The Five Rules That Turn Clients Into Raving Fans | 932

On this episode of The Inside BS Show, Dave Lorenzo reveals the five behaviors that separate the professionals clients love from the ones they leave behind. If you want more referrals, repeat business, and long-term loyalty, you need to make it easy for clients to work with you.

Dave breaks down five simple but powerful rules that make all the difference:

1. Listen More Than You Talk – Spend 70% of your time listening and only 30% talking. Show clients you care about their challenges before offering solutions.
2. Solve Problems Beyond Your Expertise – Build trust by connecting clients to resources and solutions even when it’s outside your direct service area.
3. Drop Passive-Aggressive Behavior – Be upfront and professional about issues instead of letting them fester. Honesty strengthens relationships.
4. Abandon the Need to Be Right – Correcting clients destroys trust. Protect the relationship by focusing on outcomes, not ego.
5. Remember All Business Is Personal – Every decision and action impacts the personal connection. Put relationships first, always.

Dave shares stories from his own career that illustrate how these rules can either strengthen or damage client bonds. Whether you’re a lawyer, CPA, financial advisor, or consultant, mastering these principles will help you earn trust, loyalty, and referrals.

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There are five mistakes people make which causes clients and referral sources to run the other way. If you want more business, you've gotta be easy to work with, and I'm gonna give you the five areas you should focus on on this episode of The Inside BS Show. Hi, I'm Dave Lorenzo, and here are the five areas you have to focus on if you wanna be easy to work with.

The first area is listen. You need to listen 70% of the time, and speak only 30% of the time. I know what you're thinking.

You're a professional, you're an expert, you're a CPA, you're a lawyer, a financial advisor, whatever you do. Nobody cares what you know until they first know that you care. You have to show that you're interested in them, you have to show that you're concerned about them, you have to show that you can listen and understand what their problems are, and once you do that, then people will be interested in what you have to say.

So first, listen, then respond. 70% of your time should be spent listening, 30% should be spent reacting to what you hear. The second thing that makes you easy to work with, that makes you someone other people wanna be around, is that you solve problems even when they're outside your area of expertise.

What does this mean? Well, if you're a lawyer and somebody comes to you and they say that they're struggling with cash flow for the next 60 days, they don't know what they're gonna do, introduce them to bankers, help them find a way to get financing to get them through that 30 or 60 day period. If you can solve problems outside of your expertise, that demonstrates external orientation and that makes you easy to work with, it makes you someone everyone wants to be around. If you don't help people solve problems outside of just your narrow area of expertise, nobody's gonna wanna be around you.

They'll only come to you when they have those specific problems. I'll tell you a story. One of my largest clients, a client that I developed a business growth academy for, turned over over 200 lawyers to me.

They wanted me to help their lawyers become experts in business development. And when the pandemic struck, I had ideas for this firm, how they could make more money, save money and reduce their risk. And I called up the managing partner and he said, Dave, I've got 15 people who can give me advice on this stuff.

I don't need more advice from you. And I said, well, I'm not charging you for this. I've got some ideas that I think could be really valuable for you.

And he said, I'm just not that interested in hearing them. And I reflected upon that and then I called another client and this client had only done a little bit of work with me. And I said, hey, Mr. Client, tell me what's going on with you in the pandemic.

And he told me that he had a number of different problems outside of my area of expertise. And I gave him four or five people that I could connect him with who could help him solve these problems. A cashflow problem, a real estate problem, problem with reconstructing the office so that it was a COVID safe workspace, a problem with communicating to his employees about the new rules that were gonna be required.

All those problems were outside of my area of expertise, but I helped him solve those problems. And you know what he said to me? He said, Dave, you're a really great partner. And what you did today really demonstrates that you care about me and I'm not gonna forget it.

Now, I tell you the tale of these two different clients because this is my issue. I screwed up at the beginning of the relationship with client number one. At the beginning of that relationship, all I did was talk about how I could help them grow and how I could help the attorneys there build their book of business and how I could expand their revenue growth.

