The account is three months old and the results have so far been great. Your team has rolled out an innovative campaign and the hits have poured in, including significant exposure in your client’s top five media outlets. Web site visits for your client’s firm have more than doubled and third parties have already started to adopt the messages you and your team have been pushing.
Everyone is over the moon —except the client. At first you respond by putting pressure on the team to deliver more, but nothing you do seems to make a difference. When you try to point out the great work to the client, they balk and accuse you of not understanding their objectives. Eventually, after another three months of outstanding delivery, the client walks away.
If this story sounds familiar, it’s because it happens on a daily basis in agencies around the globe. In spite of great results, clients become dissatisfied and, in some cases, end the relationship because of an unspoken disconnect with the agency personnel managing their account. Effective client relationship management is the most crucial and yet often the most elusive aspect of PR agency life.
In some instances there is simply nothing to be done. No amount of senior time or combination of new account managers will bring the client back from the brink. In many cases, however, seemingly doomed relationships can be made healthy by the application of a few basic techniques. Below are just a few of the many potential suggestions to help ensure stronger, more durable client relationships:
SHARE INFORMATION INTERNALLY
Depending on the size of the agency, some level of “switch and pitch”—the pronounced shift from “salespeople” to account people—is unavoidable and excusable. What is less understandable is the common breakdown of communication between these two groups.
To have successfully sold the account in the first place, the “salesperson” must have read and responded to the client’s unspoken objectives. Often, however, the client is handed over to account handlers with only the explicit, tactical goals outlined. Rarely do “pitchers” think hard enough about what it was precisely that won them the account and try to communicate these intangible items to the “deliverers,” leaving account managers at a disadvantage from the outset.
To ensure the best chance of success, newly appointed account leaders need to learn as much as possible about the client, including that which was not said out loud during the pitch process.
SELL THE INDIVIDUAL, NOT THE FIRM
A related problem and one which arguably accounts for most client dissatisfaction involves doing a great job for the client’s firm but not necessarily for the client in front of you. If your direct contact is the CEO, then their goals and those of the firm are very likely intertwined. Do a good job for the company and you are, de facto, doing a great job for them. If, however, your client is the marketing director, then his or her needs may diverge from, sometimes even contradict, those of the firm. Your client’s needs may in fact be to lessen their overall workload, look good in front of a particular executive, or secure a promotion. Until you discover and deliver to these personal mandates, you run a big risk of failing on the overall corporate objective.
COMMUNICATE CONTINUOUSLY
Nightly newscasters use a well-established and well-documented rule of three. First, they tell you what they’re going to tell you; then they actually tell you, then they tell you what they already told you. Account handlers should use the same rule.
Too often, managers are so busy delivering great work that they forget to talk to their clients about the great work they’re delivering. You may have a scheduled activity meeting in a few days, but a quick call outlining what you’re working on right now often makes the difference between a satisfied client and one that feels totally bought in to the process. In a similar vein, don’t miss the opportunity to contextualize and add significance to the results of your work. Good account managers deliver great work and send it to their clients. Exceptional account managers deliver the same work but explain exactly why it’s great, how it ties in to the firm’s overall strategy, how it can help deliver to personal and corporate mandates, and when the client can expect to see more of the same. This is why great account managers often have to deliver less to achieve the same result.
MAKE FACE TIME
E-mail is a limited—and limiting—medium. It is cold, impersonal and leaves enormous room for misunderstanding. It also leaves a permanent record, which cannot be revoked once sent. PR is a highly interpersonal business and, as such, it must be conducted personally.
Therefore, in the hierarchy of communication, meeting in person is at the top and e-mail is at the very bottom. Every time I begin to write an e-mail I ask myself if I’m wasting a precious opportunity to have a higher-value phone or in-person conversation with my client. More often than not I am, so I stop and pick up the phone. Of course e-mail is a necessary evil, but the best handlers know that their account cannot be truly managed from behind a desk. PRN
CONTACT:
Dan Simon is managing director of Cognito Americas, a financial PR and marketing firm. He can be reached at [email protected].