We all have clients. Whether you’re in a corporate setting, a supplier or consultancy, or work independently or freelance, your clients are your bosses, team leaders, functional heads, customers, and other stakeholders. We’ve all experienced a spectrum of positive and negative client experiences, and by taking a closer look at these ups and downs—and evaluating what works and what doesn’t—I’ve identified three steps you can take to build better clients: 1. Build a Better Brief The biggest disappointments in client relationships tend to come from missed expectations. Perhaps they weren’t stated clearly by the client, understood clearly by the person doing the work, or, sometimes, the client hasn’t taken the time to think through what they really do want. In any case, a better brief can help. Depending on your specific role, a brief could be a request for proposal, a creative brief, a project charter, etc. Whatever form it takes, there are a few critical questions that should always be addressed:
2. Build in Enough Time A common mistake in creating project timelines is to underestimate the time required for activities outside the project itself. These include things like: upfront briefing and alignment, check-ins and updates along the way, reviews and feedback (potentially multiple rounds), and follow ups after initial project completion. The consequence of not building in adequate time for these things ranges from missed deadlines to compromised quality to going over budget—or getting underpaid. To increase the accuracy of your timelines, draw on past project experience (your own and/or getting input from other team members) and think through the times that felt rushed, required trade-offs, and were otherwise unanticipated time-draws. This isn’t about creating padded or unnecessarily long timelines; by planning for these connection and feedback points up front, you can often be more efficient overall, or at least more accurate. If you’re in a consulting or supplier role, try keeping track of time spent by type of activity (e.g. project work vs. client meetings, etc.) and keep a record for each project, which will help you better estimate for future projects over time. Regularly updating project timelines with actual dates and keeping them on file for future reference will help in corporate settings. Robust, accurate and well-planned project timelines set appropriate expectations up front with clients, allow clients to be better prepared to provide inputs and feedback, and allow you to delight clients by delivering on time, as promised. 3. Build Relationships Chatting and small talk don’t come naturally to everyone (myself included), but spending a bit of time on pleasantries adds an element of human connection that not only makes interactions more enjoyable, but also increases trust and sharing—and increases the odds that you’ll get the benefit of the doubt if needed. Remember when you’re writing an email that there’s an actual person on the other end and use a more conversational tone when appropriate. Open a phone call or in-person meeting with a couple of minutes of informal conversation. Gauge your audience of course—some people will be eager to get down to business and others would be happy to talk about their hobbies or kids for hours, but a sincere interest in your client as a person tends to go a long way. Understand and respect their professional context and preferences as well. Find out how they prefer to communicate, certain days or times that are best to reach them or other facts that will make your communication more efficient and customized. Getting some context on who their key clients are, the priority of the project within their total responsibilities or within the overall organization, etc. will allow you to appear savvy and in-touch as well as helping you become a go-to, strategic business partner. Practice professional empathy with your clients. Try to put yourself in their shoes and understand their motivations and priorities. This can help you proactively tailor messages and deliverables and give you context to understand feedback and reactions. You’ll obviously invest more in building relationships with clients who are ongoing business partners or regular customers, but practice these approaches on a smaller scale with potential or new clients, in a sincere and authentic way, and they might just end up becoming ongoing clients (or key internal advocates) as well!
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I attended the Future of StoryTelling (FoST) event in New York City last month and experienced a cornucopia of performances, roundtables, workshops, speakers, and interactive experiences all centered around “reinventing the way stories are told”. As described on their website: The Future of StoryTelling is an invitation-only, two-day gathering of technology, media, and communications visionaries from around the world. The summit is designed to put participants in direct contact with the most vital ideas, people, and technologies that are shaping the way we tell stories. There were three sessions in particular that gave me great inspiration for storytelling for brands and companies and I wanted to share a few key nuggets from each here: Dave Nadelberg, founder of Mortified, taught a “story extractor” method for turning anecdotes into stories. He recommended starting with one aspect of the event and then filling in the rest of the framework. Mortified focuses on adults telling stories from their childhood, so the framework looks like this:
There are a few things I love about this approach. First, you don’t have to know the entire story when you get started. When writing a brand story, maybe you only have “the goal” to start with or “the fix”, but by walking through a step-by-step framework like this, you can flesh out a holistic and multi-dimensional brand story. Also, this approach separates out “goal” and “motivation”—translated into business speak, that’s “mission statement” (goal or objective works here too) and “brand purpose”. The motivation, or purpose, is the why behind your brand story—why you do what you do as an entrepreneur or a company—and no brand story is complete without it. Lastly, this framework is equally applicable for brand or customer stories (and don’t forget, the customer is always the hero of either kind of story!). ____ Beth Comstock, Vice Chair of GE, talked about growing a corporate brand and I took away three big lessons from her roundtable discussion.