So that firm only viewed me as a revenue growth expert. The second firm was brand new and I had only done a little bit of work with them. But when I offered them solutions to problems outside my level of expertise, they viewed me as a trusted advisor.

So while it's easy for me to look at both firms and go, oh, firm number one, they're a bunch of jerks. They don't wanna hear what I've got. So screw them.

And firm number two, well, they're better people. They're really into a relationship with me. People take you at your own valuation.

So if you, right from the beginning, offer help outside your area of expertise, people will view you as someone who cares about them holistically. If you only offer help in a narrow area of expertise, you don't offer to introduce them to people who can solve other problems, they'll think you don't care about them beyond just being a meal ticket. So in this case, firm number one, I didn't demonstrate that I cared.

Firm number two, I demonstrated that I cared. And over the longterm, who do you think I'm gonna have the better relationship with? Who do you think I'm gonna have the deeper relationship? Time will tell, but my money is on firm number two. The third rule for being easy to work with is no passive aggressive behavior.

If you wanna be easy to work with, you gotta tell people what you're feeling. You can be professional when you do it, but you can't hold things back because when you hold things back, then you start making snide comments, or you will take it out in your behavior or in your appearance, in your interpersonal skills. If you feel something and it's bothering you with a client, find a way to professionally address it, get it all out on the table, you'll feel better about working with that client and the client will know that you're not holding anything back.

Longterm relationships are built on a foundation of honesty and integrity. And if you're not open and transparent with your clients, that feeling of integrity, the honesty will be missing and you're never gonna have a solid relationship. It's never gonna last as long as it should.

So get rid of passive aggressive behavior. Don't take shots at people. If you feel something and you can professionally express it, you must do so as soon as possible.

The fourth area of being easy to work with is abandoning the need to be right. Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean here. Never ever correct a client in front of someone else.

If you need to address the behavior of a client or you need to set the record straight with a client, do it in private, do it away from other people. If you have a client, for example, that says the word nuclear instead of nuclear, you don't need to correct them in front of everyone. If you have a client who says irregardless instead of just regardless, you don't need to correct them in front of everyone.

If a client makes a mistake in telling a story and they make a factual error in the story and you were there and you know the truth, don't stop them in the middle of their story and correct what they're saying. Let it go. In fact, you never have to correct a client if they make a mistake like that.

In fact, if the mistake doesn't affect you or your relationship with the client in any way, just let it go because your need to be right will make the client feel bad and making the client feel bad destroys your relationship. Destroying your relationship removes any chance you have of doing business with that client for the long term. You must abandon your need to be right and focus on continuing the relationship and just grinning and bearing it and moving on.

The fifth rule in being easy to work with is that all business is personal. You're a professional, I'm a professional and we're in the relationship business. So if you sneak behind somebody's back and you do something unsavory, it's gonna destroy your relationship.

I learned the hard way and I'll tell you the story that taught me that all business is personal. I was working with a client and the client was just too busy to write the articles I wanted him to write. So I said, you know what? I'm gonna take care of this for you.

I'll write the articles for you. And I went out and I hired a ghostwriter. I gave the ghostwriter some outlines and I said, I want you to write articles on these topics.

Well, the ghostwriter apparently plagiarized the articles and took articles that she had given to someone else and turned them over to me. And I gave them to my client and the client said, did you write those articles? And I said, yes. The client Googled the words in the article and the exact same articles appeared on someone else's website.

That completely damaged my relationship with my client because my client thought I wrote the articles. I didn't say I hired a ghostwriter because I didn't wanna go through the whole thing with him. It was a mistake and it harmed my personal relationship and it also harmed my business relationship.

I've had to work really hard to repair the damage I did to that relationship and it hurt me personally that my connection with this client was damaged, maybe irreparably, but it was my own fault. So remember that all business is personal and always put the relationship first. And if you do, you will be easy to work with.

I've given you these five rules because being easy to work with is a foundational principle in getting more referrals. If you're ready to figure out exactly how to get more referrals, I'm gonna share a very special video with you and it's filling in right below me right now. You've got to watch this video so that you can multiply your referrals in the future.

Go click on that video right now and I'll see you there.