Almost ten years ago now, I had one of those moments that impacted the way I have seen the world ever since. It wasn’t a big event. It was a simple conversation. A conversation with a few colleagues about a particular event we were involved in. I asked them how they felt it went.

One responded pretty quickly, “It was good. I thought it went well.”

The other paused for a few moments as he stared the other down. “No it wasn’t. It wasn’t good at all. It sucked. How could you possibly think that was a good meeting? Nobody was engaged. Nobody cares. Everyone simply wanted to walk out the door.”

If you’ve been following Designer Sobriety at all, you’ll understand that we frequently return to a couple of basic concepts. One, is our ability to define reality in a particular situation. The other is our willingness to see different.

Personally, one of my greatest fears in life is eventually becoming like the colleague referenced above – oblivious and/or complacent to reality. It is all too common that at some point in life, we move into a robotic-like mode and say whatever we need to say to not rock the boat.

But often the boat simply needs to be rocked.

As in the situation referenced above, we should welcome the haters. We need the perspective of the other side.

One of the best examples of this in the current marketplace is none other than Miracle Whip. With their new campaign “Are you Miracle Whip?”, they take the plunge in defining reality and a willingness to see different. To do this, they have pushed an online campaign to welcome not on the Miracle Whip lovers, but the haters as well.

It would feel hypocritical at this point if we did not practice what we preach. So, as we invite you to define reality and/or welcome the haters, we want to do the same. Tell us what you love. But more importantly, tell us what you hate.

Welcome to the final entry of a very important topic in our opinion: making yourself irreplaceable. With this year off to a similar if not more challenging start as last year, now is the time to focus on being different.

So we are wrapping up discussing four main topics:

1 Relationship King
2 Service Superstar
3 Industry Ally
4 Valuable Partner

NUMBER FOUR: Valuable Partner

Do you have clients who would say you are an integral part of their business? If not, what are you doing to get there? #beirreplaceable

Taking care of your current clients is just as important as getting new ones. We have covered ways to make yourself as irreplaceable as possible. All of the tips in the world still pale in comparison to just good old fashioned great work. If you are not producing great, strategic, well thought out creative, then all the tips in the world will not matter.

Avoid Status Quo: In this writer’s opinion that also means continually helping your clients progress. When you have a client for a long time, it’s easy to get into a lull of expected solutions. When you feel this is starting to happen, switch up the creatives working on it, or have critiques with design friends. Do whatever you can to keep some fresh perspective. You can also take a time out to have a retreat with your client once a year and take a look at their business together. Look at trends, competition and internal scenarios to make sure you are helping them stay fresh with a current perspective.

Set Boundaries: You are only as valuable as you are excited about working with certain clients, but every excitement has to have its limits. When you set boundaries for your personal well-being, your clients still need to feel you have their best interests in mind. So be clear about your work hours, your availability, your payment needs, project process, key contacts, etc. Conversely, take initiative to learn their expectations, too. This way both parties will know expectations, have less communication issues along the way, and you can focus on what is important – the work.

Stay Optimistic: EVERYONE has tough clients. No matter how big or famous. So remember that if you are in a challenging scenario, people have been in your situation before. Some have been fired by clients, have done 50 logo revisions, dealt with project creep, and have been beaten down by an experience. You have a choice: you could get upset about it, or you can be optimistic and figure out how to appropriately handle the scenario. Handling something difficult properly will reap you awards 100% of the time. And it allows you to keep an optimistic mojo to handle these types of scenarios better or to avoid them altogether.

Being a valuable partner is mixture of process, time, manners, vision, consistency and understanding that we are a service business. When we realize these truths of our industry and learn how to incorporate them into a work flow that helps create great work, we are on our way to being irreplaceable.

Welcome to part three of a very important topic in our opinion: making yourself irreplaceable. How are you going to do that?

So we are discussing four main topics to think about:

1 Relationship King
2 Service Superstar
3 Industry Ally
4 Valuable Partner

NUMBER THREE: Industry Ally

How are you showing your clients that you understand their needs, their industry, their dreams? Understand their business and #beirreplaceable

In design school we studied things like theory, typography, history, production and if we were lucky, a little marketing. But most of us had very little business exposure, training, or understanding on how to relate our design education to the business world. More than ever we need to take time to understand our clients’ needs and points of pain. If you don’t specialize, which is a whole other subject to talk about, then you may have a lot of homework (depending on how many different industries your clients are in). Here are a few tips on how to learn about your clients’ world:

1) Listen for industry terms, trends, acronyms and competitive speak in meetings so you can google it later. If you have a great rapport ask for details in the meetings, or do both. This will also give you a chance to do more online research to help you understand your client’s world better.

