It’s fast, it’s easy to use, it’s the marketing tool of the next millennium! Okay, it’s not, and it isn’t even a real word. But here’s another axiom born in the fires of Fifteen4 that we think is pretty effective. It started as a quick way for us to remind our account team where they should focus their energy. But it’s really true for everyone on our team and works for clients, too, when thinking about their customers and prospects.
The DEMI Model
Deliver the goods. This is table stakes, but if you regularly struggle to ship your work then you aren’t honoring the original agreement you made with your clients. At the very least, there was a transactional exchange, but at best, there was a relationship agreed to between the two parties. Delivering the goods has to happen if there is to be a future for the relationship, and it has to happen BEFORE you start upselling or asking about the next piece of work you hope to win. It’s the first step in a new cadence of mutual trust. Deliver what you agreed to. Do it on time. Do it for the price you settled on. If you consistently fail at this first step, there’s something wrong with your process. Go back and revisit it.
Engage the people! This is not just about the work, it’s about building a relationship. Start as soon as the work kicks off. If you’re going to expend energy on anything, do it by listening well. Make this process enjoyable, and be responsive to the concerns you’re hearing. Regardless of the scope of your engagement, begin sending resources of value to your clients: articles about their space, news of their competitors, coffee and bagels! You’re on the same team now.
Monitor the market, measure the results of your work, and, as time allows, become a brand ambassador. Being a brand ambassador for your clients means you’re on watch, on the lookout. You’re paying attention to what they’re saying and what’s going on in their space. And then hopefully, you’ve installed some tools that help you measure the results of your efforts together. Begin to think strategically on their behalf.
Inspire the next opportunity. We like this to go a little deeper than just a typical effort to upsell your clients into hiring your team for more projects. Begin by celebrating the win you now share as you watch your little babies venture out into the wild. Remind each other that you’ve done good work together. Go and win some awards. Give your clients the credit they deserve for seeing this through and demanding that it be great. Hopefully, they got your best work out of you. Thank them for that. Now do some dreaming together, and make sure you’re dreaming about assets that they actually need and that you believe are necessary to help their cause. I don’t like to see a client waste a single dollar on our firm. But I’m not afraid to push if I think they’re hindering their growth by not showing up ready for the challenges they’re facing.
You should be hearing some overlap, even redundancy, with each of these steps. They flow into each other, and the cycle repeats itself. Put the DEMI Model into action and start to see results in transforming your client relationships!