Customers
Customers is the build for everything after the signature: making the work land, making staying the easy choice, and making the client the reason the next one calls. Byron Sharp and Anne Sharp studied a large loyalty programme and found substantial “excess loyalty” in only two of its six member brands (Sharp and Sharp). Points don’t keep clients. Keeping the promise does.
Kept is the stage most firms leave to chance, yet it’s where the best evidence, the repeat work and most new work come from.
in 4 cells
Why it matters for being chosen
A small footprint with a large shadow. Every confirmed result becomes proof for the website, the pitch, PR and being named. Every referral becomes a fit call that skipped the moments where the firm scores zero.
The partner who sold it briefs the lead engineer verbally. A final presentation, then nothing unless the client calls. Even so, 5 of 7 clients went on to more work last year, and 22 of 31 fit calls came from referrals.
Where your craft is
The results review is theatre in the best sense: the client’s own finance director presents the figure, the plant manager says what held, the improvement lead shows what their team now runs, and only then is there one offer. Designing that moment is the agency’s craft, and it’s the most persuasive thing it makes.
The seven steps
The same anatomy as every build, with this build’s specifics and Kestrel’s example.
Lay out the lifecycle the category runs on after the sale: handover, results review, the programme decision, account ownership, training the client’s team, community, referral.
Set the coverage unit: a touch (a meeting, call, visit or invitation) that answers a client’s question after the signature. Ask whether only a person can give it.
Turn the gaps into jobs: a results review at 90 days with the finance director, a six-month visit to the floor, a community of improvement leads, a forwardable paragraph for the owner.
Reconcile into programmes. Kestrel has eight; the four P1 programmes cost nothing but time and attention, and protect its best number.
Write the handover note for every client: each person’s question, fear and what they were told, and what was promised, word for word.
Check the results review’s one offer uses the same terms as the first sale, and clients take part in campaigns only after a confirmed result.
Measure clients who go on to more work within 12 months, results reviews held at 90 days, results still holding at six months, and referrals thanked within a week.
From the finished example
Hartwell’s handover note. The book writes it in full; this is how it opens.
Tom Avery, finance director. Sceptical: “consultants always overstate savings”.
Kestrel, its clients and its people are invented.
The template
The measures
Common mistakes
The work feels finished when the team leaves; for the client, the result is only starting to show. Every touch in this build lives in the gap between those two feelings.
The Loop for this build
Each quarter the Loop reads the account plan beside the extend moments and asks: did every client get their next touch, and did the result hold? Reviews held but few going on to more means the offer doesn’t follow from the results.
You should be, a little. One firm: eight programmes after the signature, a handover note for every client, a results review presented by the client’s own finance director, a six-month visit, a community, an account owner who stays, and a referral route that’s never paid. That’s why the method runs in software.
Do it in RocMode for Agencies
What stays yours: The relationship, the review, and the promise kept.