Are people pleased to hear from you?

When people hear your name in a voice-mail or see you in their inbox, how do they feel? Which messages do they want to respond to first (or at all)?

My guess is that they will want to reply to someone who is going to help them; someone who can offer them advice, or come up with just the service they need; someone who'll give them some useful information. They probably will not be so interested in talking to someone who always wants something from them, or is going to nag them or make them feel guilty, or have to explain themselves.

And please don't say to them, "Didn't you get my messages last week?"  That puts them way on the back foot.  If they haven't responded, just go into the conversation, or message, as if this was the first time. 

Think about it;  when you look at your messages, whose calls do you respond to? Put yourself in their place when you pick up the phone, or hit "send."

It's not just about you!

Any communication - or at least any persuasive communication - has to be about the needs of the person you are trying to persuade. Not about your needs. Here is something that a recent client told me about our work together:

"The first really cool thing that I was enabled to understand is how to think of it (whatever "it" may be - an interview, a phone call, a party) from "their" point of view. Always asking and trying to figure out what "their" process is? Where are they coming from? What do they want and how can I fit into answering that for them?

That's always a cool, interesting exercise and I loved to hear MP go through that drill time and again .. it was awesome and Insightful"

Where do sales come from?

Several clients have told me that they have lost faith in their sales people: that they haven't produced anything for them recently and they are wondering whether to keep them.
Sales people are not just magic wands that you wave and suddenly wonderful things happen. They have to be employed as just one tool that works with all the other smart pieces of your marketing. They cannot be effective in isolation. Could this be an area where you can implement some more change?
I thought it might be helpful to look at a few new clients who have placed their trust in me in the last couple of weeks and see where they came from. One thing is for sure - they didn't all come from one direction.

One came directly from a referral from a former happy client. A few came from a carefully targeted direct email. One came after literally years of personal cultivation. One came from LinkedIn and contacted me through that site. One contacted me from the pollock|spark website but can't remember how he found himself there. And one is a repeat client - don't we just love repeat business.

So they come from all over. You have to pay attention to all angles and contact points and approaches. And you should weave your sales people into this mesh so that they can be maximally effective.

So where are your clients coming from? Where could they come from? Think about whether some change in the way you use sales could get you stronger results.

Improv techniques help creative people communicate their ideas better

Creative people are notoriously not-so-good at presenting their ideas. Pitches, conference calls, presentations, talking to clients – these are not their favorite things to do. But without successful communication their ideas have a hard time getting off the drawing board.

April Jaffe and Michael Pollock have discovered that the techniques and exercises used by improv actors can be enormously helpful to our creative clients. We are specially selecting and adapting exercises to incorporate into our own brand of workshops that we will be giving to teams at film companies, design firms and other creative businesses.

Last night we held a trial run with the help of improv star Rebekka Johnson. The session was attended by film editors, a videoblogger, a photographer, a documentary producer, an executive producer and ad agency creatives. It was a huge success, converting even those who were not sure that this was their thing. The group was particularly impressed by the value of techniques relating to listening, working towards goals, and managing difficult clients. Here is what one participant wrote to us this morning:

"I wanted to thank you for inviting us to what proved to be both a terrifying and incredibly enjoyable evening. Standing in front of a group of people or privately attempting to be creative is always a daunting task and the night's exercises provided a number of helpful tools and exercises from an unlikely source, improv."

What your network says about you

What does your social network look like?

This remarkably beautiful image represents my own network of LinkedIn connections.

My genius friend Erich Morisse, who made this image, is developing products that quantify and value social networks. Here is what he told me:

"Social networks are as individual as we are, our own fingerprints of interaction with society. Turned into images, they remind us of everything from supernovas (see the concentrated brighter areas in this person's network) to beds of sea anemones (this one has many outliers, each with their own radiance).

Supernovas have the ability to get big and great things done with their close knit social group, but need to work hard at finding new ideas and opportunities.

Sea anemones are entrepreneurs, always finding new ideas and opportunities from their breadth of contacts; they have to rely on their contacts to find the right people to get big things done.

So which are you, are sea anemone or a supernova? And what do you need to change about your social network to meet your personal goals?"

Dear Sparkings: Why aren't my calls returned?

Q. "I keep calling and leaving messages for the ad agency producers I sell to - but no-one ever returns my calls. What am I doing wrong?"
UnrequitedRep


A. Oh my dear unrequited - you must be losing your touch! What did your message say? Did you give them any good reason to pick up the phone and call you back? Would that message make you call you back? Could it be they don't have anything to say to you? Something to think about.

Though it does seem surprising, because I've heard that agency producers have been set a goal of returning 20 sales calls a day - perhaps you were their 21st call. (Are you sure about this? Editor)

Whatever happened to client loyalty?

