Have you ever wondered how to manage a multitude of clients without dropping the ball?
Let me, Leanne Woff, share valuable insights and practical tips with you on how to handle multiple client projects with ease.
I understand the challenges that OBMs face when it comes to managing a high-touch, personable role while juggling multiple clients.
So if you’re an OBM looking to improve your client management skills, this is for you.
This episode shares:
- Clarity is King: The clearer that you are about things, the easier it will be and the smoother your schedule will run.
- Efficient Time Management: Mastering the art of scheduling and prioritising.
- Strategic Project Planning: Breaking down tasks and setting milestones. Using digital tools like project management tools can streamline your workflow and keep you organised.
- Effective Communication: Keeping clients informed and engaged.
Clarity is King
When we are quoting, when we are creating packages or when we are having Introduction Chats with clients, we want to get super clear on what the job actually is and what the capacity will be for you to commit to this. So if we can list out inclusions that are really specific and even list out exclusions, so things that aren’t going to fall into what you are offering, this is going to add that layer of clarity. I’ve learned that success or failure in managing multiple clients hinges on clarity. It’s about being clear on what the job entails and the capacity you can commit to. This clarity comes from specific inclusions and exclusions in your offerings, helping you manage your time and expectations effectively. Imagine a scenario where you’re crystal clear about your tasks – it’s like having a roadmap in an unknown city, guiding your every turn and decision.
Tip:💡Make detailed lists of what your services include and exclude.
Efficient Time Management
Now what I want you to be doing is looking at these inclusions and managing your capacity. How much time is involved in each of these things? How much consistent time is needed? So sometimes it is easier for us to say, do some planning one day, and then do you know, some strategy prep the next day, whatever it might be, how you work with clients.
You really need to think about blocks of time, and if what’s required of this quote, this project, this retainer, whatever it is that you are doing, is it consistent time or is it going to have to be spread out over these days in these weeks until you have a really nice map? Really the aim here is to get a project plan going, even if it’s a retainer.
Because we still should know how long roughly things take us. We also should know where our critical points are. We know when a job is big and when there will be tight turnarounds, and we know when something will be fairly cruisy, and so we want to be factoring all of this in and laying out the pieces.
How do we do that? When I’m first mapping anything, including my own time, usually I start with a calendar. Always block in your breaks or you won’t have them , you’ll just keep working. Whereas when they’re in there, they become like an appointment for you and you wanna meet your appointments.
Tip:💡Utilise time blocking to organise your week and always include breaks in your schedule.
Strategic Project Planning
Project management tools have been lifesavers in my workflow. They provide a central place to manage tasks, set milestones, and track progress. Asana rules my life. I love it, but it only works if I have that clarity that I was talking about earlier. So all of my client projects go in Asana. My clients cannot access them. This is for running my business, my team, and me, the work that I am doing with clients also gets put into their own internal project management system. That is where I give them updates. And so what this means is there’s double handling, but can I tell you double handling, this one thing is worth it. I have not found a better way to do this, but giving your clients the information they need within their system is crucial.
Knowing what your day, week, month looks like and what the priority is and your timelines are for things, your ability to save things somewhere where no one else can see it, or to keep notes as you’re going, is also crucial. So Asana does that for me, and sometimes it means putting an update in the client’s Asana and putting the same update in mine.
Sometimes mine has extra notes that my client doesn’t see. Sometimes the client’s one has links that mine doesn’t need. It’s all very holistic the way that I do it, but I have clear objectives. Again, with clarity, I need to know that the client has what they need, that everything that business needs to function, have a trail create systems to scale later on, have a history of what’s happened so that my clients can get their update as soon as they want it, for them to see if things are on track or off track, it needs to be in their tool. And then for me to be able to coordinate my own work, my week, my team, what they’re doing, be able to see where all our clients are up to across the board, I need Asana updated.
Tip:💡Create a separate project for each client in your project management tool, including both high-level planning and detailed task tracking.
Effective Communication
Maintaining open lines of communication with clients is essential. I make it a point to update my clients regularly, keeping them informed about the progress of their projects. This proactive approach helps in building trust and ensures that clients feel valued and understood. Regular updates and weekly meetings not only keep clients informed but also help me stay accountable and on track.
Tip:💡 Communicate any changes to clients promptly and clearly.
And… that’s a wrap!
Managing multiple clients as an OBM is an art that requires clarity, effective time management, the right tools, excellent communication, and the ability to adapt. By incorporating these strategies into your daily routine, you can transform potential chaos into a well-orchestrated symphony of productivity and success.
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Follow along with the transcript
E26 How to handle multiple client projects as an OBM
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of The Audacious OBM. I’m Leanne Woff, and I’m super excited to have you here with me today. Today’s episode is all about client management. It is how to manage multiple clients as an OBM. This is a question I actually get asked a lot. That is, how do you go about having more than one client, especially with the kind of role that being an OBM is.
We are personable, we are in depth, we are high touch. So how can you possibly go about that and be that invested with multiple clients? So in this episode, I’m gonna give you some tips and tricks into how you can do this with ease and give you some examples of some of the things that I do and have done in the past that makes being an OBM, manageable and keeps your schedule, nice and sharp and succinct with your clients feeling loved up.
