Should Client Services be Involved in the Sales Process?

"My experience of some agencies is that they sell a great service but often fail to deliver because more junior people are then assigned to execute the project who were not part of the initial engagements."

Does this sound familiar?

Unfortunately this is all too common and I have seen either:

• The senior team sell in a project that in reality wont be possible in the timeframe/budget etc defined because they are not close enough to the day-to-day running of the projects to know the limitations in practical terms.

Or

• The team that have been passed the project have no history in understand where the need has arisen from, what the client and business are trying to achieve and why this project has been proposed, they just become the transactional team.

So what's the problem with these scenarios?

In the first scenario, client expectation has been set early on with the senior team in terms of what can be achieved within the budget/ timeframe and results delivered. When the program is then passed to the Client Services team running the project and various considerations haven't been taking into account, this can cause delays, additional information needed from the client, and potentially a project needing to be rescoped. Which, from a clients perspective, is poor as they haven't had their expectations met, and the trust is broken before it's even been built.

In the second scenario, if a team doesn't have a clear understanding of the clients business challenges, why they need this project, what they are expecting to achieve and why this approach has been chosen, then the team will struggle to be able to add value to the client, or be able to upsell/x-sell any additional services that could support the project or challenges the client is facing.

How to solve this?

Don't leave a big gap of strategic knowledge between your senior team, and your Client Services team. You need to upskill your teams to be able to become a strategic advisor to your client, understanding their business and personal needs and to be able to speak competently about your services and products.

They should then be in those meetings with you, being able to give sound advice on the potential limitations to projects, and what needs to be considered before setting solid expectations. This will then build trust with the client early on, and they will feel like there is continuity from the sales process to delivering the project.

Having these skills means that your teams will be able to unearth more opportunities by knowing and understanding their clients and their business needs. Ultimately increasing your businesses bottom line.