How do you build and maintain strong client relationships?
How you maintain client relationships depends on your model. For B2C, with thousands of customers, it’s about personalisation and research, using what you know about people to target them meaningfully. For B2B, with fewer, larger clients, it’s about building relationships from top to bottom, running account plans and regular reviews. Either way, measure the strength of those relationships and don’t neglect your strategic partners.
Does relationship-building differ for B2C and B2B?
It depends on whether you’re B2C or B2B. For a B2C business with thousands of customers, the key is personalisation: understanding people’s habits and preferences so the message you send actually lands, like the well-timed email about something you’d genuinely consider buying. It also means research, sometimes literally observing customers, the way I once sat in a shopping centre watching how people browsed and bought, and asking them what they’ll need going forward. For B2B, with perhaps twenty clients, you can build relationships in person. Use account plans to map how strong your relationship is at each level, from the CEO to rising talent below, and look for other revenue opportunities and ways to align with the client’s own objectives. Run quarterly and annual reviews outside the normal cycle to discuss what’s working, what isn’t, and to remind them of the mutual wins you often forget between February and December.
How do you measure the strength of a client relationship?
The most popular tool is the Net Promoter Score, which asks a simple question: would you recommend this organisation to someone else? It works for both B2C and B2B, and you can adapt your own version of it. The point isn’t the specific method so much as the discipline of actually measuring, because it’s easy to assume a relationship is healthy without ever checking. A clear read on how likely each client is to recommend you tells you where the relationships are genuinely strong and where they need work, before a quiet client quietly becomes a lost one. So pick a measure, use it consistently, and let it flag the accounts that need attention.
Where do strategic partners fit, and what’s the risk?
Strategic partners are the most forgotten part of business planning, missing from nearly every template, yet often critical. They come in a few forms. Some generate leads: a non-competitor who shares your target audience, where you can send each other business. Some provide expertise you don’t hold in-house, like an ad agency, accountant or research partner. Others provide operational support, from an outsourced IT, HR or finance resource to a logistics partner (a 3PL or 4PL) instead of running your own warehouses and trucks. The upside is real: partners let you grow and move faster with less risk than building everything yourself. The watch-out is single reliance. If you depend on one partner or one outsourced individual and they get busy on another client right when you need them for a tender, you’re exposed. Map where that single-point risk sits as you plan.
How 24HRBP approaches this
In a 24 Hour Business Plan session we build client relationships and strategic partners into the execution plan: account plans and review rhythms for your key clients, a measure for relationship strength, and a clear-eyed look at where a single partner reliance could put you at risk.
Watch the full episode on The 24HR Business Plan Podcast: Episode 10 - Building and Managing Client Relationships