All right, so let’s get stuck in. The success or failure, when it comes to managing multiple clients at one time, when you’re working to this level, really comes down to clarity. Clarity will be your indicator. The clearer that you are about things, the easier it will be and the smoother your schedule will run.
So when we are quoting, when we are creating packages or when we are having introduction chats with clients, we wanna get super clear on what the job actually is and what the capacity will be for you to commit to this. So if we can list out inclusions that are really specific and even list out exclusions, so things that aren’t going to fall into what you are offering, this is going to add that layer [00:03:00] of clarity. Now what I want you to be doing is looking at these inclusions and managing your capacity. How much time is involved in each of these things? How much consistent time is needed? So sometimes it is easier for us to say, do some planning one day, and then do you know, some strategy prep the next day, whatever it might be, how you work with clients.
You really need to think about blocks of time, and if what’s required of this quote, this project, this retainer, whatever it is that you are doing, is it consistent time or is it No, it’s gonna have to be spread out over these days in these weeks until you have a really nice map. Really the aim here is to get a project plan going, even if it’s a retainer.
Because we still should know how long roughly things take us. We also should know where our [00:04:00] critical points are. We know when a job is big and when there will be tight turnarounds, and we know when something will be fairly cruisy, and so we wanna be factoring all of this in and laying out the pieces.
How do we do that? When I’m first mapping anything, including my own time, usually I start with a calendar on one screen and a spreadsheet on the other, because I’m very visual that way. I wanna be able to see, okay, here’s my week and here’s all of the things I need to fit into this week, next week, the week after, or in general.
And then I have a spreadsheet so that I can, . brainstorm and brain dump a little bit without having to create more calendar events if I don’t need to right now, so I can play with it. And first, I work in blocks. I love time blocking, even if it is just for setting up your overall [00:05:00] high level plan. So if you are trying to work out, okay, I’ve got family, I’ve got clients, I’ve got business, what do I, how do I map this?
Okay, family. I know that that might take 10 hours a week, and I know that Susie has soccer on Wednesdays. Map in those things first. And then in your spreadsheet you can go, okay, out, out of my, 30 hours to work this week, I will have to take five of that for picking kids after school. So that leaves me with 25 hours.
Now, if I know that I want to take 30 minutes every day for lunch, that takes another two and a half hours out of that total. Now I’m gonna go and block in my lunch, in my calendar. So this is another thing. Always block in your breaks or you won’t have them , [00:06:00] you’ll just keep working. Whereas when they’re in there, they become like an appointment for you and you wanna meet your appointments.
So block in your breaks. Now, we’ve got breaks, we’ve got kids, we’ve got what’s left in work time, and I want you to think about each of the different services that you offer. How long does it actually take you to deliver those services? So you might just have a general OBM package and if you are charging by the hour and selling hourly packages, it becomes really easy, right?
Because then it’s just, okay, I’ve got 10 hours a week in clients across the board, so I know I have to find 10 hours of time to deliver my client work. That’s so set those blocks up. It might not be as straightforward as that because even though charging by the hour can be great. A lot of the time packages are more profitable.
So we sell those, which is where your [00:07:00] deliverables C become really important because we need to be able to see, this is what I’m operating to for the next however long. So you might have a project that’s going over three months and you might have mapped that project out and you know you are going to spend about five hours a week on that project, mapping the time for those things.
Then. Once we’ve done that, we need to add in some business management time. Nothing about running a business is hands-free, and you know that ’cause you run other people’s businesses. You also know that if there is no time mapped for it, you are not going to give it any. So if you don’t put in marketing time, if you don’t put in client update time into your overall schedule, you are never going to do it.
And it will impact your client experience and it will impact your business and your profitability. So we wanna try and put chunks as much as we can. And it’s not even [00:08:00] saying you need to do this week on week, like week on week. You might have a marketing block that is a whole day in a month or half a day every week, or once a fortnight a day, whatever works for you.
But make sure you’re putting something in there. so once we’ve got a map and we understand how much time we actually have, how much working time do you have, that shows you how many clients you can take on roughly. If you know your services really well, which you need to do, then you start pivoting over to your project management tool. So Asana rules my life. I love it, but it only works if I have that clarity that I was talking about earlier. So all of my client projects go in Asana. My clients cannot access them. This is for running my business, my team, and me, the work that I am doing with clients [00:09:00] also gets put into their project management system. That is where I give them updates. And so what this means is there’s double handling, but can I tell you double handling, this one thing is worth it. I have not found a better way to do this, but giving your clients, the information they need within their system is crucial.
Knowing what your day, week, month looks like and what the priority is and your timelines are for things, your ability to save things somewhere where no one else can see it, or to keep notes as you’re going, it’s also crucial. So Asana does that for me, and sometimes it means putting an update in the client’s Asana and putting the same update in mine.
