You're thinking about your clients in the wrong way. You have the wrong mindset when it comes to client relationships. I'm going to share the right mindset with you.

And I'm going to tell you a story how I came to realize that I was thinking about my clients all wrong on this episode of the Inside BS Show. Hi, my name is Dave Lorenzo. And this is the show that takes you inside business sales.

So in B2B sales, you've got to really focus on one thing and only one thing in your client relationship development process. And you're thinking about the wrong thing right now. You're thinking about transactions now.

And you need to think about the value of the relationship over the long term. This is called client lifetime value. And that's what you should be focused on right from the very beginning.

You see, I was focused on transactional value from day one. And there was a particular client pursuit, a particular prospect pursuit that became a client that really changed my thinking. I was going after a law firm to develop a business development academy for them, an origination academy.

See, in the practice of law, they don't use the term sales. I like the term sales, but law firms use origination, they use business development. So they were looking to build an academy to teach their attorneys how to sell legal services.

And they were calling this the business development academy. And they said, Dave, we've watched all of your YouTube videos, we've seen you speak live, we've even attended some of your training programs. And we know you're the right person to build this business development academy for us.

How much would you charge us to do this? I said, Well, how many people will enroll? They said, well, we'd like to enroll about 300. And I said, Well, you're probably looking at a million dollars over three years, but the return on investment will be probably 15, 20, 25 million just in the first year alone, probably 100 million over the first three years. Well, these folks were blown away by the number a million dollars.

And they were like, Hey, we can't pay that. They said, we're going to go to somebody else, we're going to buy an off the shelf sales training program to teach our people business development. And we'll just call it a business development academy here at the firm.

And I said, Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, let's do this. Use the person that you're talking about for their off the shelf stuff, but give me 10 people. And I'll take those 10 people.

And if my 10 people out earn the other companies group, then you go with me for the business development academy work. If my people don't out earn the other group, that's fine, then go with them. And the managing partner of the firm said, Okay, that's fine.

But here's the thing, Dave, you're way more expensive than them. You've got to do your 10 people at that price. I said, No problem.

But if my 10 people out earn the other 10 people in the other group, then you pay my price for anybody in the future. He said, No problem. I agree to that.

So we're doing the Pepsi challenge. Those of you who are too young to remember what the Pepsi challenge is, go ahead and Google it. So we do this contest, and my group of 10 people blows away the other 10 people in six months, they earn quadruple as a group, they earn four times as much as the other group earned.

The managing partner calls me, he said, We're gonna give you another 10. My 20 people out earn everybody else in the firm, the other 280 people in the firm, my 10 people blow them away from a sales perspective. So the business development academy is going to be formed.

And the management committee comes to me and they said, How did you do it? And I said, It's no problem. I'm going to customize an approach for everyone in your firm. And I'm going to do it based upon what I did with these 20 people.

Well, that was years ago, this client has been worth over a million dollars in revenue to me over the time that I've worked with them, the lifetime value of the relationship I have with that firm is worth over a million dollars. I thought about that lifetime value, I thought about the bigger picture from the beginning when they told me that the number was too big. And I knew that concentrating on the relationship was more valuable than just that one transaction.

That's the shift in thinking you need to make when it comes to B2B business development. In B2B sales, you have to think about client lifetime value, rather than thinking about the value of a specific individual transaction. By thinking about client lifetime value by thinking about the bigger picture, you end up taking pressure off of yourself in the short term, you end up doing what's in the client's best interest for the long term, and you end up creating a relationship that will last for years and years and years.

I have been doing this intuitively, I've been doing it without planning on it. I have been doing it without really creating a formalized program. For years, my five clients, my top five clients who are individuals, individual entrepreneurs have been with me for over 15 years.

My top five clients in client lifetime value have been with me over 15 years. And the reason they stay with me is because I'm constantly thinking about how I can help them grow, how I can help them increase the value of their business. And by doing that, I get rewarded with them not only engaging me year after year, but expanding the size of our relationship.

If you want to take your sales to the next level, think about client lifetime value. Focus on relationships, not transactions. If this is something that resonates with you, if this was an aha moment, if this made a light bulb go off in your mind, give me a hey now down in the comments.

Just write hey now down in the comments because you got great value out of our time together. And I want to see you in our next show where we're going to talk more about relationships, not transactions. That video for B2B sales pros and their managers is filling in right below me.

Be sure and watch the next video which is filling in right below me right now. I'll see you there.