February 13, 2022
It’s probably not professional of us as mentors, to tell you we’re totally flummoxed by a concept, but in the case of goodbye packets, we really don’t get it!
Why would you want to say goodbye to a client?
The whole trend of ‘offboarding’ clients goes against everything you want to build. A beautiful, flowing business is so much easier to sustain when strong, nurtured, long-term client relationships form its base.
Because let’s face it. Attracting new business is a challenge. It takes time and money, There’s a process of trust-building, fact-finding and getting to know each other. A whole foundation has to be built before you even get to the actual design work.
Don’t get us wrong, we love new clients! But compare this to new projects from existing clients. The trust is already there, they know and love your work, and you can dive right into getting them the best results for this particular project, building on a strong foundation of everything you already know about their brand and business. A whole lot of the work is already done.
Of course, it’s not really what goodbye packets are about. They’re the wrapping up of one project. But the language around them, ‘handover’, ‘offboarding’, ‘send-off’, etc., really does suggest that the relationship has come to an end. It’s over now. Goodbye.
This isn’t what you want. You want clients who become friends, and relationships that last for decades. You want clients who will seek your input when making major branding decisions and who think of you as a valuable asset to the growth of their business.
You don’t want to close a door on all of that goodness. So, rather than your final stage of the project being a ‘goodbye packet’, make it a launch! We have a whole module in The Academy about project launches. We love launches, because instead of saying ‘Goodbye’ they say, ‘What’s next?’ They say, ‘This is the beginning!’ and ‘Hooray! We’re launching our first project together!’ This is the excitement and connection you want to create with your clients.
It’s all about working together – and continuing to work together! You want to be respected as a creative, talented designer, who is a professional and authority in what you do, and your client wants to be respected as the visionary for the business that they’re wanting to grow and develop. You should be building a partnership based on that respect, one where the two of you are working together to build a totally successful brand.
The more you get to know your client, the easier it is to develop that relationship. You become really tuned into the strategy behind their business model and what their needs are. You develop the ability to flag opportunities for them and collaborate with them on their growth. And all of this builds the trust your client has in you, and their centring of you as an essential part of their business.
Once you’re there, they’ll never look anywhere else for design work. And remember, this doesn’t just apply to big-budget clients. The goal of any business is to grow, and you want to make sure you’re going to grow together. And if they do have a big budget – well then the sky’s the limit in terms of what you can achieve for them! You’ll have nurtured a relationship that keeps juicy projects landing in your lap for years to come.
In The Academy, we go into depth about the strategies you can implement to develop client relationships. We’ll be launching the next round soon!!!! We’d love to see you in there and guide you through how to get these cornerstones for your business in place, and we really encourage you to join the waitlist (it’s obligation-free), and take advantage of all the discounts and bonuses that we’ll be offering to our waitlisters in the next few weeks.
In the meantime, if you’d like to dip your toe in the water of what The Academy’s all about, this week, we’re offering a free Masterclass all about nurturing client relationships! Come and join us live and see if the way we teach works for you. We have all sorts of practical, effective strategies to explore with you around inspiring repeat business and we’d love, love, love to see your faces!
Click on this link to grab your spot before it fills up! It’s a fantastic class and we know you’ll get lots of ideas to keep your business ticking over. And meanwhile, no more goodbye packets! You’re not ever saying goodbye to your lovely clients! You’re building a business where you get to do great things with your dear friends year after year!
With love,
Kris & Donna xo
[00:00:00] Kris: Welcome.
[00:00:01] Donna: Hello everyone.
[00:00:03] Kris: So we were inspired to have a conversation today because our master class is coming up, which is all about nurturing repeat business and nurturing clients and having these beautiful repeat connections with people and, um, all the abundance that comes with that. So, um, yes, it is masterclass time. So before we get into the episode, if you want to join us live and just see how we roll and see how we teach, absolutely join us. We would love, love, love to see your faces. And you just head to design and prosper.co forward slash masterclass. And if there are any dates available when you listen to this, you’ll be able to see it there. It’ll say the dates that are available for you. Okay. So we’ve been thinking about this haven’t we Don?
