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Going after major client projects or more clients?
The secret to confidently working with more/larger clients and delegating delivery to your team is to have a client fulfilment process that:
➡️fosters your team's confidence in their ability to deliver independently and
➡️nurtures your client's trust in you and your team's ability to help them.
You may say: "my team is made up of experts who should get it out the gate." They are experts at what they do but not experts at the way you do it.
You may say: "my clients trust and love me" because your story went a lil something like this...(I still triple dog dare you to sing with me) 🤣
😗😗[your name] and [your client] sitting in a tree...K-I-S-S-I-N-G (you vibe throughout the sales process).
💑💑First comes love (you decide to work together and they pay you!)
💒💒Then comes marriage (coughs) I mean onboarding…
👶👶Then comes the baby in a carriage (you work together to get a result - you plan the work, implement and give them post-implementation support)
But client trust is eroded if you and your team don't deliver well. Cue the pulling you into the weeds and constant firefighting. Cue the refunds, chargebacks and disappearing clients.
Client trust is built and nurtured throughout the course of the engagement. Team confidence in implementing your process independently is built when they are clear on the steps to deliver.
Getting team confidence and client trust requires a clear process for planning for and making that baby in a carriage! To do that, get better at equipping your team and clients to plan and implement new engagements.
The missing step...
Once the client is onboarded, many business owners rush into the baby-making stage. Then become surprised when things get time-consuming!
You missed a critical step. You forget to plan. You forget to ask a few big questions: “what do I need to prepare to start working with this client? What does my team need to start working with this client? What does the client need to prepare to start working with me?”
You don't give your clients the opportunity to prepare and submit the materials you and your team need to start working together. You and your team don't get the space to get specific material to clients, prepare to prepare to work with them or be ready to start working together.
Planning looks different for service providers based on their offers. For example: our marketing agency clients often require brand materials from clients to start working. For our VIP Days and 12-month consulting offers, our team spend a week customizing our client fulfilment process whiteboard template to our client's business. For that to happen, we use a part of our onboarding call to pull the high level details of our client's fulfillment process from their heads.
Dig into the weeds...
Making the baby doesn't end at planning. Once planning is completed, you implement (make and have the baby). You and your clients and team take the steps to get from point A to point B.
Again, these steps will depend heavily on your offer. For example, a marketing agency, may focus on preparing branding materials clients. An accountant may focus on getting client's books together. For our introductory offers like 1-week to streamline your client onboarding process or 1-week to create a high-level roadmap to streamline your entire client fulfilment process, it's about doing the steps to create a client's onboarding process or fulfilment process roadmap.
Whatever steps you and your clients and team take, try to make them as engaging as possible. Plus empower your team to handle the common and uncommon client situations that are bound to pop up as you implement.
Support after implementing...
There is one other stage to consider when it comes to working with clients. Sometimes implementation includes support after implementation where you make yourself available to your clients for a few days before closing out the engagement. This can look like 30-day of support.
And though they offer it, many business owners overlook the process of onboarding your clients into this process. Or even ensuring your team can confidently deliver this phase. Don't be one of those business owners if you are serious about working with more clients, taking on bigger client projects and/or delegating fulfilment.
Conclusion
Once you get onboarding and working with clients, right, you are 85% of the way to streamlining your client fulfilment process so you can step out of the weed of delivery and elevate your client experience and results while empowering your team. Doing this right also positions you to get the KPIs you need to be the CEO who has a bird's eye view of what happening with one or multiple client engagements.
And that's it for today. You are gonna want to read the next post...if you are wondering how to cut down the time you spend and money you you spend on sales and lead generation activities.
Streamlining how you say "hasta la vista" to clients (offboarding) activates your most effective salespeople: happy high-value clients. They are flashing neon billboards who eagerly shout from the mountaintops about your work, can't wait to work with you again and send a flood of new leads in.
The next post in the series shows you how to activate them after you and your team knocked their sock off with results and a world-class experience and now it's time to say goodbye (or hello again!).
Read the full "Time Freedom & Business Growth" Series below.
Here is Part 1: Get out of the weeds of your business.
Here is Part 2: Dreamy clients...wicked witch behaviors.
Here is Part 3 (this post): Going after major client projects or more clients?
Here is Part 4: Clients who behave like billboards
Here is Part 5: How the sales process is like online dating.
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Book a call to talk about how we can help you streamline client fulfilment so you can finally deliver your services with less work and stop being the bottleneck in your business.
Be amazing,
Danielle & Chanel
