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Clients are agencies' best friends – so why not treat them like you would your best friends?

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By Matthew Charlton | CEO

April 24, 2014 | 3 min read

Think about your best friends, how you feel about them. Then think about how you feel if they ask you to help them with something important. You think about it a while before you say yes because you want to make sure that you can really do it. You really don’t want to let them down.

Treat clients as you would your best mate (hand holding optional)

You never get genuinely frustrated if they change their minds about arrangements because you really understand their lives and what is going on. If they have to change things it must be for a good reason.

If you sell them a car and agree a price, you always honour the price. You don’t come back three months later saying, actually, it was too low and you need more money. In fact, you go out of your way to price it fairly because you don’t want money to come between a relationship you want to keep for a long time.

You value the ability to openly and honestly communicate with each other. It is based on transparency and trust. It is not based on bullshit, showing off and trying to get one over on each other.

You can even have a disagreement with a best friend and you just accept it as a different point of view and move on.

The thing that bonds great friends together is that you experience some of the best things you ever do in your life together. That shared experience, exhilaration and subsequent talking about it in the pub for the next 10 years is the currency of best friends.

All of the above is applicable to clients. It amazes me how few agency people set out from the beginning to treat a client like they are their best friend. Sure, in reality it’s unlikely they will reach that level, but if you aim to honour the same codes, chances are you will have a great relationship, create some amazing work and talk about it together in the pub for the next 10 years.

Instead, agencies so quickly slip into forming relationships without depth and integrity. The agency is constantly on sell, not understanding their business issues and the client changes frequently without listening properly. In the end you finish up spending the next 10 years slagging each other off in the pub.

Treat clients with the same code as you would your best friend and ultimately good things will come from it. There is little to lose and lots to gain.

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