I just finished reading an article on Raintoday.com (yes, their weekly newsletter just came out, featuring five of the year’s best articles on better serving your clients) that focused on “the power of taking your clients interests to heart.”

I found this article interesting on a number of levels, but I’ll limit my discussion to two:

Motives Matter a.k.a. Doing What’s Right

First, the whole concept is a no-brainer to me. It’s how I operate. When I was employee, I made decisions based on what was best for the company, not necessarily what was best for me. Sometimes this didn’t result in the best situations for me, but in hindsight I’d make the same decision again — because it was the right thing to do. It’s what I owed my employers, and it’s what I owe my clients.

The author (Charles Green) of the article wrote that this isn’t a matter of ethics, but rather a simple fact of trust. However, I’d argue it is a matter of ethics, or at least a matter of doing what’s right. This is so hardwired into my system that I get very annoyed when people don’t do what’s “right.” And isn’t doing what’s right a matter of ethics? For me, it goes back to the golden rule, “Do unto others….” I simply treat my clients the way I would like to be treated. I treat their business as if it were my own. It’s what’s right.

Now that said, does that mean I never make mistakes? That I never get irritated? Heck no. Anyone who knows me would tell you that. But my governing principal is doing what’s right by my clients — and that includes telling them when it doesn’t make sense to have me do something for them. And since 99 percent of my business is word of mouth, it also is a good business practice — I’d argue the best best practice you can follow. This echoes Charles Green statement that “being trusted is a very low-risk, high-return strategy.” But doing it just to boost your profits is false.

Relationships and Fake Trust a.k.a We Cannot NOT Communicate

In Charles Green’s article, he writes that “When client focus becomes a tool for seller profit improvement, clients notice and become cynical. Lately, the language of client focus is adopting the language of relationships, fostering yet another layer of cynicism…. If we can’t trust the meaning of the words a company says, then we can’t trust the company saying them.”

I don’t disagree. To me, this is a no brainer. But obviously it isn’t so simple, because many companies do seem to take a seller-profit-improvement approach to client focus. The reason I found this component interesting is probably due to my communication background, studying how humans communicate and why some rhetoric works and some doesn’t.

We cannot NOT communicate is why fake trust or seller-profit-improvement approaches don’t work. It’s a phrase I fell in love with in my first interpersonal communication class; it’s also my company tagline. It says a lot, really. We’re always communicating, even when we’re not saying anything. What we don’t say can often be more telling then what we do say — that’s why fake trust doesn’t work.

Words alone definitely don’t carry the message. All the nonverbal “stuff” says a lot more. There are a lot of studies (sorry, none quoted here, all my books are packed away) that show that if words say one thing and tone or body language say another, the audience will believe the latter over what’s said. So it stands to say that just speaking client-focused language isn’t enough. Most people are astute enough to see past what you’re saying to how you’re acting. If they don’t match, they don’t trust you. And if they don’t trust you, they won’t buy what you’re selling.

Anyway, it’s a good article to read, great food for thought. I’d love to hear what all of you think.

Read, “Motives Matter: The Power of Taking Your Client’s Interests to Heart“

Andrew Sobel has a great article on Raintoday.com that discusses four ways to deliver value to your clients: core value, surprise value, personal value, and perception of value. For many, it may be no more than a refresher, but it never hurts to keep reminding ourselves of how we can improve customer satisfaction. It’s a simple way to support continued success in running our consulting businesses.

Read “Four Ways to Deliver Value to your Clients”

Happy Holidays Everyone!

As you can tell from the series of posts that I’m making today, I was a bit behind on my reading. But many of these articles were definitely worth my time, like this one on the Silicon Valley WebGuild that shows a survey from the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) 2008 annual “Masters of Marketing” conference (October 2008).

The survey polled attendees via handheld devices about their marketing mix, budgets, plans, and tactics.

One of the questions asked attendees how much they plan to spend on marketing in 2009 vs. 2008: 20 percent expect to increase spending, 28% expect to hold stable, and 20% to decrease spending. I thought this bright news for marketing consultants given all the fear surrounding the current economy.

