Summary
What if nurturing your existing clients was the key to unlocking unprecedented business growth? Join us as we sit down for part three with HB Pasley, a veteran growth advocate, and Randi Lynn, the client experience officer at Pasley Commercial Interiors, to explore the important world of client experience. Together, we reveal the secrets of how maintaining and strengthening current client relationships can be more fruitful than chasing new ones, drawing a vivid analogy to tending the trunk of a tree rather than its leaves. Through Randi Lynn's passion for celebrating client success, we discuss how a genuine personal commitment, coupled with the right resources, can cultivate trust and boost referrals, especially in handling large-scale projects.
Tune in to discover how we empower our clients to become ambassadors of our services by communicating the unique value we bring to their endeavors. With stories from our ventures across diverse sectors like finance, real estate, healthcare, and design, we illustrate how trust is the bedrock of client advocacy. The episode captures a playful exchange between HB, Robin, and Randi Lynn as they navigate the nuances of online communication, highlighting the engaging dynamic that fuels professional growth. By balancing technical prowess with the human touch, we showcase how fostering strong professional relationships can be a game-changer for business success.
Find HB at www.hbpasley.com and his book here: https://a.co/d/cJWza82
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Robin Pasley: 0:14
HB, welcome back. This is part three of the Growth Advocate Meets Pasley Commercial Interiors interview. You are our guest, HB Pasley.
HB Pasley: 0:27
Thank you for stating the blindingly obvious. That is true. I love it that you're you. I've been listening to your podcasts. They're very informative. Thanks for doing that. Yeah, they have. You know, it's all about commercial interior design. Some of them are kind of nerdy, Some of them are a little more where I can understand it. And you've been interviewed by Randy Lynn, who's with us now. I don't know if the listeners can hear her breathing, but she's at the table. Okay, there she is. Who is our client experience officer?
HB Pasley: 0:59
Yes, she is, which means that, Randi Lynn, how would you describe your role in the firm If you were going to self define? What is, what does it mean to be the client experience officer for Pasley commercial interiors?
Randi Lynn Johnson: 1:13
To jump back to episode one, where we talked about why you do what you do, not just what you do. I'd start with a story of how I grew up feeling very celebrated and always making things a big deal and helping people feel championed. And so I get to do that for our firm. I get to just check in with our clients, celebrate their successes even apart from us it's like, oh hey, we opened a new thing or we had our highest grossing quarter ever and just getting to really champion them. But as well in a practical sense, celebrating projects wrapping, just checking in with them during the process, feeling how do you feel everything's going, et cetera.
HB Pasley: 1:55
That's really exciting, but really caring for people.
Randi Lynn Johnson: 1:57
That's what it comes to. It is a human element.
HB Pasley: 1:59
I think often nerd firms who do nerdy things, like commercial interior designers, make the mistake occasionally of thinking that their skill and the outcome itself is all that a client needs to be happy. Quite often we all need somebody to put their hand on our shoulder, give us an encouragement and just ask us how we're doing and feeling along the process, especially if it takes not weeks but months and months.
Robin Pasley: 2:23
Or years. We've got projects that take two or three years to get finished.
HB Pasley: 2:27
Taking care of the people that we love. It's really in some ways more fun than the nerd stuff we do. The people we love are really the center of our universe. Anyway, I was congratulating you. We looped all the way around to say it's great to hear you talk about your business. It's also great to hear you talk to other people. Now I'm the first of many interviews to come. You've got architects, you've got designers, you've got CPAs, you've got all kinds of different business people in town and clients that you're going to get to interview on your podcast, and I was lucky enough to be the inaugural guest interviewee.
Robin Pasley: 2:58
Yeah, I thought it was appropriate, since you've been with us all year.
HB Pasley: 3:00
And I've been with you for 30 years.
Robin Pasley: 3:02
You've been with me for 30 years but, you've been embedded as a fractional COO since January of this year.
HB Pasley: 3:09
I take all those letters and I jumble them around and I spell anything I want. That's weird.
Robin Pasley: 3:16
I don't really think you should do that.
HB Pasley: 3:20
Never mind. Never mind, I can't talk about that. Okay, so client experience this is great. This is when we started this longer conversation. This is the third element of stuff that I work with.
