Simon Rhind-Tutt

Simon uses that distinction to show why routine satisfaction questions may miss what makes a relationship matter.

In a client interview, a person Simon calls Jane said she felt valued but asked whether the firm was interested in her career and wanted to help her shine.

• Simon connects this to small gestures, recalling former MediaVest managing director Steve Parker’s handwritten notes to colleagues.
• These remarks and actions are Simon’s account.

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The method applies to clients, suppliers, and internal teams.

Rhind-Tutt’s post about the interview with Jane shows why asking an influential person who is not the main decision-maker can surface questions a basic “Do you feel valued?” prompt leaves unanswered.

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They cite a comparison to make the commercial case.

Ahead of a PRCA NewBizFest talk, Simon wrote that acquiring a new client was “20 times harder” than growing an existing one, and said fast-growing agencies develop current clients while many companies neglect retention.

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Their proposed response is a “Relationship Renaissance” based on trust, respect, and mutual investment. Simon says the resulting Relationship Accord should reach beyond marketing services to professional and business services more broadly.

In a post about the Advertising Who Cares conference, Simon says their working group presented research and introduced the Relationship Accord as shared principles for how the industry works together.

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Simon Rhind-Tutt recaps an Advertising Who Cares conference and a joint presentation with Tina Fegent.

• Their working group and original research found a “Relationship Recession” in marketing services: trust eroding, time squeezed and partnerships becoming transactional.
• The post proposes a “Relationship Renaissance” and unveils “The Relationship Accord”, a set of shared principles for how the industry works together.
• Rhind-Tutt argues the Accord should extend beyond marketing to all professional and business services relationships.

For brands planning a campaign

For a retention-focused B2B professional services campaign, this post supports a keynote or workshop that names the relationship recession, presents shared principles and asks teams to diagnose where trust has become transactional. It also offers a natural framework for a Relationship Accord-style workshop.

Simon Rhind-Tutt writes that acquiring a new client is about 20 times harder than growing an existing one, yet most companies treat retention as an afterthought.

• The post previews a PRCA NewBizFest talk in Glasgow on why the fastest-growing agencies grow existing clients rather than only chase new logos.
• It also promises practical takeaways for delegates.

For brands planning a campaign

For a keynote or workshop aimed at agency or professional-services leaders, build the business case around retention economics, then move to practical relationship-growth actions. The 20-times estimate is the post’s own framing, not an independently verified statistic.

Simon Rhind-Tutt describes a client interview conducted for a professional services firm.

• An influential person called Jane says she feels valued but not special, asking whether the firm is interested in her, her career and helping her shine.
• Rhind-Tutt connects this to relationship audits and recalls Steve Parker, former MD at MediaVest, leaving handwritten postcards for team members.
• The post’s point: small, personal gestures can turn a business relationship from valued into special.

For brands planning a campaign

This is strong material for a workshop exercise: ask account teams to distinguish “valued” service from “special” recognition, then design small, personal actions. The anecdote can open a keynote on client retention without relying on abstract frameworks.

Simon Rhind-Tutt recaps a PRCA NewBusFest day, highlighting insights from speakers including Tina Fegent on procurement and Keith Smith on podcasting.

• The post thanks industry participants and carries hashtags about retaining clients, growing clients and client relationships.
• It is a short event recap rather than a detailed argument.

For brands planning a campaign

For event-based activation, Simon Rhind-Tutt may suit panel moderation, conference hosting or a co-presented session with procurement and client-relationship speakers. Ask about commercial availability.

Simon Rhind-Tutt writes about taking part in Centrepoint London’s Sleepout to raise funds and awareness for youth homelessness.

• The post states that 1 in 62 young people aged 16–24 experience homelessness in the UK.
• They describe the experience as life-changing and praise the Centrepoint team as passionate, committed and knowledgeable, with PR support from Broadcast Revolution.

For brands planning a campaign

This could support a purpose-led or CSR-adjacent session about relationships beyond commercial settings, or a fundraising tie-in. Position it as a community or purpose credential, not a core client-retention credential, unless the campaign calls for that angle.

