It never pencils out

I had a conversation this week with some other agency owners about their “favorite clients”.

You probably have a client or two that comes to mind instantly. They let you do your thing. They pay without nit-picking every line item. They refer you often. And when something goes wrong, they don’t freak out.

It’s rarely about giant budgets, or prestigious brands. It all comes back to one thing: trust.

That’s not much of a revelation. Of course the clients who treat you best are the ones who trust you.

But how often are we proactively on a mission to “build trust”?

Sure, trust happens naturally over time when you do good work. But if it’s the key ingredient that turns a decent client into a great one, isn’t it worth being a little more intentional about?

If you’re wondering how, here are a few things that came to mind:

The “and one.”: I wrote about this a while back, but the idea is to just always do something a little extra with every client request. It’s the equivalent of a hotel leaving a mint on your pillow. A small gesture that shows you’re willing to do just a little more than the next agency.

Having their back: Most of our workday is spent fulfilling requests. Clients have a need, we take care of it. That’s good, but what’s better is when you proactively show you’re looking out for them. The next time you patch a vulnerable plugin, shoot them a quick email letting them know there was an exploit, but you already took care of it for them (you’re probably already doing this, the client just has no idea!).

Showing up: You’re probably one of a dozen vendors your client interacts with, but how many of them show up to support their business beyond the scope of work? Follow them on social, comment on their posts, share their big announcement. Their success is yours, so you have a vested interest in helping them succeed — and that can go beyond updating plugins.

The biggest challenge with all of this is it never pencils out in the short term. And with a task list mile long, it’s hard to prioritize these kinds of soft skills with no immediate ROI.

But over time all these little deposits add up. They’re how you go from being the “website person” to an indispensable part of their systems.

We can sit back and hope it happens on its own, or we can take the extra 2 minutes to make it happen.