[00:00:50] Donna: Yes, we have. It’s been top of mind, our masterclass is coming up, we’re so excited about it. Head to the link that Kris has just outlined. What is fabulous about our masterclass is that at the end, we introduce you to The Academy. And how The Academy works and it’s a phenomenal way for you to come on board and ask us any questions. If you’re wondering what on earth is The Academy, how does it work? Would it work for me? What’s involved in The Academy, then this is your opportunity to attend our masterclass, ask us as many questions as you’d like, and also get some really special surprises as well. If you go ahead and join one of our master classes and jump on The Academy wait list and become a waitlister, our waitlisters are spoilt. We do some lovely things for our waitlisters. So, um, come along and join us and see it as an opportunity to learn something from us. Especially all about this beautiful approach that we have to client nurture. And ask us any questions that you might have about The Academy. So without any further ado, let’s get chatting.
[00:02:00] Kris: Yes, so, Donna and I have had long-term clients right? For, for many, many decades. And we were thinking about why that is so, and, I’m on Pinterest a lot, right? Like I, I am a Pinterest girl. I was an early adopter to Pinterest. I’ve been on there for years and years and years and probably over the last, maybe three or four years, I started noticing this thing coming up a lot, which was goodbye packets and off-boarding, here’s the off-boarding process. Here’s the goodbye packet. And I was sort of like, what, what is this thing? Like, am I just really out of touch and really old? And, um, you know, I don’t know about this thing and I, I’m very curious and I always want to know about everything. So I’m delving in delving in what is this? What is this? And I was like, this doesn’t make sense to me because my successful business model and Donna’s successful business model was not ever about saying goodbye. It was not ever about saying I’m going to off-board you now. See you later, unless, unless it was a really bad client and usually that’s mutual, right? The client can feel it and you can feel it. And it’s like, okay, bye bye. But, but it seemed like it was becoming just a common practice. Like let’s just, you know, handoff or, it’s like one and done. We’ve never seen a design business’s success as one and done well, that’s not the model we teach. That’s not the business model we teach. So, um, there’s so many statistics out there and numbers being thrown around and it has been this way for years about getting a brand new client takes so much longer than nurturing an existing client.
[00:03:42] Donna: Yeah, it’s like five times. There’s lots of numbers like Kris said, but it costs you five times more to get a new client versus engaging and nurturing an existing one, something like 60 to 70% success rate to get work out of an existing client and five to 20% success rate to get work from a brand new client. So again, those are very broad statistics. We haven’t done the research lately, but it’s been bandied around for many years about how your client base is right here. You nurture your existing clients because they are already an advocate. They already love what you do. They already trust you. And there’s no way that they want to go elsewhere unless you’re sort of giving them a bit of an inkling that you’re done with them. And for us, we were really confused by the language because that’s definitely not been a business model of ours. This language of goodbye packets and off-boarding suggests to me and would suggest to your clients that this relationship has come to an end. It’s over now. Goodbye. We’re going to send you off now. And one of the things that we talk about a lot is how we’ve maintained these beautiful relationships that we’ve had for literally decades, where our clients become friends. We become a part of their business. An extension to their business, like when they’re making any major decisions, what would Donna and the team say, what would Kris and the team say? They want to know what we would think and we’re a valuable asset to the growth of their business. And I can’t help but think Kris and I both were sort of scratching our heads. We’re like, how does it work if you’re constantly offboarding clients? And you’re sort of saying, see you later, do they get that feeling that you’re done with them? You don’t want a relationship? So we’re just wanting to have a conversation around this and what’s going on with these off boarding processes? We’d really like to know. Yeah.