Read Full Article on Silicon Valley WebGuild

How will you adjust your current marketing and media plans to account for the recent downturn in the financial markets?
- Spending will be reduced (33%)
- Spending will be constant / marketing mix will be reallocated (33%)
- Surprisingly, we will spend more (27%)
- No changes, we will keep everything status quo (8%)

How does your CEO view your marketing efforts with respect to growth?
- As a brand-building investment (56%)
- As an unaccountable but necessary expense (21%)
- Not sure (15%)
- As an unnecessary expense (8%)

What is your preferred social media site for driving brand growth?
- None (32%)
- YouTube (20%)
- Facebook (18%)
- All (12%)
- LinkedIn (10%)
- MySpace (6%)
- Twitter (3%)

As you look toward 2009, how much do you plan to spend on marketing vs. 2008?
- Increase spending more than 10% (26%)
- Increase spending less than 10% (13%)
- Hold stable (28%)
- Decrease spending less than 10% (14%)
- Decrease spending more than 10% (19%)

Which discipline will offer your brand the largest opportunity for growth?
- Traditional 30-second spots (17%)
- One page advertisements in a newspaper/magazine (7%)
- Web advertising (16%)
- Social media integration (28%)
- Direct Marketing (7%)
- Grassroots, viral public relations (19%)
- Radio (5%)

How does your company currently measure brand growth?
- Sales and net income (70%)
- Third party brand equity valuations (15%)
- Shareholder value (9%)
- Household penetration (4%)
- Company culture (3%

I’ve just returned from an 8 day vacation (I say that, because something about being gone even one day over 1 week makes things more ’serious’!) and am reflecting on how much of a vacation I really got…

It’s always been very difficult for me to 1) prepare for being away from my business and 2) really BE away from my business when I’m gone!  And my vacation-mates get annoyed at my need to keep connected via email and the ‘quick little thing’ I have to do to respond to a client’s urgent plea, etc. etc.  All of this creates a lot of stress…and that is the exact opposite of why I GO on vacations!

Even though I tie up all of my projects with tidy bows, delegate meeting facilitation while I’m gone (if I can’t manage to get the meetings rescheduled), deliver on all client commitments before I go, and schedule ‘catch up’ meetings the minute I’m back, @*!% inevitably happens and there are things to attend to/respond to while I’m gone.

And realistically, I can’t IMAGINE totally checking out from email because it would take me 2 full days to sift through it all once I return since I get over 100 emails/day (that’s not including the junk that gets filtered out automatically).

So am I the only one with this problem?  Is it even POSSIBLE to entirely check out in the line of work we are in?  Has anyone created the perfect support system/process to allow you to really check out?  Is there a ’safe zone’ (like 3 days away) that makes it easier?

Even though the process is difficult (the preparation, the juggling and the catching up), I am FIRMLY committed to vacations…the BEST type of vacation is the one that I book a year out and can dream about all year long during tough workdays…it’s so nice to have something to look forward to!  And I really do enjoy travelling and exploring new places…so I will continue to be faced with this dilemma.

I’d love to hear from those of you who have mastered the process of getting away–and of course would love to hear from kindred spirits who find themselves in the same push me/pull you situation I am in each time I get away.

The Wall Street Journal published their list of 50 women executives to watch in 2008, along with some stats on women in corporate-officer jobs.

“In her concession speech in June, Hillary Clinton lamented that she wasn’t able to “shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling,” but she said it now has “about 18 million cracks in it.”

Indeed, women played a defining role in this year’s historic election, whether as candidates, spouses or comedians.

But in the corporate world, the notion of “18 million cracks” remains something of a pipe dream. While women have made great strides professionally in the past two decades, their numbers in the upper echelons of corporate America have stagnated in the past few years.

On Wall Street — possibly the toughest ceiling to crack — two of the most high-profile women made an exit in the past year: Citigroup’s Sallie Krawcheck and Morgan Stanley’s Zoe Cruz.

But out of the ashes of the economic meltdown, some new stars have emerged — most notably Sheila Bair, No. 1 on this year’s Women to Watch list, who has been thrust into the spotlight in her bank-rescue role as a hard-charging regulator at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Barbara Desoer, No. 3 on this year’s list, has risen to a pivotal role at Bank of America as president of mortgage, home equity and insurance services.

