Client Relationships

When trying to get new clients for work there are many factors that come into play that will determine whether or not you will deliver what they need. In order for clients to have a good relationship with you and possibly future endeavors, you need to gain their trust. There can be many ways to gain trust, but the best is to show you know what you are doing and have the same amount of understanding of the importance of the project that the client has. I am going to give you two examples of people in my life who I trust and don’t.

Back in high school for cross country we got a new coach for our team. This was supposed to be a good thing, because the old coach was doing a great job, at least that’s what I thought from what everyone else on the team said. The new coach was our school’s past JV football team coach and was trying to coach for a completely different sport. This lowers their trustworthiness in the fact that they have had no prior experience with coaching cross country. What made me have a bad encounter with this coach was the things he made us do, didn’t line up with the goals I was wanting to accomplish. He made us do lifting two days a week and cared more about explosive workouts, which isn’t helpful in a long-distance race. He seemed to care more about winning then having relationships with his athletes and through those relationships setting out to accomplish a goal. With all these factors into effect it made me not have the ability to rely my training and cross-country experience into his hands. From having him as a coach I later realized that even though everyone else hate the old coach, they where more qualified and trustworthy because of her past experience of being a runner and coaching cross country from the very start. The thing I got from this is not everyone has the same goals, so they do not need hire the same people.

My other example is my youth pastor from my church back home. I was able to put my trust into him, because of all the things he did for me. He started out by having great opportunities to build a growing relationship with him in order to have an understanding of each other. He would always talk to me wanting to know how my life was and if everything was going alright. He would take time out of his day to hang out with me and get to know more about me. What he did to make a good relationship helped with what he was doing as a youth pastor. Mainly he can take what he knows about us to give us advice from the scripture on what to do. This information was taken serious not only because he had knowledge about the bible through his studies, but he also had deep information about what was going on in our lives and what information from the bible and his own input that would help us in the situations that each of us would have in his youth group.

From both of these examples you can find ways that will cause clients not to have a relationship with you and could cause you from losing out on future job opportunities. With all clients you will have to find out what works for each one and what things you can do to gain their trust. In the end everyone has their own goals and materials that they need.