HB Pasley: 3:29
As a growth advocate, which I work as a business advisor or a business growth leader, I often join teams. My present role is usually I join teams in a fractional way, which means I'm sort of joining as a part-time member of the executive team. We're going to work on strategy together. We're going to work on leadership skills together, systems, and sometimes we're going to work on how to build your firm, not just on strangers learning about you. Right, I'm talking about sales now, revenue, new growth, new clients, not just on strangers who don't know you, but how to build your firm on the strength of the advocacy of your favorite clients. That's what I call growth from the center. When I talk about this, I often show a picture of a tree and I ask there's leaves and there's a trunk. You know, you can see it's a classic spring tree. You know which part of the tree is most exciting, which has the most color? What do people celebrate the most? And the answer is always the leaves.
HB Pasley: 4:31
Yeah, and that's where marketing people spend most of their time is the leaves. They talk about the leaves how to get new clients, how to attract new clients, how to spend money on the latest new social media program, blah, blah, blah. It's all great and you've got to have those people, but they never think about the trunk of the tree. But they never think about the trunk of the tree. And I was exaggerating a tad, but I haven't met a marketing agent recently who focuses on cultivating the advocacy of present clients. Why? Because that takes more work. It takes personal commitment, it takes conversational commitment. The firm has to think that it's important. You have to put money and time into it. You have to hire wait for it Randy Lynn, a client experience officer.
HB Pasley: 5:09
Yes, your role is to personally, hand-to-hand, cultivate relationships with clients. Why? Because we want them to be happy. We love them and we know that happy clients will refer. That's right. They will introduce, they will advocate for us in the marketplace. A lot of firms need this because without advocacy we can't develop enough trust. Because we're doing big, expensive, amazing things Right, you do big, expensive, amazing things here at Pasley Commercial Interiors.
Robin Pasley: 5:38
We do.
HB Pasley: 5:38
And I don't mind saying the word expensive, because it ain't like buying a new pair of shoes. No, when you go to renovate an office or build a multi-story building, you're going to be spending a bunch of money, a bunch of money. I like it that we've been working on. How do you help people understand how to make that choice? How do you choose the right architect? How do you choose the right banker? How do you choose the right interior designer? This should be based on more criteria than just a 10-second glance at their portfolio. You need to know if these people are going to fit on your team Right. So you know, we've spent a pretty good bit of time developing our client experience acumen around here, and I'm thinking about a couple of things on my mind. But when you and I, robin, talk about client experience at this point because you've been with me through my whole journey of learning about client experience Five years ago, I didn't know that this was what it was Right. Certainly not as a I didn't know what to call it.
Robin Pasley: 6:29
Right.
HB Pasley: 6:31
What would you think would be one of the key elements for you that has created more success in your business around?
Robin Pasley: 6:44
the client and not thinking like the designer was one of the first things that you introduced me to that I thought it was the game changer in my brain, my mindset, you know, because I'm always thinking about what, the things that I think are important.
Robin Pasley: 7:10
And when you asked me to get into their shoes at every point of the process and think what do they need to hear, what do they need to know right now? It changed the way that we communicated, the way that we I mean everything from note-taking to our internal processes now are based around what does the client need to know right now?
HB Pasley: 7:24
I want to touch those steps a little bit and help your listeners know exactly how to start doing what we call empathy mapping thinking like the client through each step of their journey with you. If you're a business owner, here's what you do Take out a piece of paper right now. You could do this with your leadership team, but you might as well do it now just for fun, and all I want you to do is name the steps that your clients go through, from beginning to end.
Robin Pasley: 7:50
From the start of whatever you do with them, until they say goodbye to you. You've completed your thing.
HB Pasley: 7:54
That is correct. Some of you have a client experience that's five minutes long, because they come in your store and they leave. Some of you have one that's a week. Some of you have it, like Robin, it might be 18 months or two years or longer. Some of you have lifetime clients. But it'll have stages like the very first time they hear about you. You know, because they have a problem, but they don't know that you're even in the world and they discover you. That's actually a step. The first time they get on the phone or go to your website or get anything from you, that's a step. The first time they come in and meet with you and spend an hour or have a conversation or have to show documents, that's a step. When you're designing things for them, when you're implementing things for them, when you complete things for them these are all steps in the process. Now you have names for this in your business. Just write them out on a piece of paper in front of you, just make them into a line and then, when we get done with that, go aha, okay, that's what we do. That's all the things that my team does to get this thing done.
HB Pasley: 8:47
Pow, you might have five steps. You might have 20. I don't care. Next might take a cup of coffee. You're going to do what Robin just described doing, which is you're going to go into each step. You're going to put the shoes of your client on your feet and all you're going to do is, like, turn the other way in your mind. Right, you turn to the other side of the equation. Pretend like your client Just other side of the equation. Pretend like you're a client.
