Feedback On Purpose

Get more feedback! Who thinks that’s a great idea (obviously, we do)?  Feedback connects you to your clients and helps you increase your value to them.  Feedback is one of many ways to increase your prosperity and the health of your business.  Let’s look at a list of ways to be better businesses:

• Get More Feedback
• Work Harder
• Work Faster
• Charge More
• Make Fewer Mistakes
• Etc

At some point we’ve all talked about ways to make our businesses better, and most ideas end up as a list like that.  No one would argue that they’re good things to have on a list, but how often do we actually have any idea of how do anything on that list?

Let’s look at “working harder” as an example.  You’re helping build a house, and the foreman yells for you to work harder.  It’s your job to carry lumber.  You could just pick up the boards and start walking around the house.  You’re working harder.  Or, you could figure out who needs what boards, where, and when, and deliver them before they are needed.  You’re still working harder – but you’ve got a plan and a purpose for what you’re doing.

Similarly, “Getting More Feedback” requires a purpose and a plan in order to provide the maximum benefit to your business.  Without knowing why you’re collecting feedback, you won’t know what feedback to gather.  When feedback comes in, you don’t know what to do with it.   The feedback just sits there, cold and lonely and wondering why someone even bothered to ask.  (So does your client, by the way).

Feedback helps firms do some amazing things.  We’ve identified nine key benefits, though certainly others apply.  From this list (or yours) pick ONE or TWO that you really want to focus on:

• Build Client Loyalty
• Market to Clients Effectively
• Increase Profitability
• Improve Firm Management
• Reduce Firm Liability
• Identify Patterns for Desired Outcomes
• Strengthen Staff Performance
• Promote Staff Satisfaction
• Increase Staff Retention

Once you have a purpose in mind, focus on a plan for how to obtain the desired benefits.  Our Client Feedback Tool has built in processes to help (and even automate) feedback collection in a standardized, methodical manner.

Consider the following example:

Your firm has been hit with reduced profits since the recession began.  You may have laid off staff, reduced hours, or cut benefits in response.  Your staff are scared, your reserves dwindling, and what you really need most right now is a boost in profits to help ride out the storm.  You identify your primary purpose for collecting feedback is to increase profitability.

Knowing what you want to accomplish, you can now put together a plan.  You determine that winning more proposals – without having to undercut your competitors – would quickly boost billable time.  Likewise, your firm has a history of being unable to bill for change orders late in the project – costing you time that can’t be billed.

First, you decide to collect feedback with a standard survey immediately after submitting each proposal.  The questions are focused on how well the proposal responded to the client’s stated requirements.  As the client engages in giving you feedback (before he’s awarded the project), he’s really training you on how to do his work better.  In addition, he now knows you know what he needs better than anyone else (because no one else asked).  You respond with a revised proposal, more fitting to his needs.

What you’ve just done is built value with your client.  You’ve proven you really understand him better than anyone else.  Your price may not be the lowest (and it shouldn’t be!) but you’ve given him confidence that you’ll more likely solve the problems he needs help with.  That’s worth something, and you start to win more projects.

Second, you decide to collect feedback at each project milestone.   When the project gets off track, change orders are harder to collect payment on.  By gathering feedback specific to each phase, and being alerted promptly if anything is off track, the frequency of change orders is reduced.  When changes and scope creep do come up, you can address them quickly, and with positive feedback from your clients, communicate changes to the fee with confidence.  Feedback helps you identify which changes are worth the added price to the client, and puts him in control of the decision process for which scope changes to make.  Overall, this eliminates wasted effort, and maximizes the project’s profitability.

There are hundreds of ways you can apply a feedback program to your business operations in order to improve outcomes and overall success.  The important thing is to identify a specific goal, develop a measurable plan, and apply the resources you need to execute the plan.  Once in place, measure the results as you go, and adjust your plan accordingly.

Not sure how to get started?  When we help our clients implement The Client Feedback Tool, we walk them through a consultative process to discover goals, plans, and desired outcomes.  Contact our team of experts, and we can help jump start the process.