Have you ever had that awful sinking feeling when you know you've screwed up?

A few years ago a local sales trainer asked me if they could buy me a coffee and pick my brains.

I'm always happy to help people out (especially if they ask nicely and bribe me with a fancy coffee) so we set up a meeting.

The trainer asked for advice about working with law firms. He'd just won a contract to do sales training for the senior staff of a large local firm. But with no experience in the sector he wasn't sure how to tailor his material.

I went through my experience working with law firms with him, giving him some clues and tips on how to adapt standard sales training to be more suitable to professional firms.

At the end, out of interest, I asked him who the law firm was. His answer shocked me.

It was a firm I'd spoken to about a year previously. In fact, I'd done a free seminar that a couple of their partners had attended and had given brilliant feedback on. They'd then asked me to come and talk to them about growing their client base.

Yet I'd gone from pole position to losing out to someone with no previous experience in the sector.

How come?

I'd made a huge mistake. After that initial meeting, the client had told me the time wasn't quite right for an improvement programme.

And my response was…

…I ignored them. Did nothing to follow up or keep in touch.

Despite the fact that they could have been a great client had the timing been right, I decided I had bigger fish to fry.

And so I lost out to someone with no real expertise in what they needed – but who did keep knocking on their door until the timing was right.

Persistence and nurturing trumps just about anything. Not only do you build relationships and credibility over time more effectively than with just “one big hit” – it also means you're in the right place when a client decides to take action.

That meeting was a big wake-up call for me. Nowadays I follow a structured and rigorous approach to nurturing relationships with potential clients that means I never miss out like this any more.

Hopefully you won't need a wake up call: you'll make sure you're nurturing relationships without needing such a shock to the system.