I am a huge proponent for holding face to face meetings to build relationships with your clients.  Without a solid long term relationship you will never be able to truly understand what your clients need from you and exactly how to make your clients successful.  Something that I have trouble balancing is how many face to face meetings to go on.  While I worked in Manhattan face to face meetings were very easy to attend because every client was a short subway/cab ride away.  Even while working in Philadelphia and Tampa Bay all of my clients were close to the office which made visits easy. 

That close proximity also creates a problem.  As a rookie I found myself visiting the "safe" clients too often and not expanding my horizons enough.  As I matured in the business I learned the balance but then ended up spending a majority of my time out of the office and not enough time recruiting.  By the time I struck that perfect balance I moved into leadership roles.  I struggled with guiding my teams on the proper number of visits at first.  My teams were doing exactly what I did and I tried to shorten that learning curve.  I did this by reviewing plans and helping them to focus.  I got some push back when I would tell them they were visiting one particular client too much or not enough.  I stuck to my management style and it worked for the most part.

Each client is different and each of them wants/needs a different level attention and I tried to accommodate those variables.  While working local markets I still believe face to face meetings have to happen but the question is still there - how often should they be done?  Everyone I ask has a different opinion and I see merit in most of them.  To this day I push my teams out of their comfort zone and have them diversify their meetings.

Recently I have been managing a global team.  We have two main locations, one in PA and one in Costa Rica.  My team in Costa Rica only does local visits at this stage so I stick with my same philosophy.  They are a new sales team anyway so they still have a lot to learn before thy can expand to visits out side of the country.  My PA team, on the other hand, has a more global client list.  I also have a dedicated sales team that does not have to recruit.  So now I'm having to relearn how to set face to face meeting priorities.  I have one sales person who loves to go on visits.  Unfortunately her visits almost never pan out.  Her phone skills are awesome and she wins a lot on the phone.  So I drastically reduced her travel and kept her on the phone for a few months.  Recently those clients have started to ask to see her.  So she has slightly increased her travel.  I have found that her meetings are now much more successful than they have ever been.  The clients seem to have missed seeing her.  

I know this is an individual case but I have done this with several other team members and they are getting the same results.  We are getting job orders faster because of the reduced travel schedules and the clients are now asking to see them, not the other way around.  I'm going to pay attention to this long term to see if this holds up.  During my QA calls with the clients not one has asked to see my team member more.  I may have found a new way of doing business for my team completely by accident.  The face to face meetings are still important but maybe less often is good - at least in this economy.   

Something to note here is that previously I was in the Accounting and Finance Temporary , Permanent and Retained Staffing.  Today - this global team - is IT Consulting with a combination of Near Shore outsourcing, and onsite Temporary and Permanent placements.