Putting Experience To Work

While working with hundreds of clients over the past 24 years, I have found that the relationships which are most comfortable for my team and especially for our clients, are based on partnership. You may be thinking either: well duh! or you’re asking yourself if you truly have this partnership experience with your clients.

“Partnerships” as opposed to “working relationships” come out of a deeper desire on both sides of the equation - the supplier and client - to create a true understanding of what the requirements are for the client company and how the client wants the product or service delivered. Each and every client has individual needs and requirements, some are dependent on corporate directives, but I have found that most are personal to the individual client contact. So, therein lies the need to create and maintain a deeper and connected relationship.

For those of you reading this who think that a deeper understanding of your client is not of interest to you, I suspect that you are in a “one-time sale only” business and therefor this does not apply to you. If however, you are in a business maintained and grown through your clients, there may be some pointers for you here.

Many of us subscribe to the idea that it is far less expensive to keep clients you have and grow with them than it is to keep finding new clients. Assuming this is true, let’s look at how it is possible to create longer lasting relationships with clients you already have.

Example
I recently won a new client through an introduction from one of my longtime clients: Rob Engelman. We’ll talk about Rob more in later posts. The client is a very large home improvement product manufacturer and they have a newly formed marketing department - about 2 years old. The whole staff met with me and it was clear from their questions that they were not happy with their current design group and were looking for a better solution. Here are some of the questions I asked them during our first meeting.

1. Who have you been using for your creative development for your products?
2. What have they done that you really like. Is their creative amazing? Is their customer service to your liking?
3. How long have you worked with them?
4. What don’t you like about your relationship with them? (Listen carefully to this answer as it is very important - you will learn not only what the supplier is not delivering - you also find out what the client’s real needs are). Ask for more information about this so that you get a very clear idea of expectations.
5. What are you looking for now that you were not getting?

Once I have a clear picture in my mind of where they are coming from, what the expectations and frustrations are, I then ask for information on upcoming projects that my team and I can look forward to bidding on.

Engage
So, the partnership begins, there is information, clarification and a request from me regarding potential work. The part of this that tends to deepen the relationship into a partnership is not only my laying out my capabilities, and the client laying out their needs, the true connection - I believe - comes from a true concern on my part for the client’s success and even more important, that the we both understand that we must co-create the project/relationship in order for the project to become successful.

Story: This morning I went to get coffee at the local Starbuck’s and the guy in line in front of me had a familiar face. After getting my traditional latte, I walked up to him and said “you work at the restaurant down the street don’t you?” A nice conversation ensued, and it turns out that he will be leaving his job managing that restaurant this spring to open his own restaurant in Evanston.

So, I took the opportunity to let him know that my company does graphic design and websites, and we could help him not only design his menus, but help with his website. I also mentioned that I do small business consulting, and would you believe that he needs a business plan for his investors. He and I were both happy that we “bumped” into each other. I have a meeting set up with him to go over particulars next week. Selling IS having fun! All I did was say hello to him, with no ulterior motive and something nice came about.

Over the past few years while consulting for various small businesses and when talking with freelancers, the abhorence of the “7 letter word” - SELLING has come up time and again.

What Selling is NOT
When most people talk to me about selling their product or service, what they always describe are salespeople who are “pushing” things on them. Kind of like SPAM which shows up in your email uninvited, or that person calling you from a call center offering you something you neither want nor need. This is a classic old fashioned form of selling - but in today’s market, I am not certain that it is a truly successful option for individuals with a focused market for their product or service. I don’t consider the above to be “selling” I consider it “pushing”.

What Selling IS
The type of selling that I have found to be most effective for my creative and consulting services is: relationship based interaction. When you tell someone about what you do, and then you ask them what they do, then talk a little, you find out very quickly if there is a common ground and perhaps one of you needs the service or product the other provides. This is FUN! You get to talk to someone new, find out something you may not have known before and open the door to a new relationship - hopefully gainfully for you both. Then you need to Close the sale. More about that soon.

I have been spending the past few days upgrading my knowledge base. My personal knowledge base that is. I learned yesterday how to install WordPress and Drupal on my site. Now I am learning how to make them work. OS(open source) is not very hard if you follow the directions and very easy and nice once it’s up and running. Drupal has a great video for installation, you can see it at: lullabot

My web host, Fatcow.com is very nice to their clientele and has loaded some OS software on their server for their client base. You can use a few of them free and some of them for a whopping $6.95 a year. Also, Fatcow recently lowered their hosting fees to $8.95 a month down from $9.95 a month. Sweet. The other thing I love about Fatcow is that an actual human being answers the phone for tech support each and every time I call.

Over the past week, I have become enamored with the “grunge” artwork of a Russian artist named Bulent Ince, I have included one of my faves from his work here. One of the freelance designers I work with told me about www.istockphoto.com where you can purchase amazing photos and artwork for next to nothing. Have a look when you have a chance.

This is my first published blog. I decided to get on the bandwagon… it’s time. I plan to post information germane to both running a small business as well as interesting graphic design/web information garnered throughout the day. If you wish to contact me, please email me at ardath@contractcreatives.com.

Thank you for stopping by.

Ardath