Perceptint Musings

The day before the big presentation to the executive council, your client calls you in harried voice. An erupting litany of new problems, new fires, new changes, and news is front and center to be dealt with straight away.

Will we make the deadline? Will we get the report change back from the vendor in time? Will we fall on our face when we have this once in a lifetime audience? Not if the digital marketing advocate has planned and prepped his client like a district attorney bringing the biggest RICO case to date.

The skills to succeed as a consulting outsider in the corporate world require being humble and giving. Being humble means trying your hardest to truly understand your clients world. No predisposed notions of how your ego would attack the situation. Not that your ego isn’t vital to the solution, it’s just not the biggest piece.

Being giving means enabling your clients to stand out from the pack. To have the tools, topics, terminology and time-lines in ready to feed format. Edited freely together to hone them to you clients perfection. Fed by your combined insights, research and opinion - a subtle salad for the corporate soul.

Standing out in an organization that has more than 100,000 employees is difficult. You’ve probably seen this in action in several ways in businesses of all sizes. Some people defy the corporate definition of who they are and rise above it, easily and without hurting others. They rise through the ranks slowly and surely.

Others follow the more traditional route of “seriously, how did this person get this far?” Somehow they rise quickly and to the top and then either transition off just as fast, or stay in place for years. In my experience, these people seem to be stuck in something, not sure themselves how to either escape or move on to a more relaxed mental space.

Corporations create their own meta-physical laws of personality through hierarchy and reward. Drawing lines by salary, title, and the group or persons getting patted on the back and continually rising.

If you or your client didn’t step in at that level, but you want it, you have to plan how to get there. You need a strategy to get into the club of continually rising. Training your clients to succeed ensures you both can stand out in the primordial soup of the corporate soul.

Executive Training Tactics

Feed their corporate ego
An advocate must maintain and grow the influence of their client within the corporate id. Your job is to help the client better think through a political strategy and finding ways to turn vocal naysayers into bobblehead, yes lovers. Providing voice, documentation, research and data as needed to polish the message at ever turn. Your goal is to watch them shine on their stage and spread their influence far and wide.

Identify and strategize personalities
Your client may not be entirely tuned to be watching the corporate political spectrum. Your job then is to use every new or ongoing interaction with teams or personalities within the corporation as a point of personality mapping. In my experience this is best achieved on-site in meetings. Over the phone you only get tone for reference. Body language and positioning broadcast a lot of information about corporate goodwill/bad juju and you just have to watch and track it.

Make it tasty for everyone 
Being succinct is required. People like soundbites and the easier you make it for your client to demonstrate success and tell a good story, the better your chances are of maintaining your clients trust. Practicing simplicity in an age of complexity wins people over. If you know the audience, show them you know just enough to be credible with them and then dive right into your needs, knowing they have to get something out of it too.

Be honest, have a second helping and pass it around
Honesty is good medicine for everyone. Corporate cultures can somehow deny a reality when they choose, until something usually called the truth, interrupts the carefully crafted facade. Helping put your client in a position where they are the consistent bearer of news, either good or bad, helps build that thicker, seasoned skin that people recognize and respect.

It’s when people know your client speaks about only things they know and always ask about the things they don’t. I’ve never found a good reason to hide anything that happens in the course of a marketing campaign. Honesty builds trust, goodwill and relationships.

Next time, I’ll talk about vendor evaluation and my goals for improving the relationships between agencies and their large clients. As always, your feedback and thoughts on today’s topic are welcome.

© 2008 Keith Boswell