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March 26, 2014

Thinking Digitally...If You Do Digital or Not

Click here if you would rather listen to this blog entry (8:16).

Marketing firms have been understandably concerned about how digital they must be in order to remain sufficiently central to the marketing mix. We’ve lost something, though, by framing this discussion around whether we should actually develop digital properties instead of around the broader question of how we should learn from digital thinking. In other words, we might need to approach our work—digital or not—with a more digital mindset. I want to talk about that, but I also want to talk about how you might go about deciding the degree to which you do digital, too.

At the outset of this movement, there were so few firms developing digital properties that it was actually difficult to make a poor positioning decision. The tools were rudimentary, no one knew what good digital really was, and that world was there for the taking.

Developing digital properties, though, now shows more signs of being a mature market, meaning that there are few gaps to arbitrage. Strong tools are widespread, we have nearly twenty years of experience to inform our work, and suddenly kids in the garage don't seem to own this anymore. (They have gotten bored and moved on to social media.)

The last two decades have ushered in a new medium, but the true impact of digital is barely felt. Worst of all, even digital firms aren't thinking digitally. But—and this is so exciting to say—the promise of digital impact is at your doorstep. If you miss the promise of digital thinking, you'll suffer far more than missing digital itself. I'd like you to consider thinking digitally....

Clients, Digital, Expertise, Managing Clients, Managing People, Marketing, Marketing Yourself, Processes, Roles, The Work

March 2, 2014

Maintaining Relevance Over Decades

Click here if you would rather listen to this blog entry (7:39).

It’s too raw to talk much about yet, but I nearly lost my business in 2013. The entire year was largely an epic fail and only now--with the situation in the rearview mirror--can I see it with any sort of perspective. I’ll write a blog post about it shortly (or maybe a book), but one of the threads weaving through those events is this notion of remaining relevant, and for a long time. On the drive to the cabin yesterday, where I am now, thoughts began to flow about just that. I wanted to formulate a perspective about being relevant over several decades, and I was thinking of myself and of you as this began to take shape.

Maybe it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: it presumes that you are relevant in the first place. A certain relevance accompanies anyone making a living and helping employees make a living. That’s noble and rewarding, and it’s how developed economies thrive. But I’m talking here about rising from your peers as a leader, and that requires that you see all the same things they do but that you observe different things than they merely see. You develop a perspective that other people--not just you--believe to be unique and they pay you money to help them observe, too.
Maintaining relevance doesn’t necessarily mean that you are consistently relevant to the same people. As your strengths deepen and creep, you may need a different audience if you want to remain relevant to anybody. Your audience will change organically, in good ways, and you will even lose part of your audience in that process. Just be sure it’s because they can’t keep up and not because they quit learning from you. This is one of the larger tensions I have struggled to navigate.
It is solidly a privilege to remain relevant for decades and most definitely not a right. Doing great work once means that you have just one more chance to do great work again, and so the cycle repeats itself. But the cycle can be broken for any reason at any point in time.
While I think that luck plays an outsized role in being relevant in the first place, I don’t think luck has much of any role in being relevant for decades. That result comes from....

Expertise, Growing Your Business, Growth, Managing Clients, Succession, Succession and M&A, The Work

January 29, 2014

Life is What Happens WHILE You Fix It

My Declaration for Your 2014: The Year of Your Own Oxygen Mask

This year I will jot down some clever ways to peg the amount of "care" my clients bring to the table, and I will willingly match that level, just because it's the right thing to do. But for my own sake, I will not exceed that level, just because it's also the right thing to do.

I will quit pretending to solve the potable water crisis in Africa and I will take a glass of cold, refreshing water to a randomnly chosen employee on occasion. I am tired of the hypocrisy of wanting to change that world while being a #@%!) shitty manager in this one.

Not inconsistent with this, I will finally boot that one employee out of the nest. Yes, they have done every job in the place and been with me as the organization has matured, but they no longer have the presence, objectivity, ability, or hunger that we need. If I hear them tell one more new employee that they've been here the longest, have done every job, and know how and when to present things to me, I may just make a decision on the spot.

I will be so, so grateful for whatever health and intelligence I've managed to retain through these years. [Pause and be grateful, please.] I won't view life as something that happens after I fix it, but something that happens while I fix it. The journey itself must be savored, along with the control and freedom and opportunities I have to NOT feed the machine.

If what I've just said still doesn't...

Clients, Developing Processes, Finance, Management, Managing Clients, Managing People, Marketing, Marketing Yourself, Succession, Succession and M&A

September 8, 2013

Getting to "Know"

I owned a pedestrian marketing firm for six years (this doesn't mean I sold pedestrians, but that it was very average). I had never worked at a firm, knew not a single soul in the industry, and had no role models to mimic. Average financial performance (I paid myself $60,000 in 1988), below average ability to manage people (with employees teaching me how I could do better), and above average effectiveness of the work. One thing for sure: I had no special methods or research that I could build into a twenty-year consulting firm known around the world. Shoot, for the first few years I was drinking water from a waterfall.

