When “NO” is the right answer

Whether personal or professional, the best relationships have all partners recognizing early on what they need from their counterpart.

As a marketing professional, delivering satisfactory results requires an in-depth understanding of product, company culture, objectives, audiences, competitors, timelines, and budgets.

To provide appropriately creative communications materials for the client, I must successfully get inside his or her mind.

Being a creative type, it’s also critical I enjoy client interactions to ensure my best efforts. I can’t just turn on a spigot and have creativity pour out.

And overlooking this critical need merely to add a client to my roster can easily lead to disaster. True, the billing would be nice…but life should be about more than JUST making money.

Consider my introduction yesterday to a prospective client: an engineer. She was stoic throughout our 60-minute conversation. She was interviewing me, but forgot I was also interviewing her.

Her stone-faced reaction to the one joke I ventured revealed she’s strictly business. Chronically concerned about my own bottom line, I understood her need to focus on serious matters.

But how can you appreciate clever creative results if you can’t even laugh?

I know many engineers, and understand they utilize different parts of the brain than I do. With the exception of a pie in the face, we typically laugh at VERY different things. 

Essayist William Hazlitt observed: “Wit is the salt of conversation.” A 60-minute conversation with someone never cracking a smile is a flavorless meal.

I’ve already solved her firm’s communications issues, but my gut says it’s a relationship headed for divorce before it’s even consummated. She’s the dangerous type who knows what she doesn’t want, and I can’t possibly charge her enough to keep re-doing work whose creativity she doesn’t recognize.

Although she might be pleasant under social conditions, I’m walking away. Working with her won’t be fun. Knowing I’d be miserable, I’m going to pass.  

Every business needs to fill the sales funnel with prospective customers. Success comes from having a filter determining a good fit between provider and customer. The qualifier might be price, geography, or business philosophy. 

Furthermore, successful marketing comes from a long-term marriage of client and consultant. It’s built on solid communication, understanding, patience, and wisdom.

For my money, add in a sense of humor.

With that said, I wish you a week of profitable marketing.

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Find better ways to “YES” at www.marketbuilding.com.