When interacting with clients or potential clients, you need to be very deliberate with your language.
Certain words or phrases can come across as unprofessional, while others might be too verbose or confusing. To impress clients, you don’t need to learn a whole new set of complicated vocabulary words. You just need to find the right balance of professional and relate-able.
Below are words and phrases you might consider to make the most of your next client opportunity.
Impress Your Clients With. . .
Collaboration
First and foremost, client interactions shouldn’t be one-sided.
You should think about your relationships with clients as collaborations rather than just you providing a product or service to them. This means you should ask for their input and ideas throughout the communication process. If you communicate this sense of collaboration throughout the process, clients will likely feel more comfortable working with you.
Value Proposition
If you want clients to do business with you, you need to show them how you will deliver value to them.
A value proposition is a promise to deliver value to their experience. Using this term puts the emphasis on your client and their experience. It reminds them what they are getting out of the experience, which is why they are doing business with you in the first place.
Objectives
Overall, your interactions with clients should stay focused on your main goals and what you can do for them. Having a clear list of objectives will help you stay on topic. That should impress your clients.
Action Items
To accomplish your goals, you need a plan. And you need to be able to show your clients how you intend to accomplish those goals.
Action items are pieces of your plan that you need to accomplish along the way. And including these in conversations with clients will show them that you know exactly how to accomplish what you set out to do.
Benefits
Throughout your interactions with clients, you should try to keep the emphasis on the benefits your clients can receive by doing business with you.
Instead of going into the specifications of your offering, this term keeps the conversation focused on the client’s needs and what you can do for them.
KPI
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator, which is a measurement used to measure the success of an activity. This is important when interacting with clients, because you need to continually prove that your product or service is working for them.
Having a measurement or indicator shows clients that you are confident in your offering and willing to back it up with facts.
ROI
Ultimately, what your client cares about is their return on investment, or ROI. What are they getting for their money? Using this term gives them specific answers and shows them that you are concerned with the value they receive from you.
Scalability
When developing long-term relationships with clients, their needs will likely change over time. That means your offerings will need to change and evolve with them if you want to keep them as clients.
Showing that you can scale along with your clients will help them feel more secure sticking with you for a long time, which could make them more likely to do business with you in the first place.
Trend Analysis
In many cases, your clients’ needs and your offerings will rely on certain trends. For example, if you’re a content marketing agency working with retail brands, you need to be aware of the trends in the retail industry.
Including a trend analysis when interacting with clients shows them that you’ve done your research and that your offering fits with relevant industry trends.
Engagement
Engagement is the rate at which potential customers interact with your business or marketing efforts. It’s a common goal for all types of businesses, and even individuals, particularly in the social media age.
Depending on the type of clients you work with, increasing engagement could be a very big part of your interaction with clients.
Social Reach
This is another term related to the reach of your marketing efforts. But instead of focusing on how people interact with your marketing content, it focuses on how many people your social marketing might impact.
Focused
Again, you need to be sure that your interactions with clients are focused on a clear list of goals. So, you need to be able to communicate that focus to clients. If you do, then they’ll know you won’t get distracted from what they initially hired you to accomplish.
Opportunities
Problems will inevitably arise from time to time when dealing with clients. But instead of calling them problems, you should look at them as opportunities for growth or innovation. This will show clients that you can help them even through the tough times and shows that you are able to solve problems in a creative way.
Recommendation
When pitching to clients, you want to keep the conversation focused on them. But you are ultimately the knowledgeable one about your industry. So, you shouldn’t be afraid to offer your expertise and recommendations to clients or potential clients. This shows that you are an expert in your field and helps improve your clients’ experiences with you.
Tracked Results
After you’ve worked with a client on a project, you should have some idea of the results. No matter what method you use to keep track of those results, you should have a concrete way of showing clients how effective your offering was for them. Those results are what will drive clients to do business with you again.
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