Beyond the financial world, faces new to the corner office include Ellen Kullman, who is taking the CEO reins of DuPont after spending two decades climbing the ranks of the chemicals maker. Oil-industry veteran Lynn Laverty Elsenhans has been plucked to lead Philadelphia refiner Sunoco. Padmasree Warrior, meanwhile, jumped from Motorola to take a key executive post at Cisco Systems.

According to a survey by Catalyst, a New York research group, women hold 15.4% of Fortune 500 corporate-officer jobs — positions of vice president or higher that require board approval. That number has inched down from 16.4% in 2005. Women running Fortune 500 companies amount to just 2.4%, the survey showed, and 74 of those companies have no female corporate officers at all.

One bright spot: More women are in charge of powerful board committees, such as nominating and governance committee chairs. That in turn could mean more women being appointed to key positions down the road.”

On smallbusinessnewz, Lisa Braziel posted an article back in February on social media campaign budgets. She concluded with a nice set of questions to ask when determining your budget.

“1) What are your overall objectives and campaign timeframe? If the whole objective is to achieve a drastic spike in sales or promote a limited time offer, we believe more of your budget should be allocated to advertising. Social media is a slower burn, and you will just be disappointed.

2) How much is your overall marketing budget? To put things into perspective. the average cost of TV production for a 30-second spot is around $303,000 just to make it: not to mention media costs to run it. With this in mind, you may want to produce one less spot for a campaign, and re-allocate these funds towards a very decent social media campaign with a longer life-span.

3) What tactics are you using already and how are they working? How your current efforts are working should determine how much you can reallocate to social media. Is your direct mail initiative working? What is your ROI on your current advertising model? What is the result of your interactive budget? Take a hard look at what results you are getting with traditional methods.

4) What are your internal resources? To put it simply, your internal resources will determine your social media budget amount. If you have appropriate staff that can devote time to social media, you may find that you only need the set-up and development of a social media strategy or tools to get the campaign going. If you don’t, a social media budget will likely be higher to include the actual execution.

Again, as we say over and over: a social media budget is developed on a per company basis. Beware of any agency that has set-pricing, as it likely indicates that they will also have canned social media efforts that don’t take into account objectives and target audience.”

Read the full article

This post on WebProNews by Chris Crum covers the pros and cons of businesses allowing employees to use social media in the workplace. There’s some good information to share with clients looking into social media. Make sure to skim through the comments as well for a few good content nuggets.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/10/27/is-social-media-good-or-bad-for-business

There was an interesting little article on Webguild that looked at the role of social media in an economic downturn.

Social Media in the Economic Downturn

By Reshma Kumar, November 2, 2008

“Social Media, in light if our current depressed economic climate was a topic of discussion and on the minds of many in attendance at the Social Media Strategies Conference last week. Paraphrasing roughly Keynote, David Carter of Awareness’ take on this, he noted that with the current economic situation, there are more eyes on where the money goes. Therefore, social media strategies have to be spot on the first time around. So, how can we execute better? Identify and leverage on points of enthusiasm (e.g. press releases, conferences, events, etc.) and make them a part of your community. Identify watering holes for customers and pick the project that has the most obvious ROI. It doesn’t have to be about money, it can be about trust scores, community stocks, and to gather the required information needed to measure and analyze this event.

“Shel Israel, Social Media Strategist of Global Neighbourhoods, had this to say: What can we scale back and cut back on in the downturn? We really need to talk to our customers. Traditional advertising and PR have remained expensive in the last decade or so. Social Media is an answer to the problem of lean marketing and addressing the problem of how to stay close to the customers. Mark Yolton, SVP, Community Network of SAP said social media is being used at SAP for about 5 years now. It’s core to what SAP does today. Given today’s economy, there is a need to focus on cost efficiency. Reducing cost, agility, and reaching out to customers are the focus points of community network at SAP.

“What do you have to cut that you now can’t live without? According to Mark, as budgets get cut, be it training budget, marketing budget, traveling budget, etc., social media is the thing to turn to — the same way PR is being done by providing daily news summaries which includes blogger comments. There are serious discussions going on on blogs and inviting bloggers to product launches, company events, etc. is the thing to do — giving them the privilege because they’re the ones who are asking the best questions.

http://www.webguild.org/2008/11/social-media-in-the-economic-downturn.php

Don’t let the headlines and news stories paralyze you. While there’s abundant fear about the economic uncertainty, it’s important that we not let anxiety freeze us into inaction. This is especially true if year-end is historically a slower time for some of us.

