Be Your Client’s Gold Star: A Guide to Building Lasting Client Relationships

By Angela Southard-Winther

I love working with clients — from the initial meetings to setting goals and establishing strategies to ongoing day-to-day activities!  Being my clients’ biggest cheerleader and telling their stories to the news media and other audiences is one of the favorite things about my job.

Some of the strategies I’ve implemented over the years include:

• Always being available – with technology as advanced as it is, it’s easy to remain accessible to clients even when we are out of the office, on business or pleasure. While my clients are aware when I am out of the office, they always know they can count on me to be available if an urgent matter arises.
• Sharing my experience – I’ve worked in public relations and journalism for more than 20 years and share the knowledge I have with my clients providing insight, best practices, trends and tactics.
• Listen, truly listen – from day one, ask questions. From “what makes a win for you?” to “what are your top media outlets?”.  It is extremely important for me to hear and understand what is important to my clients and incorporate their feedback into our PR strategies and activities.
• Communicate regularly – whether it’s weekly or monthly check-ins, regular reports, email updates or texts, I find it important to keep in contact with my clients regularly to update them about activities and successes on their behalf.
• Get to know your clients – I enjoy working with all of my clients and like them all professionally and personally.