Our Winning Formula for Working With & Retaining Large Clients

Last year, I had the honour of presenting at the biggest WordPress conference in Europe: WordCamp Europe 2015. My talk was entitled: ‘Our winning formula for working with and retaining large clients‘.

At Moove, we’re constantly striving to enhance the way we work with our clients – improving processes, service levels and quality in everything we do.

In my talk, I walked the audience through a workflow that’s suited to corporate clients and large organisations.

I emphasised the difference between small and large clients and gave a few insights into our own experience of working with large clients over the years. Here’s a summary of the points that I shared during my winning formula talk and you can view the video at the end of this post.

#1 Put together a very experienced team

• Your team is the single most important success factor. And that applies to both the pitching stage as well as for the project delivery.
• Large clients have very experienced people working for them. They understand digital, they understand websites, they understand development too.
• To be able to win their business, you need very senior and experienced people in your team.

#2 Thorough discovery and planning phase

• A solid discovery and planning stage is the most important part of the project.
• If you don’t plan and do not understand the success criteria for the project, or what the target audience wants, you will fail.
• Large clients understand this and are willing to dedicate the time and money needed to get this right.

#3 Invest in the best customer support

• Large clients are used to dealing with suppliers who know how to provide 1st class customer service.
• If you are a small agency and you were used to informal dealings with your equally small clients, now is the time to revise your internal processes and upgrade them.
• Large clients expect immediate response and resolution to their problems.
• Sounds basic but it seems that’s what most small agencies struggle with and 1st class customer support is one of those absolutely essential basics.

#4 Have an opinion

• Large clients pay you for all the years of experience that you bring on board. They like to be advised on what is possible and how to push boundaries.
• Experienced clients also know what is realistic to be delivered in what timeframes and they are doubtful of agencies who over-promise at the risk of missing deadlines and important launches.

#5 Nurture long-term relationships

• The best part of working with large clients is the long-term on-going collaboration.
• After you spend 6 to 12 months of full-time work delivering a project for a client, you inevitably become an extended part of their internal team. And this is great – for you and for the client too.
• It’s much more enjoyable to work with long-term clients, to be a part of their on-going growth and success. So make sure you nurture your relationships with your current clients.

Good luck!

Here is the video of my winning formula talk:

Here are the slides from my winning formula talk:

If you’d like to work with an Innovative WordPress Development Agency on your next project get in touch with us.