_____ Frank Rose and Paul Woolmington, senior fellows at Columbia University, talked about “The Story World” that the most engaging brands and media properties build around their entire proposition. This Story World offers four levels of engagement to participants/audiences/customers:
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse into the Future of StoryTelling and just maybe, found something that inspires you too. Some friends came over this past weekend and brought a strategy/building game I had never played before. They gave me the basics of the rules to start, then I figured out the rest as we played. Perhaps because I didn't know all of the rules or I was new to the game, I made several moves that the others questioned or advised me against. Call it intuitiveness—or stubbornness—but I proceeded with those plays anyway. And I won the game. It's common enough for first time game-players to win and when they do, we call it beginner’s luck (at least the annoyed, more experienced players do.) Reflecting on this experience, I couldn't help but think of the connection to innovation. How many times have we seen startups ignore or break “the rules” and end up disrupting entire industries? How many stories have we heard (apocryphal or otherwise) about employees in large companies ignoring management directives, sometimes even working in secret or on their own time in order to develop the next big thing? How can we make our own beginner’s luck to bring fresh perspective for innovation? Here are three areas to think about: 1. Internal Resources: When planning a brainstorming or ideation session, invite new hires, interns, administrators, and/or colleagues from other departments or disciplines. Ideally, they will bring different ways of thinking, help challenge assumptions, come up with new combinations of ideas, or provide relevant analogs from their personal lives and professional experiences. Pair more and less experienced people together for maximum benefit. 2. External Resources: Working with external specialists and consultants can often move projects forward exponentially, but also consider tapping experts from other, analogous fields for inspiration. What might a veterinary tech be able to learn from a physician’s assistant or vice-versa? What inspiration could a home improvement retailer gain from a professional visual artist? Another way to leverage the “beginner” as an external resource is to consult with a researcher who is an expert in technique, but perhaps new to your specific category. In a previous role on a beauty brand, I frequently worked with a male moderator who used his gender to plead complete category ignorance with female consumers and therefore got a lot of detailed and useful feedback. I recently completed a research project with a restaurant client, and having never dined in their—or their primary competitor’s restaurants—was able to bring a fresh and unbiased view to the findings that the client found highly credible. 3. Techniques/Approaches: When doing in-context or ethnographic research, coach teams to approach it with “alien eyes.” Meaning, try to consciously put aside existing assumptions and really notice, as if for the first time, elements of the interviewee’s physical environment, how they perform tasks and use products, etc. This can help you uncover inefficiencies, compensating behaviors, and inconsistencies that can lead to innovative solutions. Another technique, “innovation by analogy” looks to other industries or the natural world for inspiration by asking questions like “Who else encounters similar problems or challenges?” or “How else has a problem like this been solved before?” Another tool I love to use for ideation, is insight or technology “mash-ups.” It’s a relatively simple technique in which you create a grid or pairs of disparate ideas, consumer insights or problems, product features or benefits—or technologies. By forcing your brain to find connections between two seemingly unrelated things, you can often come up with something truly unique. There’s a Japanese Zen concept, frequently associated with the late Steve Jobs, called “shoshin,” meaning “beginner’s mind,” which involves approaching a subject as a beginner would—with openness and a lack of preconception—even if you are an expert. This is the counterpoint to the cognitive bias called “the curse of knowledge,” whereby an expert assumes what s/he knows is commonly known and has trouble seeing from the perspective of a novice. Leveraging the resources and approaches listed above can help us see from a beginner’s perspective all over again—building a bridge to that “lucky” break through to true innovation. CC image courtesy of Alexandre Duret-Lutz on Flickr |
AuthorSarah Faulkner, Owner Faulkner Insights Archives
July 2021
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