"Whatever happened to client loyalty?" is a cry I hear over and over again from clients in the advertising field: especially from the creative shops that sell to ad agencies: film, music, editing, design and so on.

Well, sorry guys, loyalty is not even a relevant concept here. If you give them better than they expected and they keep wanting the same thing – then they might just come back. But that is not about loyalty, it’s about their own self-interest. For these ad guys who are buying your services, novelty rules. Your typical creative client is always in search of new sensations and lives in hope that the next company will excite them in some new way. And there are no metrics to hold them back.

Of course since the marketing directors keep changing and the economy is tough - the ad agencies are constantly pressured to find a new magic bullet to move the needle - no client is satisfied with the status quo.

So none of this has anything to do with loyalty. Don't even think about it. Sorry.

The kindness of strangers

I am increasingly being asked to introduce people on LinkedIn. And not just people I know, but people I know who know the people that my friends want to know. So I am just a link in the chain.

I am not sure how I feel about this chainlinking. I suppose that this is the point of these networks. What do you think? If you got this third or fourth hand introduction would it make you take notice? Does it mean anything?

I must say that I have asked some questions on LinkedIn and got some quite useful answers from complete strangers. It feels as if they must be connected to me in some way - but they aren't, are they? I am grateful for their responses and they have helped me out.

I guess that we are moving into a phase where we will all be able to say "whoever you are, I've always depended on the kindness of strangers"

So why don't you join me on LinkedIn and see if we can meet some of these kind strangers?

You're still selling - even when you're working

I have had conversations with two different clients in the last week who were bemoaning the fact that when they get a big job they focus completely on it and are not out selling.

But they are missing the beauty of the opportunity. The client that already gives you work is very very likely to give you another job. She is the lowest hanging fruit. So everything you do when you are working on her job should be working towards securing her future business.

Yes of course your immediate task is to do an awesome piece of work for her. But your larger task can be considered as "turning this job into the next one and the next one". You don't have to hard sell. Just show her you are excited about her job, ask her about her hopes and dreams for her career, tell her about other interesting stuff you are excited about - all this is selling and you have a captive receptive audience

And there can often be an even bigger opportunity than that. In the case of one client - a film director who was shooting a commercial - he told me that everyone who worked at the ad agency had showed up on the shoot. All 15 of them. Better and better I said. Every one of them can become a client in the future. They will all probably move on to new agencies. What a magnificent sales opportunity - don't miss it.

Result: Booked Solid!

Remember the film director from our post in December? He had let his TV commercials business lapse for some years while he wrote and directed a feature (lots of star power, theatrical release, DVDs etc).

Now he wanted to get back to doing some advertising work while he was getting more films off the ground. I helped him do just this. Here is what he wrote me:

"I want to give you an update. Since we [worked together] in the late fall I have not stopped working. I have been booked solid. I shot nine new spots in the last eight weeks.

Being able to shoot with the confidence of knowing my strengths has been a great pleasure. I have never had a run this strong.

I would like to do more work together, both commercially, but for my film career as well. Your insights have been a great focusing tool."

Congratulations to him - we love to hear these success stories of people getting to where they want to be.

Pop Quiz

1. What is your company’s most successful piece of communication?

2. Who was it aimed at?

3. What did you want them to do when they received - saw/heard/read/smelled/felt it?

4. Did they?

5. What makes it successful?

Now here is the question that really counts:
What can be learned from the answers to questions 1-5?

Pricing tip (thanks to Calvin Klein)

A wonderful and insightful story from Ingrid Sischy’s portrait of Calvin Klein in the latest Vanity Fair.

Apparently as a child, Klein used to visit his dad’s grocery store. He noticed that there were grapefruits in two different bins – one lot priced at 29c a pound and one lot priced at 49c a pound.

He asked his father what was the difference between them. His father apparently just shrugged and said, “Some people like to pay 29 cents and some people like to pay 49 cents.”

How to price your services

There's a wonderful story in Ingrid Sischy’s Vanity Fair portrait of Calvin Klein. As a child, Klein used to visit his dad’s grocery store. He noticed that there were grapefruits in two different bins – one lot priced at 29c a pound and one lot priced at 49c a pound. He asked his father what was the difference between them. His father apparently just shrugged and said, “Some people like to pay 29 cents and some people like to pay 49 cents.”

Who is your best salesperson?

Your good clients are your best advocates. Millions of research dollars have been spent to prove this - but I suggest you go with your gut here.

Keep your advocates close. Make them feel they belong. Their valuable word of mouth is amplified by the internet: blogs, IM, social media. (And, don't forget, the "new advocates" are spreading both the good news and the bad news.)

Create and maintain a dialog with your advocates � help them to feel good about you and spread the word for you in a way that will count. They are your best salespeople.