Your Clients Are Not Your Friends

This was a very hard lesson to learn.  It took me years to understand that the clients, sales people who call on me and people I associate with may be friendly but they are not necessarily friends. I learned that I can see them or talk to them every day, I can exchange pleasantries, can even exchange personal information. I may have dealt with and hung out with them for them for years. But I have learned to be careful.  In the end, what is between me and them is business.  

Some remain friends and friendly, but the vast majority torn out to be what I call business friends, which is different than a true friend.

I found out the hard way. In one instance, when I rotated accounts after a number of years, my client, who I thought I was friends with since we saw each other socially, blew me off. Clearly, we had a great relationship, but it turned out to be business.  We had lunch shortly after I had moved on and all he really cared about was to pump me for information about his new account person and the agency.  After that lunch, he blew me off and never returned my calls.  I thought he was my friend, but he was not.

There was another instance, which I wrote about, where the chairman of the agency thought the client was his friend and after a focus group he brought the client back to his very elaborate home.  His house in Westchester was located right on the Long Island Sound.  He also had a major art collection.  While still at the focus group, the chairman called his housekeeper who set out an elaborate spread for the five or six people who came over.  The next day, the client’s associates actually complained that he lived too elaborately.  Their complaints were so vocal as to leave the head client no choice but to cut the agency fee.  That post was entitled, Don’t Bring The Client Home.

I can think of one director of advertising who favored his account director and allowed the account person to bring the account with him to three different agencies.  The account was a major spender and everyone knew the product.  The issue was that nobody liked the account guy, except, of course the client.  But when the third agency's president  did something which none of the other agency presidents did: he established his own relationship with the client.  When he called the client to tell him that he was going to fire the account director, but wanted to keep the account, the client said, “I have been waiting for that to happen.  Of course.”  It turned out that the client was not a real friend of the account director.  I suspect that this happens all the time. 

The truth is that what you have in common is usually the business.  And mutual goals can create what appears to be tight bond, but basically the only thing you may share with these people is the business you do.

The point is that you can be friendly with your client, but you should not count on the friendship.  Once you leave an account or the situation that brought you together, try asking your clients to follow you on Facebook or Instagram or even LinkedIn.  It is a good way to stay in touch.  Time will tell whether they are friends or not.