It’s all well and good knowing your stuff when it comes to technology, but sometimes clients just want simplicity. Matt Murray stresses the importance of client engagement.

In this article I wish to discuss something I believe is far too often overlooked during our daily business. We focus quite heavily on technology, wishing to sell the latest and greatest (and in my position, clearly, I am an advocate) however, I fear we forego what many designate as basic human ‘creature comforts’.

My thoughts regard Optimising the Client Relationship. The Custom Integration channel serves a vital role for consumer electronics as the front line for end-users, having become the de facto cheerleader for manufacturers like us and the leading-edge products we develop and put to market. So how might the ideal client relationship take shape?

Don’t think of a current project as merely a place holder on your series of schedules. Reinvent yourself into a Technology Evangelist, using each project as an opportunity to cultivate a long lasting, perhaps even lifetime, relationship with people who similarly embrace technology.

In the past decade, it seems that from a thirty thousand foot vantage point, the CEDIA channel has pivoted. The posture was once that of focusing upon the most recently manifested, gold-plated, aura-eliciting box as saviour incarnate. Now it is one where relationship selling with interpersonal skills prove vastly more successful than an ability to spout specifications and quote the latest magazine reviews verbatim.

Maintaining periodic contact with your clients is imperative for business and relationship business. Simple calls that inquire whether the system is functioning as designed, and more importantly, as anticipated by the client after a period of use, demonstrate your level of post-sale service.

I’ve often heard Joel Silver tell a story during the ISF seminar about his father setting about to retire his Lexus for a newer model. When asked by Joel: “Why not a Mercedes?” his father responded: “Because they take care of my car, and they take care of me. While I wait, they give me coffee and a chocolate bar”.

Sometimes, the littlest things make the biggest difference. A boutique, high-end appliance dealer in the Midwest sends installers and service personnel out with a fresh, red rose for the lady of the home whenever a visit is performed, becoming a company trademark. While third-party providers that auto-send monthly newsletters and touch-base, non-descript emails keep the company name in front of clients’ eyes, personalised services that reflect what you intrinsically know about a client is eminently more effective and deepens the connection.

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is one means to maintain contact with clients. To many, this is perceived as a profit-generating mechanism which, in reality, doesn’t take the client’s welfare totally to heart. This perception can be avoided by avoiding the temptation to craft it coldly as a template of terms and conditions but rather creatively making it highly personalised in how your team executes it.

The client’s salesperson can participate or advise on the particulars which individualise a particular visit. As an example, say Mr. Smith regularly watches movies in his theatre centred around an Oppo 205. The scheduled visit may include a routine check of all touch panel functions, lighting controls, peripheral devices such as thermostats, pool/fountain controls, source control and destination confirmation, etc.

Yet, a nicely done gift package featuring a movie you feel the client will enjoy and incidentals such as candy and craft popcorn presented with documentation (the more extensive, the better) of complete system performance will impress your client with the thoroughness and the thoughtfulness behind it. If the projector was ISF calibrated, shooting a pattern to document the light loss of the lamp, or colour temperature drift with a laser-based machine illustrates how you track performance and provides back-up when you make recommendations for additional service (a new lamp or re-calibration).

Some of you may be rolling your eyes feeling this is the folly dreams are made of. However, in other walks of life, purveyors of products who also provide services routinely do these things for your clients.

Women, who now outnumber men in making decisions for major purchases, have performance or quality assurance agreements with jewellers for cleaning, fit, and stone tightness. They take high-end tennis rackets in for string tautness; upscale bicycles are routinely taken in for adjustments. Bentley-priced pianos are regularly tuned. Your clients are accustomed to paying for quality assurance – it’s becoming mandatory that you provide the service they’ve accepted as necessary from others.

While it may appear as a zero-sum proposition in today’s ever challenging labour market, you and your staff can make this a win-win-win. Office personnel can be involved with ideas for the small gifts related items, as they often interact with clients more than sales personnel. Gift cards reward great ideas for the presentation appearance of client packages and break up (let’s be honest) sometimes mundane days with bouts of creativity.

Coincidental to the personalisation of SLA is the effectiveness as a service model. Assured response time must be factored in should an unforeseen issue arise. Murphy’s law always takes precedence prior to a party or special occasion where the system is the feature. Construct your agreements to cover your labour costs, however SLA’s can provide instances when you can use it as an opportunity to have a crew make an impromptu but agreed-to visit, where they otherwise may not have anything else to do.

For example, in a climate where it may rain periodically, a builder may delay you on a scheduled day, and you may not have another place to divert a crew. During the previous night, a particularly nasty lightning show may have taken place. A call to stop by and ensure that no damage occurred to a system provides tremendous peace of mind to the client, whereas you may have had a crew sit in the office doing “busy work”.

You are all supremely creative people – this is just one example how you can play the daily chess game to your advantage.

Another means to maintain contact with clients, who are looking at the same new product introductions as you, is to have the salesperson associated with the client who is scheduled for an SLA visit accompany the technician and take the opportunity to have a technology chat. 8K televisions have appeared, sans content, and while Hollywood would like to craft better looking pixels rather than create more of them, clients may be confused by displays that have no discernible content for them being offered for sale.

The discussion can mention that processors on these displays are quite accomplished and can upconvert 4K signals competently and render glorious images, enabling enhanced definition with the varied angles of a Formula 1 car as well as the spectacular granite counters and myriad patterns on a Property Brothers episode.

Naturally, updated switchers and send/receive units will be required to faithfully preserve and distribute these signals throughout the home.

But your discussion can encompass other trending technologies. Having an iPhone, I didn’t realise what an Apple watch represented…until the recent commercial campaign that illustrated how it could call for help if the wearer was incapacitated.

Above are just a few musings which I know you creative people can use as a catalyst to propel your businesses to a higher perch while creating greater value for and to your clients.