[00:05:41] Kris: I’m not really sure where it’s come from or where it stemmed from. Maybe it’s the introduction of web developing into the design world and part of the design language, but it’s, it seems a little bit counterintuitive and it’s got a funky energy about it. Like a bit of a I dunno. It just doesn’t feel, really nurturing and supportive and open. It feels like you’re closing a door. And so just be really careful, I guess, about the language that you’re using around that final stage of a project. We have a whole module in The Academy, which is all about project launches. We like to see it as a launch. You know, like here we go, what happens next? What are the next steps? And you know, this is just the beginning, like the first project. That’s just the beginning. Let’s go. Unless you really loathed the client really hated the client. It’s like, you don’t want to say goodbye.
[00:06:33] Donna: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And if you’re really having a hard time with a client and not enjoying the work that you’re doing for them, or you’re not enjoying their ethics, or you’re not being treated well, then you don’t have to wait until the end of a project to say goodbye. You can say goodbye, as soon as it’s apparent that you are not in a healthy relationship with your client and that’s okay. You know, there’s strategies around that. So, yeah, we feel like we’re excited by long term relationships. We have benefited from the value of long-term relationships. And we have benefited from clients who have seen the value in the work that we do and want us involved in the growth of their businesses. And that means that that first project was the one of many, many, many, many projects. And the benefit of this, I think is the more you get to know a client the deeper you sort of get into the strategy behind their business model and what their business is. You become really tuned into what their needs are. So this ability to actually flag opportunities for your clients and collaborate with them on their growth happens. And that elevates the trust client has for you as being a part of their business, you know,
[00:07:57] Kris: and respect,
[00:07:58] Donna: and
[00:07:59] Kris: and respect. Yep.
[00:08:00] Donna: that’s right. And what we talk about a lot in our masterclass is the know love and trust and building that know love and trust and all roads lead to respect, don’t they?
[00:08:10] Kris: Yes.
[00:08:11] Donna: all lead to respect mutual respect. You need to be respected as a creative, talented designer, who is a professional and authority in what you do, and your client needs to be respected as this visionary for the business that they’re wanting to grow and develop. And so this mutual respect happens from nurture. And the more you get to know your client, the more you know about them, the deeper it is, the better it gets, the easier it gets to have that relationship, I think. So, yeah, it would just be a shame to get to an end of a project and go see you later. And then, then your client actually think, oh, is that it? Am I done? Are we done?
[00:08:49] Kris: Yeah. Yeah. There’s there’s strategies that you can implement. We cover them in The Academy, there’s referral strategies, there’s post-launch checklists that you can cover and make sure that you’re going to be encouraging and nurturing future work. You’ve got feedback questionnaires and things like that, there’s lots of touch points you can do once the main bulk of the design is finished, even if it was a big phase of a project. There’s so many touch points that can keep you in the hearts and minds of these clients. Even if they might not have like a big budget to keep ongoing further, but they’re going to grow. You’re going to grow. You’re going to grow together. It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship that you have. Yeah. So we cover in the masterclass, not just nurturing clients, we’ve got some beautiful ideas around nurturing clients, so the title of the master class is take your brand design business from struggling to in demand. So we’ve got some very key points in there, including how we nurture, cause that’s a really big part of it, but it’s a really fun masterclass. It’s very jam packed. There’s lots of takeaways in it, we really hope you get value out of it. We really want to meet you. And as Donna said, we’ll run through, what’s involved with The Academy. If you’ve been curious about it, we’ll run through that and answer any questions that you have because we know you’ve got questions, we’ve got answers.
[00:10:09] Donna: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. All right. Well, I think that wraps up this little conversation about the off-boarding process, but, um, the thing is we’ve not ever adopted it. And we’ve realized the value in our client nurture system and, um, and we love it. We love it. And we can’t wait to share it with you.
[00:10:28] Kris: Project launches all the way.
[00:10:31] Donna: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Keep coming back. Keep coming back
[00:10:34] Kris: Launch off, you know, let’s launch. Yep. Hope that is helpful. So just be careful, be careful about the language you’re using. You know, it can land in a funny way with the clients.
[00:10:45] Donna: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. See you next time.
[00:10:48] Kris: Bye.
[00:10:49] Donna: Bye.
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