I started ReCourses through an odd and fortunate series of events where someone else suggested I do it, and gave me a platform with plenty of opportunity. It never would have happened otherwise, and I will always be grateful to Cam Foote.

I felt like I didn't have much to lose, really. At least I thought so, until the first firm...

Clients, Managing Clients, Processes, The Work

January 3, 2013

Losing a Gorilla Client

A "client concentration" problem refers to having a single related source of work representing more than 25% of your gross profit (fees + markup income). That's usually the point at which the yellow light should blink on your financial dashboard. That same light should blink red if it moves to 35%, because my research shows that to be the median at which one-half of firms fail. In other words, one-half survive the loss of a client that represents ca. 35% and the other one-half fail. Maybe not immediately, but they can usually trace it back to that point if they were not prepared for it. This is meant to prepare you for it.

You either had, have, or will have a gorilla client. Don't be afraid of it, and don't say "no" to the work. A problem like this almost always comes from something great you've done and you deserve the accolades in the form of even more work. Don't get a huge head, though, because unusually high spikes in your top line revenue typically stem from a client concentration issue and not unusual and sudden strong new business skills.

First Step: Honesty

When I talk about this to clients, the first thing they always say is this: "Yes, but all this related work is coming from different departments, and even different contacts in the same department. In fact, they hate each other and we'd probably get more work if we lost one department!"

That's bullshit, if you'll pardon me, because it assumes....

Clients, Developing Processes, Finance, Growing Your Business, Growth, Managing Clients, Marketing, Marketing Yourself

October 25, 2012

Managing Client Relationships

I had trouble getting to sleep last night, and for some reason I started thinking about how managing client relationships has changed over the years. I'm not talking about my clients, but your clients. Do you know the really important things about how to do it right? I'm not sure i would have figured all these out, but I have paid attention to the hundreds of firms I've worked with and tried to cull out the best practices that have been proven in the field.

Just for fun, I started writing these down as they came to mind in a stream of consciousness style. Here are a few of them:

The only power you have in a client relationship is to withhold your expertise.
The degree to which you have power in a relationship is directly related to how long it takes to replace you.
There are only two ways to have more opportunity than capacity, which represents your ability to say "no" to prospects and clients: create more opportunity or reduce your capacity.
The most important criteria in evaluating a prospective client is whether or not they've used a firm like yours before. Never be the first.
Your cheap ass clients are the ones spending their own money. You want to work for clients with budget authority over someone else's money.
The clients who trust you say: "I have $140,000 for this project. What's the most we could do with that money?" The ones who don't trust you say, "Here's what I need. What will it cost?"....

Clients, Growing Your Business, Growth, Managing Clients, Managing People, Roles, The Work

October 12, 2012

What Success Looks Like at Your Firm

A great client recently asked me to outline my definition of success for their firm. I really enjoyed doing that, and below is a version that you can adapt to your own situation, putting your own stamp on it:

Partner compensation equals or exceeds industry benchmarks.
After that is achieved, you still 20% net profit.
The more entrepreneurial employees are satisfied that their contribution to your gain is recognized and accounted for.
Partners and employees in key roles will have already tasted competence in the area of your focus, or they will experience it within nine months of joining the firm.
There will be few or no young employees who value variety over expertise.
When employees talk about your firm, while still employed, their private comments will be complimentary.
When partners and employees head out the door to work for the day, they look forward to the challenges, the companionship, and their participation in the overall culture.
As a firm you will not require extraordinary people....

Clients, Developing Processes, Finance, Growing Your Business, Growth, Management, Managing Clients, Managing People, Marketing, Marketing Yourself, Processes, Roles, Succession, Succession and M&A, The Work

August 5, 2012

Why Your Firm Might Fail...and Preventing It

Forgive me for the ominous subject line of this email, but there are times when it's best to be objective and forthright. I've been talking with the executives of large associations and educational institutions in this field, hoping they'll drop the status quo and beginning offering real help to their members and graduates. So far I've made very little progress, so I'm just going to use my own platform (16,000+ of you).

Look around, think back through the last decade, and make a mental list of the firms you knew that are no longer around. Did any of them fail for lack of creativity? Even if you don't think they were that creative, the answer is a resounding "NO". Here is why those firms--and possibly yours, if you don't listen--will cease to exist, in descending order. I'm going to list seven reasons firms fail, and then seven things to keep a very close eye on.

