Paul Cowan

Paul Cowan is a relationship specialist who had a successful career in leading international advertising agencies, then opened his own agency. As a psychotherapist he worked with individuals and couples and consulted with teams and organizations. Specializing in client relationships, he works internationally to facilitate change between agencies and their clients. He cofounded the Client Relationship Consultancy and the Customer Relationship Consultancy. His new book is "Connecting with Clients — For stronger, more rewarding and longer-lasting client relationships."

• Avoiding client-agency breakdown: Always ‘feedforward,’ never feedback

  Friday, May 14, 2021

  We were a young breakaway agency, packed with talent and hungry for all the opportunities we could get. Our overhead included a ridiculously large budget for salaries that had to be covered every month. We brought in all the clients we could and always asked for their feedback on our work and on our agency — how did we do? What could we have done better? Like many startup businesses, we thought asking for feedback would prove useful and demonstrate that we valued the client relationship above all else. We asked for feedback on almost everything.