2) Read your clients’ and/or their industries’ leading blogs via RSS or subscribe to thier industry publications. A peek now and then will help you stay up to speed and could give you ideas on ways to help them stand out. These will also help you with new regulations, trends, or major topics that will help you understand where they are coming from.

3) Try to understand your clients’ corporate culture. If for example they have an initiative to be more sustainable, you can recommend making an online report and/or using more FSC certified printers or paper. Or if they want to increase internal communications, you could help them set up an intranet or create internal environmental messaging, brainstorm team events, etc. Whatever the case, when you understand your client, the best chance for more business is with a client you already doing business for.

4) Going to trade shows can be an amazing way to create a deeper relationship with your client. Spending time with them in their world, walking the floor to talk about competition or where they want to go can be invaluable. Also, depending on the industry, there could be many new opportunities by working with suppliers, clients or even competition where acceptable. Having an understanding and track record in that industry helps you sell and makes you more of an expert.

5) Use your collective experiences from other industries too. Some project or program you did in one industry might be “cutting edge” or refreshing in another. Figure out ways to share that knowledge to make a case and show your clients how you can help them stand out in their market.

The best practice is and will always be to do your homework and have conversations with your clients. From there you create relationships that allow you to serve them better. And then they will value your services as irreplaceable to them.

What do you do to stay on top of your clients’ business?

We are continuing our series on a topic that is especially important this year: making yourself irreplaceable. How are you going to do that?

So we are discussing four main topics to think about:

1 Relationship King
2 Service Superstar
3 Industry Ally
4 Valuable Partner

NUMBER TWO: Service Superstar

If your clients don’t get their information in a timely manner or you treat them like anyone else, how will you #beirreplaceable to them? We all like to feel special and heard. So what are you doing to make sure you can respond in a seemingly unique and thorough way? There are many ways to up your service to clients, but we want to talk about one of the most important ways here: timely and special communication.

Let’s talk about making your clients feel special. Email communication is easy and fast, but does it make your clients feel like one of a kind? One of the great ways to stay on top of things like estimates, schedules, proposals, green reporting, user names and passwords, etc., is to make templates of these items that you can customize on the fly. We have about 30 different forms that we use to respond back to the client in a much more memorable way than just shooting them an email. Make PDFs with some of your branding, and areas for theirs that they can save, print out and generally feel good about. The great thing about these artifacts is after you create them, you have records of the information as well.

A another crucial piece to the service puzzle is making your communication with clients faster. Don’t make them wait a week for something that in their minds should only take a day or two. To do this, you need to figure out a system of tasks, schedules and job tracking that will help. Now there are a million options out there, but DS recommends the products from 37signals. They are not free, but they do have great functionality, some good pricing options, and continual upgrading. We have seen many large and small companies utilize Basecamp, a project management and collaboration tool, and Highrise, a great CRM. Both are great options. For more details on 37signals’ full suite of options, click here. (We will write soon as well about all the great options from Google, but that is a whole post in itself).

Whatever your method is of tracking and staying on top of work, our point is do it in a way that will help you save time, keep up to speed, and respond quickly to your clients. Don’t give anyone an edge on a relationship that you have worked hard at developing. We hear from people all the time about clients who accuse creatives of not being able to manage jobs efficiently. Don’t fit into that category, and take some time to tweak your service so you can be a superstar.

How are you irreplaceable with your service?

Your theme, especially this year, should be to make yourself irreplaceable. How are you going to do that?

The design and visual communication field boasts over 55,000 different companies in the U.S. When you add freelancers, crowd sourcing, and the person who still has CorelDRAW, the competition is steep, especially for clients that may have more pressure than ever to watch the bottom line. Of course, if we lose work to the guy with CorelDRAW, we probably didn’t want that client anyway, but I’m just saying there are a lot of us out there.

So how do you #beirreplaceable? We’ve got a list of several great reminders, and we will be covering one at a time for the next few weeks. Short and sweet, and something for you to think about. Some of the topics will be:

1  Relationship King
2  Service Superstar
3  Industry Ally
4  Valuable Partner

NUMBER ONE: Relationship King

If your clients don’t think they or their needs matter to you, how will you #beirreplaceable to them? Close your email and pick up the phone. Send a (real) card on their birthday. Remember their name and spell it right. Know what hobbies they have or how many kids they have. Pay for lunch. Send them interesting links about business related items, or shows, or things they are interested in. Connect them to other clients when there is a good business match. Send them a holiday gift – maybe for an unexpected holiday. But more than anything be genuine. The little things matter, and if you do not know yet, relationships are king.

What are you doing to stand out and #beirreplaceable? Any of these things? What do you do in client relationships that has been most successful?