Managing the relationship

Tips on maintaining a great long term relationship with your clients

How you manage the relationship is very important and too many advisor relationships don’t live up to their potential, leaving people underwhelmed or disappointed. Advisors often treat the relationship as the responsibility of the company to “call me when they need me”, but producing a successful engagement should be the responsibility of both sides. Putting some work upfront and having a regular process to review the relationship should be discussed and clarified up front.

Participate as much as possible

One common challenge with being an advisor is that you can often be out of the loop with the latest information about the business, making it more difficult to provide valuable advice. This can lead to the team spending most of the calls updating you vs. getting your advice. To avoid this so try to design in ways that you can be updated about key developments in the company on a regular basis. Participating in company meetings or having access to a company update or Slack channel can help you develop advice before you even get on your regular call with team. Include these updates as part of the engagement so both sides know how you will stay updated and be sure to budget time for them. This may be tough if you are short on time but the idea is to most efficiently give you the information that you need to add value.

Issue spotting and being proactive

Make a point of staying informed and looking for ways that you can add value before the company asks. If you are paying attention, you should be able to see those opportunities before the team does. Founders are always overwhelmed and pulling you in at the right time may not always come to mind for them. As part of your regular calls you can add to the agenda a review of outstanding areas that could use your help and how they should be prioritized. Engaging with other members of the executive team besides the CEO can also lead to the identification of new opportunities to help. Be sure that your work is resulting in the outputs and outcomes that the team really needs. If not, help diagnose why your contributions aren’t generating the results that are expected. Often times, it can be something else inside the organization.

Setting boundaries and maintaining scope

Some founders will want to push past the time that you have committed to them, and they may begin to treat you as they would an employee. Be sure to be firm on your boundaries and your commitment, and make sure you discuss estimated time requirements of any tasks you may have upfront. Always try to manage expectations, and when things begin to creep beyond the original commitment, try to buck the trend early and get back to the original scale and scope.