The most important question to ask (and keep asking) your clients

A simple framework for growing key relationships

In startups and other nimble companies, there’s far less time to get employees up to speed and fewer resources for strategic training. This is especially true with account management, where it’s often believed that the right personality and good organization skills are all that’s needed to “manage” customers. This leads to a lot of startups winging it with their most important accounts.

Toward the goal of giving some structure and guidance to the practice of account leadership (I’m using “leadership” and not “management” to emphasize a more purposeful, growth-focused mentality), I’m sharing a simple framework that’s based on a single question to ask your customers.

First, some context
The question (yes, I’m building anticipation) seems painfully obvious, but unfortunately, it’s one that’s often not asked, or when it is, it’s usually buried somewhere on a long list.

It took me several hundred meetings in my early career before seeing the power of single best question to ask an account.

I was with our head of sales at a large semiconductor company in San Jose, discussing their frustrations with the idiosyncrasies of our product (an online video platform). We were diving into the details and missing the big picture. The meeting wasn’t going in right direction and the client’s team looked uneasy.

Then our head of sales asked a potent question:

“What does success look like?”

Our sponsor, a project manager, then painted a picture of salespeople watching product videos in taxis on their way to sales meetings. Their lead trainer envisioned a rich library of content that would keep employees updated on new technology. Though I’d heard pieces of these goals before, I could now clearly see why we were critical to their mission.

Asking the client to articulate their vision of success wasn’t just another question. It was a visualization technique that somehow made their goals more real and gave me a visceral, central concept to rally both sides around. More work lay ahead, but the client began to see us as a strategic partner that could make their aspirations into reality.

Three weeks later, we closed a large professional services project with them.

A “success-based” account growth framework

To be a heroic account leader, follow these 10 steps:

1. Begin with a leadership mindset
Understand that high-value clients require leadership. If you’re the person tasked with handling the relationship, then you will lead your team and the client to success.

2. Ask your customer the essential question
“What does success look like?”
If it’s the first meeting, you need to walk away with a clear understanding of why the client hired you. If it’s a new project with an existing customer, then stay laser-focused on the vision of success for the new initiative.

Keep in mind, you’ve just asked the customer to open up, to share their dreams with you. It’s crucial that you respond with emotion and passion:
“That’s super-helpful. Thank you. I really like — ”

Don’t be taciturn after they’ve opened up. Show your passion for their dream.

3. Expand and Internalize
You want the client to paint you a picture from their mind’s eye — and you’ll want them to use lots of color. If there’s something that doesn’t jive, flesh it out with the stakeholders until you totally grasp it. Dive into key moments in the project and ask what success looks like at each key interval. It may feel tedious to the prospect or client, but stay the course. It’s quite possible they haven’t really thought things through themselves. As you help them clarify the vision, you’ll also help shape it. Most important, the vision must be extremely clear to you before you begin to rally your team. You need to be confident in the client’s vision to persuade others of its importance.

4. Quantify
Ask the client how they intend to measure success in order to quantify their expectations. Well-conceived plans have target metrics. When a client can’t or won’t share quantified goals, that’s a red flag for a half-baked initiative. No matter how amazing your work or solution may be, a difficult client can attack the results with general criticisms like “I expected more.”
Without metrics, success is open to interpretation.

5. Harmonize
The more complex the project, the more varied the stakeholders will be, and the more likely you’ll hear different visions of success. When views differ, examine how various stakeholders define success and weave them into leadership’s birds-eye view of the project.

For example, if a C-level executive stated the importance of the project publicly, reiterate that. If you haven’t spoken with the head of marketing, this is an important time get his/her vision of the project and how it fits into their overall marketing goals. Turn any confusion into an opportunity to show your value to the client’s senior leadership.

6. Publicize
Once the vision is synthesized, a great account manager becomes the vision’s chief publicist, so to speak. Write a catchy version of the vision on the whiteboard before a meeting. Add the key quote from the client regarding the vision as a header in your internal emails.

7. Motivate
Explain how and why that vision benefits your company—and go beyond revenue. If you believe it’s a chance for your team to do work that will draw industry attention or open up a new vertical, then show your internal stakeholders why you think that. Teams that are aligned and inspired with the client’s vision produce the best work.

8. Keep asking
No matter how strong the vision of success may be at one point, it will change in the minds of stakeholders and this will often not be shared with you.
Here are some events that warrant a check-in:

- Client is missing deadlines or goes silent
- Key stakeholders are added to or leave the project
- Someone communicates expectations that aren’t in line with the plan
- A major business event like a merger, acquisition, or bankruptcy
- A major competitor releases something similar or noteworthy
- Impactful industry data is released that asserts or contradicts assumptions

In the worst-case scenario, you’ll sound like someone who’s paranoid about staying in alignment with the client’s goals—and of all the perceptions a client might have of you, that’s not so bad.

9. Build on what you’ve delivered
You build credibility with indisputable success stories. Success earns you the right to move deeper and broader within the organization.

10. Be the hero
When you own the vision of success, you can confidently move everyone in the right direction and dodge of obstacles well before they become problems. You’re far more than another vendor: you’re an indispensable leader who clients and colleagues will insist on working with again and again.