23 March 2010

Building Successful Relationships with Professional Services Firms

Professional services businesses include, but are not limited to lawyers, accountants, management consultants, financial services, marketing, PR, design, architecture, engineering and construction.

Having worked with many firms across this spectrum, I find they share some specific characteristics that color our approach in working with them. Understanding what makes Professional Services firms different from businesses that sell products is key to building and sustaining mutually satisfying relationships.

Trusted Partners
Professional Services firms are often literally selling themselves. Their success depends on building a personal bond of trust with their client. They must become deeply involved in their client's business in order to provide meaningful counsel or support. Professional Services firms often work in teams and routinely bounce ideas off of one another in a group situation.

With this understanding of the importance of relationships in a Professional Services company, we know that developing a bond and rapport are critical for building trust. We also know that the decision process for reviewing our work is sometimes a consensus building exercise requiring us to show both flexibility and leadership.

Comfortable Leadership
Professional Services firms are used to being "the experts" that lead their clients toward solutions. Their clients rely on their objectivity, intellect and professional experience to guide them in the right direction. Because Professional Services firms are usually in the position of being the consultant, with all of the respect and expertise that implies, they often have strong opinions about the design, writing, web and marketing services we provide. Because of our strong facilitation skills, we have found success managing the many strong opinions of a Professional Services client.

Brand Matters
Professional Services firms don't have products upon which to build a brand. When thinking about Professional Services brands, "rational" and "emotional" are the two sides of the same coin.

On the rational side, their brands generally reflect traits or ideas their organizations admire. Accenture's "Performance" brand is a good example of a Professional Services company building a brand around a concept.

"Persona" defines the flip side of the coin. What is the character of the firm? What is the culture like? Is it a buttoned up, somewhat conservative feel, suggesting black and white photography of business subjects, or is it a more casual environment that might seek more conceptual imagery, perhaps even illustration?

We work closely with our Professional Services clients to tease out ideas, themes, taglines, color palettes, font choices and style of imagery. When we achieve the right balance, we then build brands that work cohesively across the electronic and print worlds.

Think Differentiation
In the end, our job is to differentiate our clients using all the tools, experience and intuition we possess. Our understanding of how Professional Services companies think increases our value to them and makes the process smooth and enjoyable!

Categories: General
Posted by Paul Regensburg at 11:45 AM   |  1 Comment

08 December 2009

Using Video to Put a New Spin on an Old Story

I'm struck by a wistfulness in some of my clients when we work together. They tell me that the work on which we collaborate — creating their brand and web experiences is the most fun they have in their job. I'm happy to represent that for them and feel that as hard as we all work, it's important to find some joy and perhaps tap into that passion that originally led us down the path to where we are today.

My job seems to many to be fun. My company makes things. There is creativity in what we produce and subjectivity in how it is received by clients. But, while this is true, even in our field, there is repetitiveness and some of the mundane. Back in June, I began thinking about a fresh way to convey how RainCastle thinks, on our new website, which has now launched (www.raincastle.com). Watching HBO's "In Treatment" one night, I had an inspiration. For those of you unfamiliar with "In Treatment," Gabriel Byrne, a terrific actor, plays the part of a psychiatrist and each night of the week he sees a different patient. These dramatic and expertly crafted sessions make up the show. You get to follow psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Weston (Byrne's character), as he guides each patient through issues and crises, in most cases toward greater self-awareness. I've often felt there are parallels with how we consult with our clients, and the approach of a shrink. We're both diagnosing a problem by analyzing a symptom and sometimes delving into its root cause. In our case the patient may have an underperforming website, marketing campaign or brand.

Once I considered this notion, I wrote the script for the first video, "Web's Home" (www.raincastle.com) attempting to capture the nature of how I problem solve, which is to guide my clients down a path that enables them to draw the right conclusions and make the best decisions about their brand or interactive experience.

Inspired by "In Treatment," I called my show, "InTension," because, after all it is marketing that we're doing. I wrote each script as a metaphor, made up the tongue-in-cheek t-shirts with the "patient" names printed on them and recruited friends to play the "patients." In "Web's Home," my friend Doug plays the role of Web. He feels loneliness and isolation because everyone who comes to his "home," leaves as soon as they arrive. As the "Dr.," I ask him why he thinks this is happening and through the ensuing dialogue, lead him down the "healing path" to a home (page) renovation, aka, a new website.

In 2010, there is little mystery in creating a website, assuming a website is the end game. Why clients need a "web Dr." is that their websites have become a critical marketing tool connected to and sometimes the centerpiece of an increasingly complex, multi-faceted marketing ecosystem that conjoins search, email marketing, social media and traditional media. Viewing the website as a commodity or ignoring its place in the marketing ecosystem is a sure way to negatively influence the health of your company. And in that instance you're out of luck, since I'm not licensed to prescribe medication.

