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).

What Will It Take To Win This Job? Part 1

Week of September 29, 2014

How many times have you heard (or thought) "What do I have to do to work on this project? This would be so cool!" And where does that conversation go? Into the weeds, as I like to say. That is, into the details about the project, the technical "coolness" of it, and the possible solutions.

My job at that point is to say, "We wouldn't be talking about this opportunity if you couldn't DO the work. What we have to do now is WIN the work." I'm such a buzz kill. But it's true. Why torture yourself with the fun talk about the project when you don't even have it, yet?

I think it is because folks believe that it is hard and not fun to do what is necessary to win the work. Let me tell you what "hard and not fun" is:

Hard and Not Fun

• Writing a persuasive cover letter without knowing what is motivating the client
• Tailoring resumes without knowing what skills the client is looking for or what is needed for the project
• Putting forth a passionate, believable, likable PM that has never met the client face-to-face
• Creating a team of subconsultants without knowing if any of them have history with the client (you know what I mean)
• Knowing that our competition did all the previous phases of work, but not knowing if the client liked it or not
• Writing an approach for a project that you understand technically, but not politically

Easy and Fun

• Knowing more than any of your competitors about the project
• Knowing what the client is really after because they told you
• Being told by the client which subconsultants they think are needed for the project
• Getting confirmation from several stakeholders that a specific issue is a real issue for the success of the project
• Learning that your competition did not even bother to submit a proposal because they heard how prepared you were
• Or even better - the client asks if they can sole-source the first phase of the project because they are so impressed with what you know and how involved you have been to this point!

What will it take to get to "easy and fun" and win the job? Do this ONE THING: Write an executive summary to your proposal before the RFP is ever released.

Organize your summary like this:

1. Client Needs - spell out what the client needs and the client's key issues or problems, based on what the client has told you
2. Results/Benefits - what the client wants to achieve by addressing their issues or solving their problems. These could also be the benefits the client will realize through the completion of the project, such as safer streets, fewer community complaints, good publicity, etc. This must be based on what the client has told you, too.
3. Solution(s) - what will you DO that will (lead to) the solution for the client's problems and deliver the results the client wants? This has to be action-oriented, explaining the process, not the products. The products will be the same for every competitor. Only the process, the experience the client will have working with you, will be different. Pick out the high points, as if you are opening the "black box" of your creative process.
4. Proof - briefly explain where you/your company has provided a similar solution/process, and how it was received. This can be as brief as a single sentence: "We implemented a similar collaborative process for the City of Wonder, and they were able to complete their project three months ahead of schedule with full Council approval and an overflowing community ribbon-cutting ceremony."

Have someone else read your summary. Ask them to look for:

• Client Focus - does the writing focus on the client, the client's needs, how the client will benefit, how the solution(s) will help, etc.? This is good. If it strays to language about you/your company before the last paragraph, it will need to be corrected.
• Filler - words like unique, state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, innovative, and others that are vague and/or superlative. These will need to be eliminated.
• Jargon - The executive summary needs to be clean and simple so that anyone with a fourth grade reading ability can grasp what you are saying. Look for acronyms, technical jargon, etc.
• Pretense - words and sentences that are more complicated than they need to be to convey the message need to be cleaned up. Remember, fourth grade reading ability. Do not hide your message in complex sentence structures or difficult vocabulary.

If the writing is clear, clean, and client-focused, you're in great shape! You know enough to make the proposal process much easier and more fun. If not... Come back next week for my tips on what you need to do next.

Gaining Client Loyalty

Week of September 22, 2014
Ok, so how DO we get to top of mind and build client loyalty?

Interestingly, Tom Fishburne spoke on this very thing at his Google keynote, "Marketing Worth Sharing." At the link to his keynote, he includes both his slides AND his notes. You can easily follow what he is saying, and in essence, his message is this (and I agree):

When you're with your clients, how can you make their experience a little more awesome? THAT is marketing, branding, business development, client services, and company culture all rolled into one. Are you seeing it?

More importantly, are you hearing it? What are the things your clients are talking about? What are they wrestling with? When they share this with you, are you giving them your full attention? Or are you thinking about what you are going to say next? Or what service you want to tell them about?


For the next few days, I want you to try something for me... BE PRESENT.

When the client speaks, stop what you are doing and thinking, and really listen to what they are saying. Ask for clarification. Ask for details. Ask them how it makes them fell. Ask them what they want to accomplish. Ask them what "it" would look like if "it" was working/running/behaving the way "it" was supposed to.

Do not try to solve their problem. Don't offer your advice. And don't tell them about what your firm can do about that or the project you did that was just like what they are going through. Just help them be more awesome. Listen. Reflect back what they say. BE PRESENT.

Is Client Loyalty Dead, Part 2

Week of September 12, 2014
Last week, I shared some of my recent pondering about whether or not client loyalty (loyalty to us/our firms) was dead. I have concluded that clients are not really loyal to a company/firm, but to a particular person. So in that respect, no, loyalty exists. And it is a powerful one-to-one bond.

I've seen that manifested when a popular client manager leaves a company... and the clients follow him or her to their new firm. So what is that client manager doing to gain that respect and, well, loyalty?

Interestingly, Tom Fishburne, The Marketoonist, has touched on this topic a couple of times. The reality is that clients are thinking about a lot of things, and we are probably not any of them. It is VERY much like this cartoon, "Inside the mind of the consumer" by Tom Fishburne.

This is just human nature. Clients, like all of us, have far more stuff going on in their brains than the name and services of a consultant.

Even clients who are loyal to us, who like us and come to us a lot, suffer from this "too much stuff on the brain" syndrome. For more on how the consumer/client thinks, read the companion article "Inside the mind of the consumer." It is vital to know what is on the client's mind before we can change our position within it.

Next week... how to get to the "top of mind" position with a client.

Is Client Loyalty Dead?

Week of September 8, 2014
I've been pondering this question a lot lately: Is Client Loyalty Dead?

Things keep floating up out of my subconscious in response, like when I worked for my father's law firm. He told me that clients, including managers of corporations and government officials, never liked being shifted from the attorney they were familiar with to another in the same firm. The client saw their primary relationship as being with the individual attorney, not the law firm. This was a particularly difficult issue in the large law firm in Portland where he first practiced because senior attorneys wanted the younger, less-expensive attorneys to do as much of the work as possible, which led to more profitability. And while clients may not have understood the motive, they certainly felt slighted if "their" attorney wasn't made readily available.

So maybe our thinking about loyalty is faulty -- that someone could be loyal to a firm/company. It follows that it is easier to establish and maintain a relationship with clients on an individual basis, not a firmwide or organizational one. 

What are we doing to create those relationships? 

I think that part of my role in marketing is to help identify the individual qualities of the person and then help select the technical individual who is the best match. Client research has to go beyond what can be read on the web or in a report. It is equally important to know as much about the individual client staff as it is to know about the organization, company, and market.

 It is a two-step process (at least): 1) Identify the clients and the people within that client organization who are most influential and figure out what makes them tick/what kind of people they are. 2) Then identify the strengths of your BD/Marketing team and match them up to the people at the client organization. 

If we want any semblance of loyalty, perhaps we need to look at how we approach our clients (and with whom) first. It is bringing the "friend making" to a conscious level, and pairing the "right" people together to create something extraordinary. 

I'm still pondering this... More next week...