She said yes, but added that the real question was whether the firm made her feel special—whether they took an interest in her career, asked about her weekend or helped her shine.

• Simon argues that satisfaction questions miss the personal side of client relationships.
• A related story about a media agency managing director who left handwritten postcards for team members shows how small gestures can turn “valued” into “special.”

For brands planning a campaign

A keynote or workshop can challenge the audience’s standard satisfaction metrics before moving into practical, low-cost ways to make key contacts feel personally recognised. This is a strong fit for professional services firms that rely on repeat business and referrals.

Examples: Source 1

The method includes interviews with influential people, not just the main decision-maker, and uses questions such as “Do you feel like a valued client?” to reveal gaps between a firm’s view of its performance and how the relationship actually feels. Posts also show audits applied at PRCA events and in marketing procurement contexts.

Structured interviews with decision-makers and influential non-decision-makers; question sets that test both rational satisfaction and emotional connection.

For brands planning a campaign

For a client-retention brief, a workshop can centre on a mini relationship audit: who to interview, what to ask and how to act on the findings. It gives the audience a diagnostic tool rather than a set of abstract principles.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

They say the fastest-growing agencies are not just chasing new logos but growing existing clients, while most companies treat retention as an afterthought. They use this to argue that client satisfaction alone is not enough.

For brands planning a campaign

A keynote can use this cost asymmetry to make the business case for relationship investment. It suits agencies and professional services firms where new-business effort often crowds out account development.

Examples: Source 1

They proposed a Relationship Renaissance—a blueprint to re-centre trust, respect and mutual investment—and unveiled “The Relationship Accord,” a set of shared principles for how the marketing services industry works together. Simon argues the Accord should extend to all professional and business services relationships.

For brands planning a campaign

This gives a keynote a ready-made industry narrative and a named framework. A workshop can use the Accord as a starting point for teams to assess and redesign their client or supplier relationships.

Examples: Source 1

Simon Rhind-Tutt presents these as small moves that make a measurable difference to how people feel about a business relationship.

For brands planning a campaign

A workshop can turn these ideas into an action list participants can use immediately. It suits teams that need practical behaviours, not just a strategy deck.

Examples: Source 1

One post lists a working group that contributed to the Relationship Accord; another thanks collaborators for PR support on a charity sleepout. This suggests a convening style: bringing together different parts of the industry to discuss and act on relationship issues.

For brands planning a campaign

For a campaign or event, Simon Rhind-Tutt can serve as a host or co-presenter, bringing in procurement, agency and client-side voices to make a session more credible and interactive.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

Simon Rhind-Tutt says they are fortunate to work with marketing departments, agencies and professional services firms, and argues the Relationship Accord should apply across all professional and business services. Hashtags and affiliations include the Worshipful Company of Marketors and PRCA Relationship Audits.

For brands planning a campaign

This supports positioning the talk for a B2B professional services audience, not just a marketing one. A workshop can be tailored to any firm that depends on long-term client relationships.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

The post also praises the Centrepoint team as deeply knowledgeable subject matter experts. This is a personal cause, not a core business topic, but shows Simon’s willingness to use their platform for social issues.

Only one post covers this topic; ask for further examples if it is central to the brief.

For brands planning a campaign

For a brand aligning a campaign with a social cause, this shows prior engagement, but it sits alongside the core relationship-management offer. Use it as a secondary theme, not the main pitch.

Examples: Source 1

One post describes a day with the PRCA and thanks its speakers; another announces they will explain at the PRCA's NewBizFest in Glasgow why the fastest-growing agencies grow existing clients rather than chase new logos.

• Their posts tag the PRCA alongside Relationship Audits.
• Ask whether either reflects an ongoing commercial arrangement.

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They credit Brian Jacobs and Nick Manning with making the event happen and thank the wider working group by name. The post discloses their involvement and shared work, but not the commercial terms; ask about those before engaging.

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They praised the Centrepoint team as knowledgeable, committed subject-matter experts, comparing them with the marketing departments and professional services firms they work with. The post records fundraising support for one event; ask whether any wider arrangement exists.

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The post records help with that event; ask whether the relationship extends beyond it.