What to Keep An Eye On

Make Poor Business Decisions. I'm thinking of things like leasing too much space, incurring debt instead of examining the issues behind why you need it, spending more than 45% of your AGI on compensation, establishing unnecessary satellite offices, ignoring standard embezzling safeties, and not really understanding what the financials are saying.
Let Growth Happen to You. This is the land of opportunity, as we're told from a young age, and so one of the most difficult decisions an entrepreneur must make is to turn down opportunity. By avoiding that, they let the marketplace determine how large they will be, in spite of all the additional management load that brings, and worse yet they match their capacity to their opportunity and forgo the ability to say no to clients who don't fit. Eventually they end up consistently accepting work to keep the butts in the seats busy, focusing on cash-flow rather than profit.

Clients, Developing Processes, Finance, Growing Your Business, Growth, Management, Managing Clients, Managing People, Marketing, Marketing Yourself, Succession, Succession and M&A

June 27, 2012

Expertise is Like Cocaine

What kind of information are you giving people in a business setting, and how are you delivering it? I have a reputation for complete candor (deserved), deep and thought-provoking content (deserved), and a less-than-engaging conversation style of delivery (deserved). I speak 30-35x/year, and if the event happens to give audience members feedback forms to complete, on a scale of 1 to 5, I typically get a 4.9 on content and somewhere around 4.0 on delivery.

I only use PowerPoint or Keynote when the audience is too large logistically to provide handouts (200?). I much prefer handouts, because I hate last minute technical problems, I'd rather look people in the eyes the entire time, I want them to write, and I want them to take something home. For larger audience (200-3,000 typically), I just include a URL on the last slide so that a PDF can be downloaded for their later use. I tell them that in advance so that they can relax, listen, and not bother with too many notes.

I'm an intense introvert. I'm so far off the scale in that direction that I jokingly call it "unabomber land." That just means I like to be by myself to recharge. I can be with crowds, large and small, in little doses and no one would know I'm "acting the part." Oddly enough, speaking totally invigorates me, too, which may not fit in your mind with the idea of a deep introvert.

Do you know when I began to love speaking?...

Clients, Managing Clients, Marketing, Marketing Yourself

June 14, 2012

More Transparent Client Relationships

I've had a hand in shaping four of the software products out there, including the two with the largest installed base. And for ten years I've been clamoring for more transparency, enabled primarily by allowing a client to log into your project management software (that's not BaseCamp, by the way) and seeing the status of things. For one thing, why make the AE do that? Every client is different, and this would let them interact with the data on their own terms, with selectable update options to boot.

Why hasn't this caught on? Two reasons:

Firms say something will take three weeks of work but they don't even start it until four days before the deadline, and this way the client would know that.
Firms are afraid of interferance in the creative process, where I think it should be more collaborative and with no "big reveals" as we call them.

Anyway, I was chatting about this with a client of mine, Greg Daake, who has a firm in Omaha. He has been thinking the same thing, and so I asked him to write some thoughts on this. Here's Greg...

Clients, Management, Managing Clients, Managing People, Processes, The Work

March 20, 2012

Why You Don't Publish Pricing

You'll have to look long and hard before you find a marketing firm that publishes much, if anything at all, on their pricing. That's been true for years, and only recently are firms experimenting with a little more transparency around the financial aspect of what qualifies a prospect as an appropriate fit. And if they are feeling particularly bold, they might even publish some pricing for a few services that they've packaged up so that they have fairly similar deliverables from project to project.

Reasons You Don't Publish Pricing

I'd like to think outloud with you about why that is. I think there are five primary reasons why this is the case. See if any of them resonate with you.

First, most principals don't really believe that the main purpose of their corporation is to make money. They know that it's probably the right reason the company exists, but underneath it all is the truth: the business is an extension of what they want to do personally. The money is nice, but the work is more important.

Clients, Developing Processes, Finance, Managing Clients, Marketing, Marketing Yourself

December 10, 2011

How to Become an Expert

Have you ever had a huge corporate client and delved deep inside the organization only to find incompetence around you? I have, and it makes me wonder how we've become the richest nation in the world. It's also encouraging, because the bar is set very low and therefore it's pretty darn easy to be an expert!

One thing I get asked a lot is this: "What is an expert?" There are many ways to define that, but here's how I think about it. I picture myself keynoting a conference. In the auditorium are 3,000 people. After my presentation, I open it up to questions from the audience. There's a microphone on a stand in the center aisle, and soon a line forms with people who want me to elaborate or they want to disagree with me.

Picture yourself in that place. How do you feel? Prepared? Nervous? Naked? Eager? Being an expert is flat knowing that you can answer any question about the narrow field you serve. By the way, you don't need to be some amazing speaker or a strong extrovert to captivate an audience. Essentially, it boils down to two things: do you know what the hell you're talking about, and are you presenting it with a personal authenticity.

So the next question is how you get to that place where you think of yourself as an expert, and where markeplace acceptance confirms that belief. Here are my seven specific, practical suggestions:

Clients, Managing Clients, Marketing, Marketing Yourself, The Work

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