"There Will Be Dogs"
We’re sharing a client with The Advance Guard for the first time and I am psyched to work with C.C. Chapman, whom I met in-person for the first time this week. (Yes, he’s as warm, smart and genuine as you suspected.)
Catching up prior to our client’s arrival, talking about our respective sales pipelines, current projects, and all that jazz, C.C. and I both noted that not all clients were going to fit well in the Social Media era. Ideal clients – great products, savvy contacts – are actually kinda’ rare.
And as PR becomes more transparent, this becomes a risk factor for agencies. An agency’s brand will be increasingly tied to its clients’. This was always the case at some level – reputations are built on good work – but, never more so than in today’s broadband, 24/7, Google-monitored world.
So consultants like The Advance Guard, SHIFT, et al., are putting their own reputations on the line as they engage with, and for, their clients. Brands are intermingling: our individual brands, our company brands, our clients’ brands. The bigger we get, the more transparent we get, the more likely it becomes that we’ll take a reputational hit due to a client’s SNAFU.
C.C. sagely summed it up: “There will be dogs.”
It’s a risk we must take. Except in extreme cases, no service provider I know of can afford to turn away a prospective client. If the client’s not doing anything illegal or unethical, and they will pay for your counsel and connections (which could actually improve the product) … well, “It may be the future but you still gotta eat.”
P.S. – For the record, the client that C.C. and I are working on is one of the cool ones, thankfully!
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Comments
Very true! It's up to the service provider to carefully examine all aspects of a client's business. I have a minor qibble with the assertion that turning away prospective clients is only done in "extreme cases." At the firm I used to work for, there were certainly companies/objectives that we didn't feel matched well with the firm, and we would turn the work away. I am also familiar with a case in which a firm disengaged with a client that was generating significant revenue because it was felt that the choices and objectives they were pushing for had the potential to harm the firm's reputation.
My father, prior to retiring, worked for a company that armored cars for heads of state. They would regularly turn away work that would have generated significant revenue if they couldn't verify the potential client was above board. The company realized that armoring cars for suspected drug lords or other unsavory types might be lucrative, but could damage or completely decimate the company--not to mention they knew it was the right thing to do.
Extreme example, I realize, but transparency shouldn't be the only reason to examine closely who the prospective clients are. Feeling good about what you do and who you are doing it for at the end of the day is important.
Just my .02!
Jen
Posted by: Jen Zingsheim | March 28, 2008 09:54 AM
It was great to finally actually sit down and formally meet each other. Nothing beats face to face in my book.
Really looking forward to working together!
Posted by: C.C. Chapman | March 28, 2008 10:05 AM
Todd, thanks for the link and great content as always. You bring up a good point about how the collective body of a company is made up of individuals who all have brands. The big challenge in the years ahead is for each one to keep their individuality, without hurting the reputation of the company.
Gary Vaynerchuk made a podcast about how social media is the tipping point for reputation management and good people prevailing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg2MukcqbdE
I felt compelled to respond.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyprIBJiErA
In your case, technology will only reveal your true expertise and that of your associates. The ticket is to just be yourself and show everyone what you got.
Posted by: Dan Schawbel | March 28, 2008 10:16 AM
Thanks all, for the comments!
Responding to Jen's comment: you're right, it's really about feeling good about the work being done. In our case, we rarely encounter anything nefarious or even somewhat dodgy; more often when we need to consider turning away a prospect, it's simply a case where the fit is not good, or we have no bandwidth, or the product not as ready as we'd been told in initial meetings. So, yea, we *do* walk away from business, but we run a for-profit enterprise, too. We try to "find the line," when it seems like it might be in sight.
Posted by: Todd Defren | March 28, 2008 11:49 AM