If you are not making your client look good, reducing their stress, and managing risk, you are replaceable.
It’s a dark and stormy night. You wake up at 5 a.m., only to realize there is a flash flood in your town. As the project manager on a job, it’s your responsibility to stabilize the situation, protect the project, and shield your client from unnecessary fallout. Your job is not just to solve the problem, but to prevent it from becoming a crisis.
In a way, your marketing director is just like you, because while you were asleep, someone else was protecting your reputation, managing the message, and making sure no surprises landed on your desk at 8 a.m.
Your marketing director has done three things:
- Made you look good
- Made your life easier
- Kept you out of trouble
Why do I tell you this? Because as the architect, engineer, or contractor, you do the exact same thing for your client.
Clients want five things out of their projects. Two are obvious while the other three are a little more “under the radar.” The two obvious ones are on schedule and on budget. In today’s marketplace, those are the “typical” words clients want from their architect, engineer, and contractor.
Those expectations are measurable. They show up in reports, dashboards, and progress meetings. But they are not the full story.
The other three are not so obvious and not typically communicated in the traditional way. Those are:
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Make them look good. This one allows you the opportunity to put the spotlight on your client. Your client is the hero in the story. That’s what you want to communicate to them. This is their project, and you want to do the best job for them you can. It’s your job to make them look good to their leadership team, stakeholders, or board of directors.
In many organizations, the person you are working with is being evaluated on how well this project performs. When it succeeds, they succeed. When it struggles, their credibility is tested.
When you can make your client look good and communicate that you will do that, then you will have that client for life.
That is not just philosophy. Zweig Group data shows repeat clients account for roughly 75% of revenue for architecture and engineering firms. Long-term client relationships are built on more than technical competence. They require trust, reliability, and the confidence that you will protect your client’s reputation and position with their stakeholders.
If your main point of contact is the facilities director at a hospital, you want to make sure to help them. But helping them goes beyond completing the work. It means anticipating what will affect their day and communicating before they have to ask.
For example, if you are a contractor and need to switch over the power to temporary power for an hour, you communicate with them ahead of time and let them know. You provide the details, the timing, and the mitigation plan so they can confidently brief their leadership team and affected departments.
You are not simply managing a shutdown. You are managing their internal risk. -
Make their life easier. Make sure your client has more time or resources because they hired you. Reduce the mental load they carry. If the client needs updated information at their fingertips, then providing project updates in real time through a project management software may make them feel more at ease.
When clients can access schedules, photos, and other project information their supervisor or leader is asking of them without having to chase you down, they can respond quickly and with confidence knowing the information is accurate and current. -
Keep them out of trouble. This is ultimately about risk management. And risk today is rarely confined to the jobsite. It affects budgets, board confidence, public trust, and long-term funding.
Your clients want peace of mind. They don’t want a jobsite that is unsafe and causes accidents and public relations nightmares. Clients want to know you will keep them out of trouble and not allow unsafe events to occur on their project.
OSHA notes that the indirect costs of a worksite injury, including lost productivity, administrative time, training replacements, and reputational impact, often exceed the direct costs and are largely uninsured and unrecoverable. A single preventable incident can ripple far beyond the jobsite.
For your client, that risk does not stop at safety metrics. It can affect insurance premiums, board confidence, community trust, and future funding. When you operate with discipline, communicate early, and enforce standards consistently, you are protecting more than a schedule. You are protecting their credibility.
By making your client look good, making their job easier, and keeping them out of trouble, you will make them look like the hero while maintaining strong client relationships. Clients who see you as an advocate and trusted advisor providing these unmeasurable characteristics will continue to hire your firm.
This is not a soft skill. It is a competitive advantage. This mentality must be transferred throughout the organization, specifically to those individuals who have daily client interactions like project managers and superintendents.
When every level of your firm understands that their role is to protect the client’s reputation, reduce friction, and manage risk, you move from vendor to trusted advisor. And trusted advisors do not compete on price alone.
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Lindsay Young, MBA, FSMPS, CPSM is a marketing services advisor with Zweig Group and president and founder of nu marketing. She can be reached at lyoung@zweiggroup.com. |