The clients of ad agencies and internal marketing departments are exactly the same in one important category — they are human. Most of them are worried about a multitude of problems in their organization already – they don’t need more help from you. Below are seven items to avoid when dealing with your clients:
1) Don’t over promise and cause disappointment, or pretend you have expertise in something you don’t. When you fail to be an expert, life will be worse for them and for you.
2) Under deliver and look dumb. If you’re going to be late with a job, let them know well in advance. Most people can adjust expectations but nobody will feel friendly if a delivery is late without warning. ad agency project management software can help ensure expectations are being met.
3) Don’t try too hard to understand the basics of a client’s business. In the case of internal clients, make sure to figure out their pain points so that you’ll be able to help them get rid of the pain. Once, with the best of intention, I tried for months to convince a client to make a change to consumer communications. They were nice people and rejected the idea time after time. When they fired us, I learned that they thought I was too aggressive. I also was told that our idea was against the law. We should have known better.
4) Make billing mistakes. Whether your client is internal or external, someone in their accounting department will check the bills. The accounting folks will bug your contacts and you will pay the price for their embarrassment and your mistakes. A large client of ours once called me to task because he was subjected to “abuse” because of our errors. He said, “I doubt that you have selected us to miss-bill. You’d better check your systems.” We did that and he was correct. Utilize your ad agency software to its full potential to make sure these mistakes don’t occur.
5) Send information about one client to another client. This scare the recipient because they will immediately imagine that you doing the same thing with their information. Horrors.
6) Allow a purely personal relationship to grow with someone in the client group. Having a business lunch or a game of golf with the CEO or the VP for Marketing works fine. Having dinner-plus with an attractive client is a risky and ill advised idea. Mix it with alcohol and trouble is just around the corner.
7) Abraham Lincoln is quoted as having said, “No man has a good enough memory to tell lies.” Women, too. Don’t do it! It can become a habit. When the truth gets out, trust declines and the relationship will sour.
Anything new here? I doubt it. However, reminding ourselves of the need to be diligent can’t hurt. The ever present bottom line is that the client you serve is surely frazzled from time to time. You must subtract from their worries — not add to them. Got your own unfrazzle ideas? Let me hear from you. Thanks.
Allan Kalish is co-founder and Chairman of Workzone, LLC, a provider of web-based project management software and collaboration tools for ad agencies, marketing departments and any organization needing to manage projects more effectively.
