Five Ways to Engage Clients Before They Sit Down In The Office

What do great businesses do to engage and educate clients before they have actually started the client discovery meeting?

They have at their disposal waiting room excellence.

In other words the client experience begins as the client enters the business premises. And by design rather than default these great businesses tap into client behaviour and emotion to educate and inform before the formal interview has even commenced.

How?

Follow these five steps and start your transformation.

Create a welcoming environment.

Like the PCE Assurance Letters, the waiting room environment is all about confirming to the client that they have made the right choice. This means that it needs to speak to the client needs that are in play. If you are pitching to senior executive clients a waiting room needs to evoke the environment they are accustomed to. The details right down to the magazine selection needs to be appropriate. If pitching to families a waiting room that is child friendly is a winner.

Your pitch to your prospective client that you understand them, starts in the waiting room. Create an environment that loud and clear announces that you know your market.

Have great front of house staff that can engage your clients.

This works because you can find out vital information about a clients decision making internal influences such as ...attitude, motivation, how they learn (do they watch the video screens, read the magazine, look at pictures in a brochure, read your business collateral?). Recently PCE were strongly engaged in two adviser waiting rooms. Once by a dynamic receptionist who was also studying law. PCE were quite put on their heels and certainly discovered there were some issues over and above what PCE were there to discuss that it was suddenly illuminated that this particular business could assist with. The second occasion PCE was struck by the smiles, the welcome, the conversation of two front of house staff.


Start educating and leading your clients.

Create and use focused and targeted collateral be it brochures, case studies, video that provides information about your business and what it is you do and why.

Importantly what is your process and what sort of clients have been through your process and succeeded. There are many ways to do this. Video, flow charts, client storyboards. What you are doing here is creating credibility that positive results happen for people who work with you.

Demonstrate the value you provide.

With the pressure you face from an ever increasing Competitive environment, differentiating your offer has never been as vital as it is now. To win you need to demonstrate that your offer transcends what else in out there. Easily done. Simply create a map/ a process/ a visual of all the things you do for clients and how broad your network is, in a way that clearly identifies that you can provide and facilitate a multi faceted solution for your clients and that you are the vital hub of their world.


Let them bond with you before they meet you.

How? Let them know you and who you are and who are the clients you've helped. You, your staff, your clients should be on display. This means visuals, photos, a library and other items that can make an emotional connection with your clients. What community contribution do you make? What about charity? What do you stand for and what is valued in your world that you are willing to share? By opening yourself up and displaying your values you will have as a result like attracting like and people bonding with you or at the worst people understanding and respecting your values and giving you the opportunity to reciprocate.

Waiting rooms.......not just for waiting.