Clients can be horribly indecisive. Is it that they’re never entirely sure of what they want or that they’re not entirely interested in working with you right now? You don’t ever really know.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough … there’s nothing worse than thinking you have reached an agreement with a client on an assignment only to find out you don’t know everything you really needed to know. (Note: some creative types consider this a kind of sport, especially with first-year account managers.)
The result of your ignorance can be missed deadlines, increased budgets, pissed off clients.
How do you avoid this problem? Essentially, what you need to do is get a more objective understanding of what the client is trying to accomplish. Understand the strategy behind the request, first, and you’ll find it easier to provide guidance to your team members and to identify potential additional business for down the road.
The strategic visioning process, outlined on our BrandCrafting blog, works for corporate and product brands alike.
Here are some things to keep in mind when working with a client to set their “vision” for a project or account:
1) Understand how the client defines “success” – get them to discuss success on their own terms. How are they going to know if what they spent was good for their company? Who needs to be happy with the outcome? What are the long-term benefits of a continued relationship?2) Part of having a clear vision of success is being able to identify (fairly accurately) the financial benefits of success. Once a client can objectively identify the financial outcomes of a successful effort, they can objectively identify a budget to spend in order to generate the anticipated “return” on their investment.
3) Work with the client to describe their “vision” from the point of view of the customer/end-user. Are there any insights that result from this conversation? Can you identify any measurable actions that might help you set performance metrics down the road?
As you can probably tell, a discussion with a client on this level will require account managers to be better prepared and educated on the nature of the client’s business, their customers, competition and media. It’s well worth the investment, though, since these kinds of conversations successfully position your firm as a strategic partner rather than just a vendor.
Do you know what your company’s mission statement says? Chances are, even if you do, many of your employees and most of your customers and vendors don’t … and don’t want to!
Why is this?
Because if your company is like most, your corporate mission statement isn’t all that different from anyone else’s. White out the product-specific stuff and the name of your company and your mission statement probably says something about commitments to quality, profitability and innovation. About half of the mission statements I read say something about “our people are our most important asset.” And another forty percent are sure to through in jargon that doesn’t really mean anything to people (e.g. synergies, strategies, paradigms, et al).
There isn’t anything wrong with having a stated commitment to quality, etc. That’s commendable. But why is it, after a management group has spent a while (sometimes days or weeks) squeezing a multi-paragraph statement down to a few sentences, that employees are under-whelmed and customers and vendors don’t really seem to care?
Why aren’t people excited?
The answer is relatively simple – most mission statements sound like a lot of hard work that will result in relatively little in terms of personal or professional gain. As my 14-year old is fond of saying when I give him a mission (like cleaning his room): “So what?”
As rude and self-serving as that may sound, there is a point to the question. People (whether they’re customers, employees or vendors) need a reason to commit to a mission. They need to know their agreement to do whatever it is you want them to do will result in something they want to have happen to them. In short, they need to “see” their own success first in order to be motivated to make the success a reality.
We call this process “visioning” – while not a particularly clever term, it does describe the process we use. When put into practice, clients are able to clearly and succinctly explain what they are trying to do with their business in three to five years. This answers the “So what?” question for most people and gives them an opportunity to create their own, personal vision of their success in the future.
Making sure the vision of the company is shared is the responsibility of the CEO and senior management team. But internalization of that vision is everybody’s job. In fact, the visioning process makes the development of a mission statement much easier:
“Live up to the promises we make and turn our vision of the future into a reality.”
Plentiful communications inside the enterprise helps reinforce the fundamental changes required to realize the future. As more and more people start to see the role they play in the company’s future, though, something remarkable happens. So remarkable, in fact, it’s actually measurable.
Internally, people begin to take advantage of opportunities to make the corporate vision a reality whenever and wherever they present themselves. This “strategic opportunism” can lead to productivity gains in the most unexpected places. Vendors, armed with the relevant parts of the corporate vision, start presenting proposals that fit within that framework – not only is it easier to sell to a client when you know what they’re trying to do, you have a steak in their continued success and prosperity.
“Strategic opportunism” can be found on the sales and customer support side, as well. Sales leads become easier to evaluate and targeted leads worked faster once ideal customer types are identified and the brand’s USP is clarified. With existing customers, lifetime values can be maximized according to the company’s plans for the future.
All of these are examples of companies making their own reality – turning their “vision” into success.
Technorati Tags: Marketing, Strategic Planning, Corporate Vision, Brand, Brand Equity, Branding
