Research has shown that the typical client/designer relationship lasts two - three years. Usually, when a relationship goes South, the communication stops. That’s understandable. Sometimes there are bad feelings over something that happened during a project and such. But, often, it’s a matter of contacts changing. People move on, get promoted, you get busy with other things and the communication fades.

Word to the wise – strive to keep the lines of communication open. With the holidays coming up, this is a great time of year to rekindle an old relationship. Consider dropping a contact a holiday card. Or, pick up the phone to say “hello.”

Let me give you a couple of examples.

There’s this guy who was my boss in the previous incarnation about 20 some odd years ago. We had become pretty good friends during the time I worked for him. When I left that position for greener pastures, we kept in touch. A phone call here. A lunch there.

After a while, he left the company to set out on his own. When he needed some design work, he called me. As luck would have it, he was something of a broker. His clients became my clients.

Several years later, he closed up shop to take a job offer that he simply couldn’t refuse. Guess what? That company became a client. This scenario repeated itself several more times over the years. Simply keeping in touch resulted in thousands of dollars in billings over time.

Here’s another example. I had a local client for whom I did a boat load of work a while back. After a few years, things changed. My key contact was promoted to a position that didn’t get involved with design. Another contact, the Marketing Director, left the company. The President launched a new branding directive and a new Marketing Director came on board. Although I had been doing much of their branding-related work, she elected to team up with her own people. That’s not all that unusual.

The work dried up, but I kept in touch here and there.

After not hearing a peep out of these folks for quite a while, I get a phone call. One of the company divisions had a trade show coming up and they needed help creating a center panel for a display. To make a very long story short, that one panel turned into designing 15 full displays. Cha ching! Not too shabby.

Then came an email a couple of weeks after I finished the displays. “Could I come in for a meeting?” Sure thing. During that meeting, I learned that the relationship with the Marketing Director’s “people” had soured. The client needed a fresh look for their enterprise-wide branding. They wanted me to redesign their web site … and every marketing material the company had in its arsenal – brochures, PowerPoints and more. This client is a 100 million dollar+ company. Son of cha ching!
The thing is, this was a result of not giving up and not burning any bridges.

So, your job-at-hand is to go through your past contacts and dig up some folks you’ve not heard from in a while. Then, pick up (or better, custom design) some holiday cards and shoot ‘em out. Or, pick up the phone and give them a call. Take them out for a holiday lunch.

This is a perfect time of year for rekindling relationships. You might just find those couple of cards, phone calls or lunches are the best gift you can give to your practice.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt