Touchpoint Frequency & the Attention Asset

We all know that the more spam you send or the more often you bother a sales prospect the more likely they are to begin ignoring you. Said differently, if you have built up a certain level of trust and credibility,  you have built up an "attention asset" with a user or prospect -- and spamming them will quickly deteriorate the value of that asset.

The conventional solution to this problem is to simply stop touching the user or prospect, or to at least do so less frequently.

While certainly intuitive, this is exactly the wrong solution.

Instead, I believe companies should strive to touch a prospect or user every single day, if not more often.  BUT, at the same time they should challenge themselves to bring the prospect or user enough value in every single touchpoint, every single day, so that not only do they not deteriorate the attention asset, but instead they increase the value of it.  I wrote a post back in April titled, Drip Marketing that outlines this approach.

In practice, of course, you don't have to reach out every day (be sensible) but I do believe that the approach of reaching out every single day will require you to create content that is compelling, interesting and highly valuable.  And that this is a far better approach than taking the easy way out and solving the problem by simply backing off.

Crisis Management Framework

Here's a very simple framework I use when dealing with a crisis at work.  The framework has worked well for me in the past.  Sometimes simply having a framework for dealing with an unexpected event can inspire confidence and help you get your clients and team focused on solutions.

1. What happened?
2. How did it happen?
3. What are we doing to fix?
4. How are we going to prevent it from happening again?  (include both short term solutions and long term solutions)

Client Management Lesson #3: Manage Expecations

This is the third post in a seven part series on Key Client Management Lessons. Lesson #3: Manage Expectations

For this lesson I'm going to refer back to a post I did back in 2007 titled, The Best Business Lesson Ever.  Click here to read that post.

The lesson, in short, is this formula: Perception Minus expectations Equals Satisfaction (P - E = S).

Managing expectations is a critical part of client management, I'd encourage you to read the post and memorize the formula.

Client Management Lesson #2: Partners, Not Customers

This is the second post in a seven part series on Key Client Management Lessons. Lesson #2: Partners, Not Customers

It may seem like semantics, but I’ve learned not to think of my clients as “customers”.  It has a connotation that implies that you’re inferior to the client.  You’re not.  A buyer/seller relationship is a perfectly mutually beneficial partnership.  You want something, they want something.

Your role in the partnership is to maximize the benefit to your organization and your partner’s role in the partnership is to maximize the benefit to their organization.  If you don’t approach it this way, you’re not playing the game -- the “self-interest game” -- and you’re setting yourself up for failure.

It is this joint self-interest that creates the magical “win/win” -- where you both get more from the relationship than the sum of your combined assets.

Positioning your relationship as a partnership can be difficult.  Clients are paying you a lot of money, they think of themselves as customers, they expect you to jump when they say jump.

To be sure that the relationship is positioned as a partnership, as soon as you take over the account, setup a call with the client and do two things:

1. Define the objectives of the relationship (be sure the objectives are aligned with your business goals and theirs)
2. Define the key metrics that will determine success or failure in reaching the objectives

This is a critical step; it forces you to view the success of the partnership through the lens of business success and "win-win", rather than the lens of client satisfaction or happiness.  Happy clients are important, but they should be happy because you’re helping them reach their business goals, not because you’re treating them like a king that you’re in business to serve.

When a “partnership” is in place, as you move through the relationship and opportunities, challenges and conflicts come up, you can always refer back to the objectives and metrics you’re using to determine success.  This will keep you both focused on actions that drive business results rather than non-essential activities that take you off course.

Client Management Lesson #1: Lead, Don't Follow

This is the first post in a seven part series on Key Client Management Lessons. Lesson #1: Lead, Don't Follow

Intuition tells us that the customer is always right, that good customer service is giving the customer what they want.

Whenever I hear this I think about a quote I read from Steve Jobs.

A while back somebody asked him if he had done any market research while he was building one of his products (I believe the iPod).  His answer was no way.  He said:

"It isn't the consumer's job to know what they want."

I love this quote.  In my experience, I've found that this is absolutely true; most clients have no idea what they really want.  In fact, even you probably don't truly know what they want or at least not what they're going to want.

In order to truly serve a client you need to have the flexibility to be ahead of the market.  And to do this, you need to create an environment with the client where you can do what you do well, where you can lead, where you can innovate.

Remember that you are the expert in your field, you're better at what you do than they are, that's why they 've chosen to outsource to you.

The best relationships are the relationships where a client leans on you for your expertise.  To create this type of relationship, do these four things right up front:

1. Specifically define your area of expertise for the client (where you're going to lead)
2. Define the metrics you use to determine success in that area
3. Set goals for each metric and a timeline for when you plan to hit each
4. Share those metrics with the client and demonstrate how those metrics are perfectly consistent with the overall goals of the relationship

Positioning your relationships this way might be difficult at first -- many businesses have been successful by following their clients,  and doing whatever the client asks.