Sometimes mine has extra notes that my client doesn’t see. Sometimes the client’s one has links that mine doesn’t need. [00:10:00] it’s all very, holistic the way that I do it, but I have clear objectives. Again, with clarity, I need to know that the client has what they need, that everything that business needs to function, have a trail create systems to scale later on, have a history of what’s happened so that my clients can get their update as soon as they want it, for them to see if things are on track or off track, it needs to be in their tool. And then for me to be able to coordinate my own work my week, my team, what they’re doing, be able to see where all our clients are up to across the board, I need Asana updated. And so how I do that is I have a project for each client. And I have our key milestones.
So what are the things that we are doing with this client that are going to show me that we’ve completed something or that are going to show me that we’re progressing towards our goal? And again, this can look [00:11:00] different based on how you’ve structured your services. If it is, say you are setting up,
you are creating processes for a client. You wanna streamline things in your project, your milestones might be, okay, we’re gonna do an audit first, then we are going to, once we’ve got that audit, we’re going to map out all the gaps. Then we’re going to, create the plan of what we think is missing, what we think is needs to be updated and overhauled, but maybe some of these processes are too old.
We’re going to include in that possibly the different tools that we need or the different team members we need to talk to. So creating that plan would be one of the milestones. Then rolling out that plan is going to be the next thing. Potentially your plan has three big areas. Each one of those areas becomes a milestone, and then there’s handover.
So you’ll be able to look at that all different ways. Okay? So whether it’s [00:12:00] retainer or not, then you’ll have that for every client. So you’ll be able to pull reports on where everything is up to. And for each action that is in your tool, I want you to know how long you plan to spend on it. Give things a time estimate and then plan that time.
Make sure that these things are feeding in together. Otherwise you’ll be over capacity and you won’t be able to meet your needs, and then you’ll be upset and your clients will be upset and it won’t be great. . Once we’ve got everything in our tool, so we’ve got things in our calendar in terms of the blocks of when we are gonna work on things and who’s working on what, when our meetings are, we’re making sure our balance is right in terms of how many hours we need to commit to different things, life and business.
We’ve got our tool, which [00:13:00] has our tasks, it has our big plans and our little plans. It has all of our team. It can run reports and give us progress updates so we know, oh, these are the tasks I have to do in this block, and we can go and do it. The next piece is using that to boost communication. So we really wanna keep our clients up to date.
And this can be part of the hard bit of having multiple clients is we feel like there’s this big burden on how much we have to update everybody. But really that’s just reactive behavior. If you already know what you’re going to be working on, you can give a pre-update, Hey, just letting you know that this is gonna be my focus.
Keeping them in the loop and then giving them an update when you’re done. Hey, just letting you know everything is on track. You can see it here in your project management tool. And I’ve left notes. And here this is over to you to review. And if that is not natural for you, [00:14:00] try and make it a habit.
But if you can’t, then block that time in. Put it in there. Must update client. Have the weekly meeting. Make sure you know what you’re talking about in those weekly meetings. Give them the recap because I tell you what, if you are not meeting your objectives, you are going to know when you are doing the notes for that meeting.
When you are setting that agenda, you are gonna start feeling like, I actually haven’t done it. Why haven’t I done it? We wanna review and be really clear, be honest with yourself, what your capacity is. And then
I really want you to add extra time. So as humans, we always don’t give ourselves enough time. We underestimate how long something will take us, and the more time pressure we have, the lower the client experience is the lower quality of work. Because then we start rushing and we miss things, [00:15:00] and then your reputation is at stake.
So how do I handle multiple clients? I’m clear. I’m clear on what I’m doing. I’m clear on when I’m doing it. I’m clear on what I need to fit into my week, and I’m clear on what my process is. Those are the things that keep my business on track. And I’ve built in rhythms. So I know this is when I go and look at where everything is up to.
This is what I do. If something is off track, this is how I update clients. This is the areas where things might go off track, and here’s why. Sometimes you’re gonna have instances where you can’t predict everything. You can ballpark, but until you’re actually there, you won’t be able to give the full scope.
And all it means is you have to be really clear with your clients again in communicating with them. When we get to this point. I think from what I [00:16:00] know now that it’s going to look like this, but here’s some key factors that might change that. And if I get in there and I see that well, actually you’ve got four email marketing tools and not just two like you thought you did, and you’ve got more data, and it means that this job is going to roll on, it means we will need to alter the project plan because it is not within scope now. It is different. Some pieces have moved. So what do we need to do to cater for that? And we do it in advance. All of these things are going to help you manage multiple clients and still be fully in it. Keep notes, keep documentation, and always work from a place as if you are not the only one that is going to touch it.
Because then when you go back to it, you’ll be able to see exactly where you’re up to. You’ll be able to jog your own memory. You’ll be able to give the client the experience they deserve and that you can deliver. [00:17:00] So I hope that that helps you . there, I could go on and on and I could pull this down into multiple layers.
So I just wanna reiterate that this is more of a high level overview. Lots of clients, biggest things – Communication and Clarity. If you can do that, then you’ll be well on your way to doing this stress free. See you next week everybody. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star review because that’s how other OBM’s find us and it can help them too.