Author: Jo White

The easiest way to improve the quality of your relationships is to listen. Sounds simple right? (No pun intended!) In reality, it is a skill that takes self-control and practice.

Building and maintaining strong relationships is fundamental to long term success at work. But we all know that things don’t always go according to plan. Proactively dealing with the aftermath of difficult situations, rather than writing them off as a bad experience, will make you stronger and more resilient.

Collaboration is the essential ingredient to success for modern agency teams. With digital so prevalent across organisations, agency teams need to easily integrate with client teams.

This presents a challenge as – although often fully integrated – there’s an agency/client contractual relationship. Team members represent your agency at critical moments, often without the support of a client services team. And the people embedded are often from a technical background so can lack the client services skills needed to deal with complex client challenges.

For these reasons, it’s essential for modern agencies to train their frontline staff in client services skills. Giving your team the skills, frameworks and processes they need to manage relationships gives them the confidence they need to represent you in front of clients.