Categories: General
Posted by Paul Regensburg at 12:14 PM   |  1 Comment

23 November 2009

An Introvert Does Social Media

It's an ongoing source of amusement and occasional irritation between my wife and me that I'm a classic introvert and she, a hard-core extrovert. On Saturday, after a particularly tough week marked by the death of a relative, we both needed to decompress. I took my camera and went to a wildlife sanctuary to watch the sun set over the wetlands. She drove into the city to be around a lot of humans, drink her double tall, half caf, nonfat Latte and watch the sun set over Newbury Street. We work because of a mutual respect for different styles and because we know we're often better together than we are apart.

My business relationships follow the same model. The ones that work best are the more personal ones in which we are partners, not vendors and the combination of our ideas results in better outcomes. I do "relationship marketing" because it's in my nature. I'm energized by one-on-one communication or interfacing with small teams. It's why at first the mass deification of social media seems like a mass intrusion into my comfort zone. When every event, conversation and even my SPAM hypes social media as THE way to build meaningful relationships, my first inclination is to dial down the blablablab. But when I get over myself and the antipathy towards the mainstream and massive hype, I'm starting to experience aspects of social media as a pretty perfect way for an introvert to exchange ideas with many people and engage in more informed conversations. That is what I hope to do here. Call me slow, but there it is.

As a marketer with mostly B2B clients, I've observed some companies with internal teams twittering away merely to stay north of the relevance line and often with no apparent relationship to other marketing initiatives. I'm finding that after this grueling year that quite a few marketing departments are stretched like a rubber band with the collective tension one would expect. One of our partners, Lois Paul & Partners, a PR firm in the high tech space, is one of the few I know who are seriously leveraging social media successfully for B2B firms. This case study is a good example:
www.loispaul.com/casestudies/arbor2.aspx

If you have B2B social media success stories, please feel free to share.

Photograph: Paul Regensburg

Categories: General
Posted by Paul Regensburg at 10:16 PM   |  5 Comments

05 November 2009

I Could be Don Draper

First of all, let’s get this out of the way. For those of you who don’t know, Don Draper is the protagonist in the TV series, Mad Men, which takes place around 1960 in the office of fictitious ad agency, Sterling Cooper. For three years, I’ve watched Don’s character unfold. The similarities between us are evident.

Don Draper is a Creative Director.
I am a Creative Director.

Don Draper has been made a partner in the agency.
I am the owner of an agency

Don Draper is suave and irresistable to women.
I have imagination.

Don Draper is married to Betty, a dead ringer for Grace Kelly.
I am married to Robin. She is cute.

Don Draper has a secret life.
I know how to keep a secret.

Don Draper chain-smokes and drinks.
I am addicted to Strawberry Smoothies.

Don Draper is watched by millions.
I am read by several.

Don Draper can be ice cold.
I can be luke warm.

Don Draper knows what motivates people.
I am surprised by what motivates people.

Don Draper leads by expertise.
I lead by example.

Don Draper practices tough love, often minus the love.
I practice tough love, often without the tough.

Don Draper is fascinating.
I’m hoping the blog helps me get there.

Categories: General
Posted by Paul Regensburg at 9:55 AM   |  5 Comments

27 October 2009

Firing a Bad Client, A Love Story

"You may not remember me, but we worked together a while back and you actually fired me," the caller said after introducing himself. I felt the tentacles of my memory reaching back many years to a contentious relationship, one of the three clients in 15 years of business that I have resigned. I remember what a gut-wrenching decision that was as a business owner of a relatively new business. I also remembered why I'd done it.

"What you may not remember is that I had a particularly difficult boss and I was the conduit between you and him, so I hope you do recall it wasn't me who gave you the grief," he continued. "I've always respected you for the way you handled that situation, that you had the confidence to resign. You said you felt you couldn't add value and we'd be better served by another agency. You were very nice and professional about it. If I had been in your shoes, I like to think I'd have done the same thing."

I thanked him and asked what I could do for him now, twelve years later. He told me that he was now with a large technology company. He remembered we had good experience creating brands and websites for this kind of company and if my memory of him was not tainted, he'd like me to come in and pitch some work.

For years, I had maintained the impression that I was persona non grata with this person, when in fact I had differentiated myself in a positive way that took more than a decade to come back to me. Whether or not we win the business, I'm reminded that being true to oneself and making the unconventional decision can be a differentiator.

Photo courtesy Photos8.com

Categories: General
Posted by Paul Regensburg at 10:07 AM   |  3 Comments