This deck focuses on tips, tricks, and best practices to help you build better relationships with your clients. It will go over the tools we use to facilitate client communication on a daily basis, as well as a dive into the power of influence.

1. Client Communication
January 21, 2016

2. Let’s get some information from you!
● Who is in the role as ‘the client’?
● Who here works or answers to a client?
● Have you ever had a client communication go
badly?

3. Let’s face it, we all experience good and bad
communication whether as or with a client.
➢ By prepping yourself
with tools for success,
you can become a more
effective communicator.

4. The goal for today’s talk is to highlight some of the
main areas of importance for communication:
1) Preferred Tools
2) The Balancing Act
3) Workshop / Story Sharing

5. TOOLS
5

6. Top tool recommendations from the PBS team
Teamwork
Slack
Trello
Google Alerts
HubSpot

7. TOOL #1: Teamwork
➢ A project management
tool that allows for
collaboration and
transparency within
teams and clients.

8. TOOL #2: Slack
➢ A multi-platform messaging
app that integrates
connection, collaboration,
and file sharing.
➢ It helps to reduce email noise
during your work day.

9. TOOL #3: Trello
➢ A free, flexible,
organizational tool
that lets you keep
everything in one
location.
➢ To do, email threads,
notes, and more.

10. TOOL #4: Google Alerts
➢ Google alerts allow you track
news updates and stories for
you clients, their competitors,
their industry, or anything else
that you want to stay up to date
on.

11. TOOL #5: HubSpot
➢ An inbound marketing and
sales platform that helps
companies attract visitors,
convert leads, and close
customers.

12. The Power
of Influence

13. How to successfully navigate getting things done
while you are in-the-middle
● Balance between client and internal team
● Feel empowered to make requests
● Reading between the lines
● Maintaining positivity

14. Balance between client and internal team
➢ Knowing when to advocate
for each side
➢ Always avoid over-promising
➢ When to stand your ground
➢ If everything is urgent,
nothing really is

15. Feel empowered to make requests
➢ You’re only as good as your
word
➢ Setting clear objectives
and expectations
➢ The “follow-up”
➢ You are the internal client
representative

16. Reading between the lines
➢ The power in the unsaid
➢ Finding meaning in non-
verbal cues
➢ Uncovering non-verbal cues
when not face to face
➢ Connecting the dots...the
“follow-up”
➢ Don’t be afraid to ask

17. Maintaining positivity
➢ Authority vs. Positivity
➢ Focusing on the solution not
the problem
➢ Yes, you said something but I
didn’t hear you
➢ A little positivity goes a LONG
way

18. WORKSHOP
Breakdowns in Communication
18

19. We all have had an experience of bad client
communication or an epic save,
whether as a client or with one...

20. Example #1:
➢ A client had a bad experience at a
restaurant
➢ They take to Facebook to complain.
➢ The owner responds to them and
insults them
➢ An ongoing battle ensues...

21. Example #2:
➢ A business dinner with a client. The
account manager, coughs while drinking
tea and sprays tea on the client
➢ Brainstorming session with friends on
how to recover
➢ The account manager delivers a scuba
mask and snorkel to the client joking it’s
for their next meeting

22. Share your client ‘horror’ or ‘magical save’
stories in teams
● Discuss your experience as a client or with a
client, but keep it anonymous
● Choose the ‘winner’ of the group
● Share your story & outcome
● Would anyone have dealt with this differently?

23. So what were some of the common themes?
● Miscommunication/Misunderstanding
● Assume (= “Ass” of “u” & “me”)
● Humour
● Timing
● ‘Trust your gut’

25. Q&A
25

26. Estimating time/risks on projects. (Dan - BRPS spreadsheet)
Measure the intangibles!
(High, Medium, Low)
➢ Confidence Level
○ Scope
○ Solution
➢ Risk Level
○ New Tech
○ Outsourced
○ Executive
Support
○ Complexity

27. Any questions for the team?

28. Thank You!
Any questions?

29. Appendix

30. Tools
● Trello
○ Todoist
● Google Alerts
○ Talkwalker
● HubSpot
○ Marketo
● Teamwork
○ Basecamp
○ Wrike
● Slack
○ Hipchat
Here are a list of the tools we’ve discussed and their largest
competitors. Please click the links below to learn more about each
of them and how they may be able to help either yourself or you