What You Can Do to Keep Clients from Walking Away

Your clients are pressed for time. Everyone wants to get on their agenda. There is competition, in a sense, to build a relationship with them. If you want to be the one they turn to, you need an attraction strategy. You need to become a person of interest, someone that senior executives are drawn to spend time with.

This is not about charisma or personal flair, but rather about authenticity and value—about being an interesting person to spend time with, someone that clients feel stimulates their thinking, someone from whom they learn and get ideas.

What kind of person is that? First all of, you have to become a Deep Generalist. This is someone who has a well-developed core expertise—be that in an industry, function, or other niche—and who layers on top of that broad business knowledge and acumen. This enables you to have discussions with your client about their business issues—whether they're talking about operations, organization, or strategy—and to always put your specific solutions in the context of the overall enterprise.