Get a Meeting

Week of October 20, 2014
This week is about getting a meeting with your clients. How do you get that next "touch point" so you stay Top of Mind? Here are my 10 quick tips.

1) At the end of your project-focused discussion, ask the client what else they have on their plate OR how else you can be of help to them. Be sincere, and this one question can uncover a wealth of opportunities.

2) Arrange a site visit to a current project, a project-of-interest to the client that you are doing, or an open tour that you know about.

3) Introduce your client to a colleague, trusted subconsultant, industry expert, or teaming partner.

4) At a project milestone, thank them for their business and support on the project; congratulate them on meeting the important milestone (on schedule or ahead of schedule or under budget).

5) Offer to collaborate with the client on an article, a presentation, an award submittal, etc. Do your homework and find an appropriate venue/audience for what you propose.

6) Ask for feedback - how are you doing on the job? how can you improve?

7) Reality check - ask the client "What is going well?" Not everything is a problem to be solved. Help them (re)gain some perspective with this game-changing question.

8) Share industry news, an economic forecast, and/or technology advancement. They probably do not have time to keep up-to-speed on the latest/greatest, so help them out by bringing something you found interesting or helpful to their attention. Be sure to discuss with them WHY you found it interesting/helpful.

9) Take your marketer to meet your client. We need to know about them, too, and what better way than to meet them and help generate conversation? We can ask them the "big picture" questions that might not come up naturally in your usual conversations, such as trends, economic outlook, or organizational news.

10) Still need ideas? Check out these two items from the Oregon Daily Journal of Commerce: What does your client want (a synopsis from a keynote speaker at the Society of Marketing Professional Services Pacific Regional Conference) and What does the client want? (an article I wrote for the Journal with information straight from the clients' mouths).

Writing Guidelines

Welcome to the inaugural post of my BD and Marketing Blog for Professional Marketing Services. Consider this a "note from a friend." Each week, I'll post articles that interesting, informative, or important to your jobs. I will also take you behind the curtain of marketing/BD for professional services, to keep you educated and motivated in your client relations. And I will try to give you a glimpse inside my brain at the odd and sometimes amazing connections that are made there. [You don't have to be crazy to love marketing, but it helps!]

So, "Hi!" to everyone. Drop me a line sometime to let me know how you are doing, what you need, and what you are up to. The Blog is for YOU - please help me give you what you need/want to see. Until then, here are the Things You Need to Know for this week.

Just as you all have to follow standards and guidelines in submitting your deliverables to various clients and agencies, marketing and BD has standards and guidelines. Most companies have writing, style, and graphics guidelines specific to their company, or have adopted a particular edition of the AP Style guide. In either case, get to know your company's practices. Following them not only makes editing easier, it gives a consistency to your company's materials that clients recognize and appreciate.

Here are a couple of items that tend to trip us up:

Capitalization - avoid unnecessary capitals. Proper names and formal titles are capitalized when used as the name and title; almost everything else is not. If someone served as the project manager, then it is not capitalized. If they are Project Manager Jane Smith, then it is capitalized. In the case of reports, an environmental assessment is not capitalized, but the Lower Stanton River Environmental Assessment is capitalized, as it is the formal title of the report.

Acronyms - Acronyms and abbreviations for government agencies should be spelled out the first time they are used in the document. Several companies use ONLY the acronym in their employees' resumes and the project descriptions, because it is likely that the acronym would be used (and spelled out) MUCH earlier in a proposal document than the resumes/projects. This is a time-saving practice!

In the case of technologies that are widely recognized by their abbreviation, use that in all references: GPS, GIS, CADD, JPEG, PDF, etc.

Agencies commonly known by their acronym can be used with or without first spelling them out (FEMA, NOAA, EPA, DoD, etc.) These could be regional, as well, such as CDOT in Colorado -- you would not need to spell out CDOT in a CDOT submittal.

Numbers and dimensions/units - Spell out numbers under 10... except as part of dimensions, distances, or addresses. For example, "He has more than six years of experience..." but "he built a 16-by-9-inch box." All unites are spelled out (inches, feet, foot-long, percent, etc.), without the use of symbols (no ", ', or %). If the number begins a sentence, spell it out.

Ensure/Assure/Insure - these words, and all of their forms, are liability words that should be avoided. They implay a guarantee of action or result, which you might not fully control. Rewriting the sentence that has any of these words in it usually involves identifying an action or desired result and focusing on that. For example, "We will perform quality checks prior to each submittal to ensure they comply with ODOT standards," would become "We will perform quality checks to confirm compliance with ODOT standards." Or better: "We will check that deliverables comply with ODOT standards."


What are your common standards/guidelines? Or pet peeves?

Make it a great week!