But if you want to create an environment where you can truly innovate, you need to lead, not follow.

And you’ll find that once you've created this dynamic in the relationship you can move much faster in the market and the relationship will benefit in the end.

You’ll find that rather than being just another vendor that they have to manage, the client will come to you for advice, open up more about their challenges and be more understanding when you run tests and make rapid product iterations that don't succeed overnight.

To facilitate a relationship where you lead, you might need to be more proactive and more transparent than you normally would.   It's worth it.  Show the client data that supports your decisions.  When the relationship is positioned properly, you'll find that the client will require much less control.  In fact, when they ask you to make product changes you can say "no way!"

Of course you need to listen to the client and consider their feedback and you better be prepared to show how the changes you make are consistent with the goals of the relationship (again, try to do this proactively) but at the end of the day, you’re the expert, lead, don’t follow.

Your job is not to give the client what they want; your job is to give the client what they dream about.

Bad Negotiators Use Emotion to Negotiate

I just went on a rant about this and a colleague told me I should blog about it so here goes. I had a call the other day with a big client. The call was a preliminary negotiation call. We’re going to discuss terms of an agreement extension in a couple weeks.

From the outset of the call, the client surprised me by being both rude and confrontational -- lots of sarcasm and sighing. They explained that they might want to go to RFP. Oh, and of course, they want a fee reduction this year.

Not a nice way to start off a call between two companies that have had a very positive relationship for many years. Why would they start the call this way? Are they just rude? Are they really mad?

I don’t think so. My answer is that they’re bad negotiators that don’t want to do the homework and preparation required to get what they want.

Good negotiators don’t do this. Good negotiators are polite, friendly, do their homework and have ruthless, rock solid business angles as to why they should get what they want. Good negotiators don’t simply threaten to go to RFP; rather, they build leverage by citing the rational, business reasons why they might end up going to RFP (budget cuts, poor performance, shifting priorities, changing markets, competition, etc.).

When negotiators don’t have rock solid, logical business arguments they’re forced to rely on fake, insincere emotion to make their argument.

My advice: rather than put yourself and the people on the other end of the phone through this nonsense, reschedule the call for a later date until you can do your homework and prepare your angles. That’s a lot more fun and productive than just pretending to be mad.

7 Key Client Management Lessons

A few weeks ago I was asked to teach a "Client Management 101" class. I was happy to do the class but wasn't all that excited about its title.

I believe that the basics of client management are mostly intuitive.  And the parts of it that aren't intuitive can pretty easily be found in a book or online.

So a class on the basics of client management wouldn’t be very interesting or insightful and wouldn’t really make the listeners any better at client management -- not to mention it wouldn’t be very fun to teach.

So I decided not to teach the basics; instead, I came up with a list of 7 key lessons or insights that I've picked up over the years that would've helped me quite a bit had I understood them when I started my career.  Some of them are provocative and many of them are counterintuitive.  I decided to keep the list to 7 because it forced me to pick the most interesting.

I put the 7 lessons into PowerPoint, added some personal stories and took the class through each lesson one by one.  The class was very well received and spurred some great conversation during Q&A.

I thought I'd capture and share what I presented on this blog.  Here are the 7 Key Lessons:

1. Lead, Don't Follow
2. Partners, Not Customers
3. Manage Expectations (it's easier)
4. Ask for More
5. Everybody Has a Boss
6. Know Your Audience
7. The Bigger the Crisis, the Bigger the Opportunity

Posting them all at once would make for an extremely long blog post…so I’ll post them individually over the next several weeks.

Great Quote

A very, very true quote from Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff.

Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things.

Yahoo! Answers

I just started using Yahoo Answers again. This is a great source for blogging content. Just search through the questions, find something that you might be able to help with and write. What I really like about it is that it's a step beyond search; i.e. most people don't ask, "What's CPC?" You can find that on Google. The questions are much more difficult than that and thus a foundation for great content.

Here's an answer I just gave to an important question while I was riding the Acela back to New York.

Question: What is best way to keep long term clients and customers?

My Answer: I think there are three key ways to address this challenge:

1. Find a way to make leaving difficult for your clients. That is, create substantial "switching costs". And I don't mean cancellation fees, that'll just cause ill will. Instead find ways to make your product or service more valuable by becoming more intimate with and integrated into what matters to the client.
2. Innovate, innovate, innovate. Watch your competitors and run as fast as you can to avoid becoming a commodity. When your clients are only talking about price you know you're running much too slow.
3. Make big promises and over deliver.