According to Andrew Sobel, “Client relationships can take a long time to develop. This is especially true in large corporate environments where you have multiple stakeholders that have to be won over and executives who are cautious about opening up to an external advisor. “It’s very frustrating when the relationship-building process seems stalled. In some cases, my clients report that they’ve struggled in vain for months or even several years to establish a trusted relationship with a key executive.”

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Here are the first four of nine strategies that Andrew recommends to accelerate the process of developing strong relationships with clients and prospects.

1. Offer an issue-specific working session.

First, identify an issue of real importance to your client. Second, establish your credibility in that area by illustrating what you’re doing to successfully address it with other clients, and/or providing insight through a point of view or framework that helps your client see the issue more clearly. Then, offer to run a working session—a few hours or even half a day—to explore it more deeply. One CFO told me, when referring to one of his trusted advisors, “This was their ticket to building a deeper relationship with me: Taking a ‘deep dive’ every year into a topic of interest.”

Is there a working session—a “deep dive”—you could propose to a client?

2. Get your client out of the office.

One of the fastest ways to accelerate the development of a relationship is to change the relationship environment. Take your client out to lunch or dinner. Go to a conference with them. Create an offsite event that includes lots of time for informal discussions and personal bonding.

Are you creating opportunities interact with your client outside the office?

3. Use speed.

Speed is an underutilized and undervalued quality that can have a huge impact on a relationship. My belief is this: The longer it takes you to diagnose the problem and the longer your delivery for any given project or solution gets dragged out beyond your initial estimate, the less profitable it becomes for both sides and the less impact it has. Speed things up with your client! For example:

o After meeting with your client, get back to them quickly (within 24 hours) with a summary of what you discussed and the next steps.

o Diagnose rapidly. Don’t take months to assess the problem. It’s impressive when you can quickly identify what’s wrong and how to fix it.

o Finish your first engagement on time and on budget. Don’t stretch it out—except under certain circumstances (for example, it the problem is far worse than anyone thought). If you do, it will lose impact.

Are you using speed to create impact and short-term value for your client? Or is your work getting dragged out?

4. Use questions, early on, to connect personally.

The best way to start creating the “emotional resonance” that I mentioned at the beginning is through thoughtful questions that engage the other person on an emotional rather than purely rational level. These include questions about their background, their past experiences, where they grew up, how they like to spend time outside of work; and, questions that appeal to the right brain, versus the analytical left brain, such as “I’m curious, what are working on right now that your are most passionate about?”

Are you asking thoughtful questions that engage and draw out your client on a more personal level?

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

To learn all about Andrew and his work, please click here.