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Contributed by David C Baker, ReCourses (see information about the Yearly New business Summit at the end of this article)

For the purpose of this article, I’m going to assume that you are smart and that you do your homework, and that the only thing keeping you from doing more effective work for clients is that they don’t listen to you enough. Got it? If both of those first two things aren’t true, these suggestions aren’t going to help much.

I want to talk about this because doing effective work for clients and making good money in the process keeps you interested. For instance, just making money isn’t enough-it gets boring and it feels empty. You need to really be making a difference on behalf of your clients or your work is going to get old.

So assuming you are smart and diligent, how do you get clients to listen more? Here are five very specific suggestions to turn things around a bit next year.
First, make sure that within any given client relationship the same person is not doing what we call Interfacing and Planning (these two words come from our Functional Model, and the first simply refers to the role of an account executive, whether they are called that or not, and the second refers to account planning or account leadership). Stated differently, clients will not listen well to strategic guidance if it comes from the same person managing the daily account activity. It’s not about ability, either, but about wanting the deeper advice toAdvice Managing Your Marketing.ems come from someone a bit more “apart” from the daily routine of their frequent contact at the agency. We want our pilots (Planners) in uniform and “apart” from our gate agents (Interfacers). Let your Interfacers excel at that work, and whether they’re good at it or not, don’t expect them to be effective Planners (provide strategic guidance) to those same accounts because being a daily contact will move you to another role.

Second (but closely related), make sure that marketing, planning, strategic leadership–whatever you call it–is actually a separate position at your firm. That means title, job description, available tools, etc. If your firm is too small to require a full-time person dedicated to just that (less than 16 employees), be careful what you have that person doing in the time they have left. Sometimes you can effectively combine it with new business development, and sometimes you just have that person working part-time. Definitely don’t combine it with Interfacing (see first point, above).

Third, don’t give away your best thinking when pitching an account. The message there is that you don’t value it since money is the currency of respect. Using that mantra, what you are really valuing is your implementation work if you get the account. That’s like a portrait photographer charging a $50 sitting fee to make sure someone shows up, and then making all the money on selling overpriced 16 x 20″ prints for the mantel. So stay away from those pitches, or peel off a section of the proposed engagement and get paid for your thinking with an assessment (otherwise known as paid prospecting), often leading to a better proposal that’s a more appropriate solution to the client’s problem anyway.

Fourth, always list any strategic work you do separately in proposals. Clients are more likely to notice it and assign value to it. This applies to invoicing, too, which needs to list it separately.

Fifth, make a distinction between consultative and transactional pricing by using round numbers for Advice Managing Your Marketing.ems the former ($40,000) and more specific-looking numbers for the latter ($23,120). One looks more confident and the other looks like you’re hiding behind a spreadsheet to justify it.

The common theme in these suggestions? Make sure everything about your high level thinking is separate.

Yearly New Business Summit

Jan 17-19, Nashville

This annual three-day summit is our biggest event of the year and has been sold out all four years we’ve held it. This is crafted to cover everything about positioning, marketing, and new business development. Anyone who deals with branding, marketing, and selling your services is a perfect candidate for this seminar.

The sessions are a mix of presentation, hands-on exploration, exercises, and roundtables. You’ll learn how your firm should be positioned, what your role should be, how to perform that role flawlessly, how to adjust for your own strengths/weaknesses as you deal with prospects, and how to make the most of the marketing strengths at your disposal. This will include everything from knowing how to identify prospects, how to nurture them to the client stage without weakening your firm’s position, how to deal with objections, and one hundred other things that will ensure your success in new business. Essentially it’s a complete look at this function in your creative services firm.

We had 72 firms at our last event in Chicago, and we’ll have room for that same number in Nashville in January. Three-fourths of the spaces are taken.

Download this brochure for a complete agenda and registration details: http://www.recourses.com/media/pdfs/2007nbs.pdf