Yes, there are layoff announcements and some companies are putting new hiring on hold. However, a recent survey by consulting firm Towers Perrin found that most companies aren’t looking at mass layoffs as a solution in this recession — a departure from past downturns. Most companies that are cutting jobs are doing so in a very targeted fashion, and fully two-thirds of companies surveyed don’t foresee employee layoffs on the horizon.

The good news: many of the companies that have laid off employees will need consulting talent to fill some of the gaps. Often, this work may not be the larger strategic consulting projects we have as our goal, but the client still needs the results. And they need them now — in this quarter, in this fiscal year.

Tips from Successful Consultants

• Be proactive in searching for and developing new clients and projects. You may need to adjust your pitch or focus on a new set of challenges for the client; and you may need to explore new resources. Don’t be afraid to try new things just because the economy bad.
• Be mindful of the audience to whom you’re pitching and the place they hold in the direct revenue stream. It’s that revenue stream that’s most crucial to the client, especially today.
• Be confident in your own value and let that confidence help you in negotiations, but don’t be overly confident.
• Follow your passions. Continue to search for the clients you really believe in and who fit your “best clients” model; and do your due diligence on potential clients.
• Use your network productively. Let colleagues know that you’ve some time available, and let them know how you can help them as well.

So let’s cast off the doom and gloom and get busy providing great consulting to our clients, both old and new.

As an independent consultant, I know that marketing and selling is a big part of my life and livelihood, but they haven’t been naturals for me. That’s why I like to watch and learn from the pros.

This is a true story about a guy I know. I’ll call him “Ray” because he’s like a ray of sunshine in every way. We all can take a page or two from the book he endorses and lives. (At the end of this blog I’ll tell you the title — you may be surprised.)

Ray is one of the best examples I know of a successful business person. He’s a top-selling pharmaceutical rep for one of the world’s largest pharma companies. What’s more, he’s a top seller even though he doesn’t have a particularly good territory. While other reps get Manhattan or Los Angeles, Ray has to travel long distances around a large, sparsely-settled Midwestern state to serve his physician clients. Yet two years in a row, Ray was the top oncology sales rep for his corporation. If you know anything about how sales goals are set, you know it’s tough to be # 1 in the first year – but nearly impossible the second because the bar is raised significantly.

I couldn’t resist asking Ray how he managed it. A generous person, he willingly shared three things.

#1: Ray knows his company’s products, his competitor’s products, the industry, and the field of medicine in general. Learning has to be ongoing because the flow of new discoveries and new drugs is constant. This alone, however, isn’t the answer.

#2: Ray is a true consultant. That means real problem-solving even when it may mean losing some immediate business. He partners with his physician clients to help them figure out the best solutions for individual cancer patients. He will even recommend a competitor’s drug if he thinks it’s more suitable in a particular case. Clients see him as collaborator rather than salesperson, and trust is built. But this isn’t the only answer, either.

#3: Here’s the secret sauce. Ray truly cares about people. He understands that clients don’t buy products and services as much as they buy an experience – from people they can relate to. In answer to my question about his selling skills, Ray said (and I quote): “I don’t try to make sales; I try to make friends.” For him, that means relating to clients on a personal level first. It isn’t fake; he truly appreciates and respects others. He went on to tell me that his daily guide is Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” It has been a best-selling business book since 1936. Some of the examples are dated, but the information and techniques are still “right on.” Ray told me that he re-reads it annually. I had a copy on my bookshelf, so I read it again – and there was Ray on every page. As one who is privileged to know this outstanding human being, I can assure you he doesn’t just turn the pages, he turns the advice into action.

By the way, Ray is a 30-something guy with a loving family and hundreds of adoring friends and associates. He’s an all-around success because he practices the same solid people principles in private as he does in business.

It’s not hard to find a copy of “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The investment is small, and the payoff can be gigantic. Just ask Ray.