How to Have a Client Strategy Session
Kicking off your client interactions with a strategy session is a great way to start your projects on a high note, as a service provider. Doing a strategy session with your clients in the beginning will help you make sure you have all the information you need to do excellent work for your clients and it’ll help you make sure you and your clients are on the same page about everything before the work begins.
But as a former web designer, I didn’t always do client strategy sessions to start my projects. When I was just starting out, I simply started each project with a client questionnaire that I’d have clients fill out via a form they could submit to me on their own. The questionnaire had basic business questions about their goals, adjectives they’d use to describe their brands, etc. But the issue with that was…I wasn’t really pleased with the responses that I got from clients in the questionnaire. Most clients answered the questions vaguely. So using only the questionnaire to start client projects didn’t help give me a strong foundation to work on.
And so that's what made me start doing strategy sessions to kick off client projects instead!
Here are the three easy steps for a successful client strategy session:
Plan what information you need from your clients to do the best work possible on your project.
No matter what service you specialize in, there’s information that you’ll need from clients to do a great job on the work.
For example, as a designer, I needed to know who was my client’s target audience, how did they want their business to be perceived by others in the industry, what were their business goals, etc. I basically needed to know everything that would determine the visual direction of the project, so I’d know what decisions to make on design choices, color palettes, photography, etc. for their websites.
So think to yourself…what it is that I really, really need to know about my clients to be prepared to create the best end result possible? This step is super important because asking the right questions and being equipped with all the information you need from your clients from the start is truly the foundation for the entire client kickoff strategy session.
Decide what questions you’ll ask during your client strategy session.
Once you know what information you need to gather from your client to get stated on the work, next you want to move on to creating questions that you plan to ask during the strategy session. Based on the info that you know you need to uncover, create your own questions list that you're going to take into the client strategy sessions.
Having questions prepared in advance allows you to make sure you don’t miss anything and it helps you approach the strategy sessions with more confidence, so you can lead them well.
And once you have your list of questions typed out, I recommend separating them into sections for the questions that fall into the same category. This will allow you to lay out the plan more clearly at the beginning of the client kickoff call, explaining to the client, “First, we’ll cover your business goals, then your target clients, and then your marketing strategies.” This will allow you to flow easily from section to section in an organized way, making it easy for clients to follow along with you!
Here are a few examples of the questions I used to ask:
Brand Purpose & Goals
What’s the mission of your company?
What are the long-term goals for your company? What about short-term goals?
What is your unique selling proposition?
Brand Attributes
How does your brand voice “sound” to others?
What benefits do your services create for your clients?
How would you describe your ideal clients?
How are you different from others in your industry? What makes you special?
Ideal Clients
What are the top 3 daily frustrations of your ideal clients?
How will your clients feel after working with you?
What is life like after your ideal clients finish working with you?
The final step of planning a client strategy section is to make it easy for clients to schedule the session with you.
When I was working with design clients, I had a scheduling link that I created using Calendly that I sent to clients to allow them to schedule their kickoff sessions with me. I hate going back and forth with people in email trying to nail down a time to speak, so using a scheduling link makes it much easier and efficient for both you and your clients.
You can set the appointment time slot on the scheduling link to be the right amount of time for your kickoff call, whether it’s 30 minutes, one hour, or even two hours. And you can even set reminders in your appointment scheduling tool to remind clients to show up on time the day of their kickoff call.
And once the appointment day comes, if you want to start it in an EXTRA organized way, you can present a few PowerPoint slides on what you plan to cover with the client during the kickoff call and review the slides with the client via Zoom. This allows you to start calls with a nice welcome and it helps you give clients a heads up on what’s going to happen during the call before you dive in. You can also explain any “rules” during this stage, like if you want to put time limits on certain sections of the call (i.e. you only want to spend 10 minutes on one section, where people tend to overshare and drag the calls out).
That’s it! In conclusion –
Having a successful client strategy session is pretty easy to do! You just have to get clear on what information you need from your clients at the beginning of the project to do excellent work for them. And then prepare the right questions to ask during the strategy session. And then as a bonus, you can prepare a few PowerPoint slides to open up the strategy session with, letting the client know what you’ll cover together and what the rules are. And finally, you create an appointment setting link to allow clients to easily schedule a strategy session!
That’s all you need to start your projects on a strong foundation, while impressing your clients with how well thought out your process is!
If you enjoyed those tips, make sure to check out my free masterclass on the three steps to book high paying clients consistently, even if you’re a beginner and you have a small audience online!
