Articles

Filter by Topic

Managing People
Managing Clients
Marketing Yourself
Growing Your Business
Succession and M&A
Developing Processes

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

May 5, 2012

Managing People is Counter-Intuitive

I was sitting down last week, thinking about how much difference it makes when you have a good boss. I realized, though, that much of good management is counter-intuitive. So I thought I'd take a few minutes to record a few observations while they were top of mind.

Before I do, though, remember the survey on the last email? It asked whether you were better or worse than average as a manager. A full 68% of you said better! You can interpret that one.

Here are the things I've learned interviewing nearly 14,000 people for the book I reference at the end:

Any non-evil person can be a manager.
Management does not make you special.
Managers shouldn't always make more money than those they manage.
There should be two career paths so that we don't saddle technicians (craft people) w/ management.
Nearly all important information should come from an employee's direct manager.
Why you were promoted, or why you promoted a certain person, tells a huge story.
The biggest danger to your company is a very skilled employee who doesn't fit the culture.

Management, Managing People, Processes

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

November 27, 2011

Storytelling and Real Storytelling

Bill Baker (no relation) is nicer than I am, so don't pin any of my introduction on him. I recently spoke to an auditorium of C-level executives, and the title of my presentation was long but revealing: "The Happy Death of Branding, the Next Fad of Storytelling, and the Hopeful Rise of Alignment."

I guess that expresses my view of branding: there are a few firms really doing it, and the rest (and majority) aren't doing anything differently than they did before, but now they are calling it branding because it sounds upstream. There was no training in marketing, no classes, books, or even real processes. The typical four circles with the ubiquitous use of alliteration doesn't count and should be taken off your website.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with my view of branding, it clearly is yesterday's news, and storytelling comes up frequently. Rather than being marginalized even more, I think we ought to jump on this one early so that we don't relieve the word of even more meaning.

Bill (disclosure: a client) is one of the very few people really doing story telling. While the concept has been around since people wrote on cave walls, modern storytelling was really maximized by E+S (Envisioning and Storytelling) in Vancouver roughly three decades ago, a place where Bill was Chief Strategic Officer. Now, under BillBaker&Co he continues that great work with clients like GE, Relais & Chateaux, Johnson & Johnson, The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, etc. Here are some of his thoughts on the difference between faux storytelling and real storytelling. Real storytelling is a very complex skill, and I can sit for days listening to Bill point out the subtleties involved. This is just the outer layer.

Here's Bill:

Marketing, Marketing Yourself, Processes, The Work

November 11, 2011

You Might Need to Change the Name of Your Firm

Most creative firms are poorly named, especially if they are named after the principal and perhaps multiple partners. Unless you turn out to be a very large agency with a 40+ year track record, your name matters. Naming it in the traditional way after yourself does this:

it makes it a tad more difficult to sell
it encourages new clients to work with you when you should be doing other things that the firm really requires of you
it makes it difficult to add significant partners, because every time you do so the name will likely change
it makes your agency look small

Chances are that you didn't put much thought into naming the company when it began with just you as an employee. The attorney was pressuring you to come up with some name that s/he could put on the forms, and so you defaulted to the easy choice. If I had done that, my company would be Baker Inc., or Baker & Associates, etc.

Management, Managing People, Marketing, Marketing Yourself

October 12, 2011

Playing Whack-a-Mole with Prospects

One of the most significant marketing blunders that marketing agencies make is deciding who they want to marry after they fall in love with someone. In other words, they bend the criteria for what makes a qualified client, either because their sales techniques are weak or because they find themselves with far less opportunity than capacity. No part of the marketing mix is exempt, either: you find it with internet marketing services, public relations firms, marketing agencies, and design firms.

Clients, Managing Clients, Marketing, Marketing Yourself

September 29, 2011

The Hardest Weekend I've Had in Many Years

About two weeks ago, I had one of the hardest weekends of my career. Many things came together all at once and pretty much brought me to my knees.

Our wonderful, special dog Lucy has cancer. We rescued her from a very abusive situation and she's been a wonderful companion. She's fighting it well, but we don't know when and how the end will come. When we got her, she was terrified of men, terrified of newspapers, and had a bullet in her hip. Now she brings me the paper and is as sweet as can be. She's a Rottweiler and Labrador mix.

Marketing, Marketing Yourself, The Work

September 13, 2011

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

I'm 51, so I figure I'd better get this right pretty soon. :) I think about this a lot, though. The common thread through the last 25 years, though, is that I've worked for myself. That's a lot of years without a safety net, and it's also a lot of years to learn habits that would make it almost impossible for me to work for someone else.

About 20 years ago, though, I put together this list. At the time, I felt like most of my life was ahead of me and that I wanted as many options as possible. So there's very different from each other, and it was just me dreaming one day:

Growing Your Business, Growth, Management, Managing People, Succession, Succession and M&A

September 6, 2011

Gwen Bell

Some people get it. By extension, then, some (most?) people don't get it. Gwen Bell is one of those people who clearly gets it. The first time I read her website, a whole lot of things clicked for me. I'm not prepared (at the moment) to adopt her lifestyle and business model, but I like her presence, how articulate she is, and how key points are explained thoroughly enough to eliminate the frequent response: "Yeah, I've heard of her and read some of her stuff."

Management, Managing People, Marketing, Marketing Yourself

September 6, 2011

Variety of Experience vs. Deep Expertise

When you add someone young to your staff, their primary business goal is to add variety to their experience. That's partly because they believe that doing so will make their next job search easier, but it's also a bit self-serving: more variety means more interesting things to do. Not really because they are forced to do research and become an "expert" overnight on a given subject, but just because there seems to be a genetic A.D.D. affliction among the creative set.

Marketing, Marketing Yourself

Pages: 12345678910111213141516171819202122232425

Articles

Filter by Topic

Advisory Services

M&A Services