If you’ve been following the Marketing Minute, you likely know that in my spare time I’m the Senior Account Manager with Odell Advertising/Marketing, Inc. “Senior Account Manager” is a fancy way of saying I’m a suit … a sales guy … a rainmaker. Although I still keep my fingers in the creative end of things, a big part of my job is getting new business. And, I’m happy to report, I’m rather pleased at the way things have been going.

As you might have guessed, one of the first things I did when I started with the firm was getting in touch with my existing Tortorella Design clients to let them know what was up. That was an easy inflow of “new” clients for Odell. If you keep your clients happy, attend to their needs and do good work, they’ll usually follow you wherever you go.

Next, I started contacting clients I hadn’t worked with in a while. Several of them came onboard the Odell ship, as well. But I didn’t hear back from one.

In the day, I had done quite a bit of work for this client – ads, trade show stuff, brochures, identity design and such. I got along with my main contact quite well and he seemed pretty happy. I was concerned why he hadn’t emailed me back. The last we had talked, a few years earlier, things weren’t gong so well for the company and they didn’t have any dough to spend on marketing. That’s kind of a bad idea, but that’s another post.

I could have stopped there and given up the [contact] ghost. Lots of designers do. I could have figured that he just wasn’t interested, they were using another shop, yada, yada, yada.

After emailing him twice, I picked up the phone. “Hi, this is Neil with Odell Advertising in North Canton. Is Joe Contact available?” “Sorry, Joe’s not with the company anymore.” Ah ha!, me thinks. “Who would be the person to speak with about your marketing and promotion?” “That would be Jack Deep-Pockets. He’s not in right now. Would you like his voice mail?” “Thanks. That would be great.”

So, I left a voicemail telling him who I was. A few years back, they renamed the company to be one of their main product names. I had done the logo for the product. I figured this was a good angle. “Hi Jack, this is Neil Tortorella with Odell Advertising up in North Canton. I’m the guy who designed your company logo several years back. I’d like to talk with you about your marketing and promotion plans for the remainder of 2007 and into 2008. You can reach me at …”

And that was that.

Our office opens at 8:30 AM. I tend to get there around 7:15 - 7:30 AM. Okay … I’m an overachiever. So sue me. The next morning around 7:30, the phone rings. It’s the president of the company I had called the day before. It seems they’d been looking for me, but when my previous contact left, so did my contact info. We set up a meeting.

Since then, this client has turned into, arguably, my biggest client at Odell. We’re doing trade show displays and support materials, ads all over the place, photo shoots, etc. Today they emailed needing us to design a system of product logos. Cha ching!

And all this is a result of simply keeping in touch.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt

What did you learn? I asked.

My grad students’ answers were variations on a theme: That preparation made all the difference. That the right kind of preparation made a huge difference. That thinking about it in new ways helped it unfold far more successfully. That they’d been missing opportunities by not preparing before their most difficult conversations.

It’s the end of a term and my students have just completed their major assignment for the course: To step up to a difficult conversation they’ve been avoiding, using approaches and skills I taught for effective chats with someone important to them…family member, friend, client, colleague. In class a few weeks ago, they each presented on their difficult conversations and what they learned from the experience. They were giddy with the good outcomes they’d achieved, even in conversations they’d anticipated might be a lost cause.

One approach we discussed during the course was the importance of preparing before picking up the phone or walking into the room. The amount of preparation depends to some degree on the depth and complexity of the conflict, but often 15-20 minutes of focused thought can make a huge difference. I usually recommend that people actually write out their preparatory thinking, because the act of typing or writing an idea forces your brain to move beyond the kind of “passing thought” that achieves little.

But what to think about? It’s not uncommon to catastrophize, considering all that could go wrong with the conversation. It’s far better to put your brain to work on something else, because catastrophizing causes you to avoid, to fear, and to make the situation more overblown that it need be. Here are some things worth your energy:.

Focus. Set one major goal for the conversation and keep it front and center. Try not to accomplish everything with one conversation, but keep the big picture in mind and have several smaller conversation if needed.