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The posts don't state whether Rhind-Tutt owns, works for or contracts with the business. Ask about their relationship with the company before engaging.

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Trevor Vas makes the case that talent acquisition must move from filling roles to advising the business on its workforce, backed by white papers and a conference he has run for twenty years.

• Simon Rhind-Tutt makes the parallel case that client relationships need structured auditing and deliberate investment, backed by interviews and a shared set of principles.
• Each treats a long-running community as a testing ground for the argument.

The subject is workforce rather than customer relationships. Trevor Vas writes about recruitment, skills-based hiring, internal mobility and AI agents, drawing on two decades of an Australasian talent conference; Simon Rhind-Tutt writes about how clients and suppliers experience each other in marketing and professional services.

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Simon Rhind-Tutt shows that asking whether a client feels valued misses whether they feel special; David Shultz shows that personal circumstances predict risk better than the usual slices of region, seniority and role. Both build their arguments from conference sessions and practitioner conversations, then leave readers with a practical question.

David Shultz works in cybersecurity awareness, where the goal is changing employee behaviour under attack, and draws on behavioural frameworks such as FUDGE and slow-brain versus fast-brain training. Simon Rhind-Tutt works on commercial client relationships between firms, where the goal is retention and trust.

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Natalie Benamou traces how customers evaluate vendors through external intelligence platforms before a first meeting and how experience, not just credentials, shapes decisions.

• Simon Rhind-Tutt traces how clients judge whether a firm is genuinely interested in them.
• Both write in a practical, list-driven style for people making decisions.

Natalie Benamou covers AI tools in buying decisions and career reinvention for women over 50, including authoring and book projects.

• Simon Rhind-Tutt covers client retention and relationship audits in marketing services and professional services.
• Benamou’s material centres on what the buyer does before the decision; their work focuses on what happens inside the relationship afterwards.

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Their posts describe two decades of running the Australasian Talent Conference, a white paper on Talent Advisory co-published with Simon Townsend, and a concrete prediction: talent acquisition will become workforce configuration, deciding how work gets done across build, buy, borrow and bot before defaulting to recruitment. For a professional services firm whose retention problem is really a partner and associate capability problem, that workforce-planning angle would outperform a client-relationship workshop.

The tradeoff is the buyer question.

• Trevor Vas's posts focus on talent acquisition and HR leaders, not client-facing account teams deciding how to treat clients.
• They do not address client retention, satisfaction or the valued-versus-special distinction.
• A firm wanting partners to change how they handle client relationships would get workforce strategy instead of relationship behaviour and need a separate client-relationship module to cover that need.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Their posts describe work on cybersecurity awareness segmentation, the gap between slow-brain training and fast-brain threat moments, and the FUDGE framework (fear, urgency, desire to please, greed, empathy) for understanding who is vulnerable when a message lands. A firm whose client retention problem is really about responding well in tense moments, or segmenting internal communication by role and pressure level, would get a tested behaviour-change approach.

The tradeoff is domain distance.

• David Shultz's posts focus on security awareness and conference workshops, not client relationship management.
• They offer no relationship-audit method, retention economics or professional services client examples.
• A firm choosing David Shultz would get transferable behaviour-change mechanics and have to map them onto client relationships itself, rather than draw on Simon Rhind-Tutt's direct account of interviewing clients and the valued-versus-special framing.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Natalie Benamou's posts describe work on women over 50 as a resource, a multi-author book (Bold Moves By Design) built from personal stories, and a customer-journey view of how buyers use AI platforms before the first meeting. A professional services firm targeting that demographic, or one whose clients are evaluating vendors before contact, could use the pre-meeting research angle or the lived-experience leadership theme.

The tradeoff is the core task.

• Natalie Benamou's posts focus on personal transformation, publishing and buyer research habits, not managing existing client relationships.
• They offer no retention diagnostic, account-team behaviour or client interview method.
• A firm that books Natalie Benamou for a personal transformation, publishing or buyer research conversation would get a different discussion — identity, purpose and how buyers pre-shop — and still need Simon Rhind-Tutt or another relationship specialist to deliver the client-retention workshop.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2