HB Pasley: 9:06
Just ask yourself how am I feeling at this stage? What am I suffering with? What are the questions that I have? What am I concerned about? What's the big thing I must solve at this step? Because you make a mistake if you think your clients come to you to solve one thing and they've got that on their mind all the way through. It's not true. At each phase they change their sense about how is this going? Did I make a good choice? Are they going to treat me like the last people did? How is this next step going to be successful? How long will this take? They've got all these questions that change Map and I call this empathy mapping map their questions across those steps.
HB Pasley: 9:42
That's your phase one for building you and your whole team's empathetic IQ. Okay, eq people call this emotional. You know your emotional IQ or whatever. I think this is very specific, though this has to do with empathy, not just an emotional sensitivity. You've got to think like your client. If you can map that, then you're on a journey to decide how will you answer them and put that into your systems. You mentioned something earlier, robin, that you went into your CRM and you literally created an automation that reminded your team members to reach out to clients on a particular interval during construction phase. That's not the only thing you put in your CRM, but you made it so that the system tells you to act in response to the empathetic map that you made for the client. So you're acting it out. I think this is super important. Now, thanks for letting me talk about this conversation. As you know, I may have written a book about it.
Robin Pasley: 10:42
I was just going to say we have to tell them about your book before we end today. We'll have Randy put the link in the podcast episode Sure, but it's called Never Drop the Ball Again.
HB Pasley: 10:51
Yeah, you can look it up at Amazon. A lot of people just skip the line and go straight to Amazon. Look up. Never Drop the Ball Again. By HB Pasley. I love it because it's short and I am dyslexic, so reading is a bit of a chore for me. Tiny hardback, 100 pages. Tiny hardback, big print. Look at the pictures. Just skip the words if you don't want the words, there's not pictures. There are lots of diagrams.
Robin Pasley: 11:16
I don't even remember them.
HB Pasley: 11:16
Oh come on. I read the eight steps of client experience.
Robin Pasley: 11:18
Oh, I do remember that.
HB Pasley: 11:19
There you go.
HB Pasley: 11:20
I just had to draw it with my finger and you saw it, I put together eight what I consider to be just foundational steps for any trust-based business. I put them into this little book so you could see them. So if you and your team want a practical guide for mapping how a client feels about their process, all the way through, with you you can start to build your client experience IQ and then, instead of just talking about it and having a feeling, you can put it into your systems and start delivering better responses to them. I bet you won't even have to do more. You'll just add intelligence to what you're already doing. This is good news for the business owner.
Randi Lynn Johnson: 11:53
Right.
HB Pasley: 11:54
And the outcomes will be more referrals, clients more willing to write reviews for you on the Internet, clients who want to come to your socials and parties that you're throwing.
Robin Pasley: 12:06
I think that one of the biggest things was clients who knew how to refer me now.
HB Pasley: 12:10
Oh, not just that they wanted to, but they knew exactly how to do it.
Robin Pasley: 12:13
Right Cause they I helped them over time, over the the journey that we went through together, understand better who I was to them, so they would know how I could be that to someone else that they're friends with or other business owners.
HB Pasley: 12:28
Yeah, it's been great to be Yep.
Robin Pasley: 12:31
Thank you so much. You're welcome. I was already expressing my thanks for being invited here.
HB Pasley: 12:34
I'm sorry I interrupted you. You know we were on the same tone right there. Yeah, it is cool to get to share a little bit about my work because I've been able to work with you, but I do my own thing out in the world with different kinds of businesses. I've worked with financial advisors, commercial real estate developers, people in medicine and healthcare, people in design Anybody who builds trust in order to do what they do. I've really enjoyed helping them grow and I just appreciate the opportunity to come and talk about it.
Robin Pasley: 13:04
I know that people could come to our website to see your sweet face, but if they were, going to come learn more about this part of what you do? Where would they go?
HB Pasley: 13:12
HBPasleycom.
Robin Pasley: 13:14
P as in.
HB Pasley: 13:15
Paul A, as in Apple, Happy birthday first.
Robin Pasley: 13:17
S as in Sam L-E-Y.
HB Pasley: 13:19
You spelled over the top of my spelling I did.
Robin Pasley: 13:22
We are just. It's good for Mary, though you don't stop anymore when I start talking.
HB Pasley: 13:24
We just talk over each other, we just talk simultaneously yeah, h-b B as in birthday, or Honey Bear B B as in birthday, or honey bear Pazley, honey, biscuit, Honey, biscuit, pazley, hot. Don't fill any more blanks. Okay, no more fill in the blank games. You guys have got it.
*Recorded in our studio in Colorado Springs, Colorado
