to relevant events, add them to your holiday mailing list, celebrate when you see they had a big achievement, won an award, or are being recognized in the community. It is important to build a human connection beyond just work to maintain relationships over the long term.
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Prioritize Your Client’s Business Challenges Beyond The Design Of A Single Project
Start expanding your conversations with business relationships by stepping outside a "commoditized" role. Making their business success your priority will set you apart from your competitors.
Your clients have way more on their mind than just the design of a specific project. Look for ways to engage with them outside the specifics of your project. You aren't just a designer for hire, you are a trusted business advisor. Take them to lunch or set up meetings to discuss everything from their spacial needs to their pain points and growth plans. Some common problems that small businesses face include:
Many of these concerns can be addressed through design or other services you can provide. When you get to know your clients well, and you start having conversations about larger business issues you show that you can add value beyond a one-off design project. By understanding their pain points you can offer new services, like feasibility studies on new office space, branding and signage design to increase their customer base, real estate studies on new markets, or even using the design you provided to attract new employees.
Of course you can't solve all business challenges as an architect or engineer, but you can start discussing the additional value you can provide as an expert advisor. This opens up opportunities for stronger relationships, repeat work, and revenue from new services you could sell.
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Keep the Communication Lines Open
Effective and regular communication is vital in every relationship, particularly with your clients. Keep the communication lines open by being responsive to their calls, messages, and emails. Schedule regular meetings with your clients, be it in person or video calls, share company news, and, if appropriate, interact with them through social media. Maintaining regular contact with your clients and keeping them in the loop is a great way to improve relationships with them.
One tip that will set you apart from most of your competitors is to establish regular check-in cadences. For instance, your team should send short update emails to all clients ever Friday. This simple, brief email, should simply state what was done on the project over the past week, what is coming up in the week ahead, and any milestones or achievements the client can look forward to. It should take no more than a few minutes to put together these emails (you can even set up a standard template to make this easier for your project managers). Yet they will go a long way in building trust.
Communication is key and it is better to over communicate than under communicate. You really don't want your clients to be reaching out to you asking for updates. If they are, that is a sign that you should be upping your communication frequency. Use tools like a CRM, or project scheduling planners to build communication into your ongoing project tasks.
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Ask Your Clients for Feedback
This sounds so simple but amazingly hardly any architecture or engineering firms actually do this. It's crucial to ask your client's for feedback when reaching milestones in projects or completing phases. Don't wait until the end of the project for feedback as at that point it is too late to make changes.
You can ask them for their inputs during an informal conversation or adopt a formal approach by requesting them to fill out a client satisfaction survey. Decide what would work best for your business, team, culture, and clients and implement this as a standard operating procedure for your firm. The most crucial step in getting your client’s feedback, however, is to have a plan for addressing any criticisms or concerns and being committed to altering and improving your general business processes accordingly.
Consider each client relationship as a valuable, ongoing connection, and it will ultimately help you build a mutually beneficial partnership. A focused approach and consistency in providing the best service is an effective way to forge better relationships with your clients and take your firm to new levels.
Additional Business Development Resources for A&E Firms:
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