Choose the right kind of goal. It’s tempting to enter a difficult conversation with a variation of this goal in mind: “To get my client to ___ (pay me, get better with deadlines, communicate better, get clearer on their wishes…you fill in the blank). When you enter a conflict conversation with this kind of goal, you automatically set up an offense-defense dynamic because you’re entering with the intention to convince, strong-arm, plead, or change the other person. Instead, focus your initial conversation on learning only. What can you learn from your client that will help the two of you get back on track? When you bring only your good, innate curiosity to the conversation, then you enable effective goals like “to understand the situation from their eyes,” “to re-establish good communication,” and “to figure out where the confusion is lurking.”

Leave your debate team self behind. One major mistake is to work hard at convincing or making your case. It’s not really possible to try to learn and understand, as described above, while also trying to demonstrate to the other person why you’re view is right, best, valid, or wise. Let it go for now and you may be surprised by how much lighter you feel.

Be really clear about your own contribution to the problem. Contribution is not the same as fault and it’s much more effective to discuss the former than the latter. Discussing fault just invites defensiveness. Most conflict situations have contributions from both sides and your ability to say, “Here’s what I think I contributed to this” can help break the tension. Your contributions may be things like, “I should just have picked up the phone when I first sensed a bit of tension and I’ll be sure to do that in the future” or “That clause in the contract was less clear than it could have been and I regret not realizing that before now” or “I’m burning the candle at both ends to get this project done well and my stress is showing.”

Hold on lightly to your solutions. You may have some ideas for resolving the problem with your client, and that can be a good thing if you don’t get wedded to your own brilliance. The benefits of having a few ideas is that they can serve as starting places for problem solving when the conversation gets to that point. The dangers are that you introduce them far too soon and buy into your own ideas before you really know they’ll work for everyone involved. Beware of problem-solving before you’ve had the curiosity and learning conversation described above. When you’ve properly set the foundation you may be surprised to find out that your initial solutions are no longer relevant and better ideas suddenly appear on the horizon.

I have a free worksheet that’s designed to help with preparation for almost any kind of difficult conversation. Drop on by my site to get your own copy of Talking It Out in Ten.

Keep the channels open,
Tammy

Dr. Tammy Lenski | Mediator, Executive Coach, Business Development Consultant
I Can’t Say That! | Lenski Strategic | BoDo Author | Creative Conversations

Do you have a client conflict or difficult situation question you’d like Tammy to address in a future post? Just drop her a line.

Nip Client Conflict in the Bud: 3 Tips for Efficient Creatives

Put the words “client” and “conflict” into the same sentence and you can already feel the “ugh” that goes along for the ride. There’s nothing to sap your creative energy faster than a problem or tension with a client. The following three tips are designed to help you navigate tension with greater ease and encourage you to confront the tension before it flares to messy, project-halting conflict:

Deal with it early. It’s tempting to try to shrug off minor concerns, hoping they’ll dissipate or work themselves out. Sometimes they do. But the problem with this strategy is that when they don’t dissipate, they join other minor concerns to create real tension. And then it’s much harder to sort out. It’s a better use of time and creative energy to raise questions or check out concerns when you first experience tension or conflict, because it’s simpler, easier, and there’s less muck built up. Try saying something like, “It may be nothing, but I want to serve you well and so want to check out some concern I thought I read into your last message. Is something on your mind?”

Talk directly with the client. If your client has handlers, assistants or team members who play gatekeepers, the challenge for you is that all your client’s real thoughts get filtered through another mind and mouth. Like the game of telephone many of us played as children, the message gets more garbled as it’s filtered through each person. Whenever possible, try to get direct contact with the client when concerns arise. Try, “I really value you as a client and think it’s important to check in with you personally now and then. How do you think things are going?”

Pick up the phone. Email’s efficient in a lot of ways. But not so in conflict situations. Email can cause heightened tension due to misread cues, the “tweaking cc” (copying of an email message to someone you believe has power over or influence on the recipient), and a tendency for emailers to be less disclosing than on the telephone. When there’s tension, picking up the telephone is usually more effective and efficient. And the personal touch also signals you really care, which clients will appreciate. Try something like, “This seemed important enough that email wouldn’t do it justice and might take more of your time. Is this a convenient time for a quick chat about the project?”

Keep the channels open,
Tammy

Dr. Tammy Lenski | Mediator, Executive Coach, Business Development Consultant
I Can’t Say That! | Lenski Strategic | BoDo Author | Creative Conversations

Do you have a client conflict or difficult situation question you’d like Tammy to address in a future post? Just drop her a line.