The importance of client services working with planners and being strategic themselves

Client services is a tough job. Never ending in-tray, no one doing what you need on time, being at the sharp end of client moans. I did it for a bit and failed, so, well, respect.

Having seen both sides, the most successful client services folk are great planners in their own right, especially today, where clients can take things in house. What they really buy into is impartial advice about their business,

Being More Strategic

Strategy isn’t something only people with planning or strategy in their job title do. We can, and do, strategy every day because it’s simply:

Achieving your goals with minimal effort

My strategy to get to the office in Manchester, from Leeds is to save parking/train money and traffic rage by driving most of the way and cycling some of the way

My daughter’s strategy to get around me is to be perpetually cute

You’ll find that impact with clients comes from the advice you give, how you can help them reach THEIR goals with minimum effort

Client services are well placed to do this, because with the closest relationship, you can continually talk to them about their goals and the headaches they must reach them

On a business level

And a personal level

It simplifies every client conversation to always frame it around what we’re trying to achieve and what will it make it easier to get there

It cuts through politics

Subjective opinion

Busy people with too much on their minds

It’s always that simple – what do we need to achieve? How do we get there with the least effort?

Don’t let your strategy team overcomplicate it, push for brutal simplicity of thought

Which brings me to how you can better partner with the strategy folks

Working with The Strategy Team

The goal of the strategy people is brutal simplicity of thought. Cutting through all the clutter to find the simplest and easiest way for clients to reach their commercial goals.

We want to be able to cut through the crap to what really matters and, as we tend to be short of time, needing to do it fast!!!

We also tend to be a little shy and sometimes find it hard to say what we really want, especially in busy meetings with lots of people with the gift of the gab.

That can mean we struggle with client and internal meetings sometimes.

Finally, we’re not a factory. We don’t want to ‘churn out’ strategy. We want to be your partner with the client relationship – give them the EVIDENCE BASED RECOMMENDATIONS they need to use marketing and creativity to reach their commercial goals

So how can you help?

1. Involves us in the client relationship. Let us attend meetings more, not just the ‘strategy ones’ the more we get a feel for clients, the more we can really help
2. But you’ll always have a better understanding of their world and what matters to them – don’t just talk to us about their business needs, talk to us about their relationships in the business, what pushes their buttons, what keeps them awake at night. Like any target audience, the more we know about what makes them tick, the more we can develop recommendations they are likely to buy into
3. Deal us in. Make sure in any meeting we have a clear role and space in the agenda for that role. Look for us struggling to get a word in and help us get into the conversation
4. Involve us early. Most of the real strategic work is defining the issue. The worst thing you can do is give us a brief the client has signed off, that we can’t talk with them about. Involve us as soon as possible, let the client talk us through the brief, give us the chance to ask questions. Client briefs are always too long, and they rarely get to the heart of what is really needed. Too often, the first presentation is when the client tells us the REAL brief
5. If can’t involve us, put the effort into briefing us. Especially how our work will be judged, who is judging it and what you are expecting. Make sure EVERYONE who will approve our work is involved in briefing it where you can. We want to get it right first time
6. Be brutal. Great strategy is about simplicity – be hard on yourself, ask yourself what is relevant, keep conversations about THE GOAL and THE EASIEST WAY to get there. Be brutal about what is a medical job v a strategy job. Be brutal with us, ask us WHAT IS THE GOAL what is the EASIEST WAY TO GET there. If we can’t answer simply, we haven’t done our job
7. But overload us with information and reference- at our best, we spot things and make connections others do not. Give us EVERYTHING you have to read in our own time. Just don’t talk us through it all!!!
8. Be kind. Sometimes we need to talk through things to figure it out as we go. Every good planner has a trusted confidante they can chat to as they work things out. This is important, we love AND hate the start of project when we don’t have the answer, it takes time to work it out and chatting it through really helps
9. Be concise. We do what we can to keep our work simple. In return, we need feedback clear and concise. Where you can, don’t let people feedback in comments, make them join a meeting to talk it through – comments are often contradictory and confusing. It’s ALWAYS quicker to chat, conclude and move on
10. Judge our thinking before our formatting or spelling. It saves time if we share early thinking, it also means we can collaborate better if we share a work in progress. That means you need to not judge how it looks, or typos etc. Let us talk through where we’re going, and you feedback on that. It will save time and make our recommendations better. We can make it client friendly later, first it needs to be good
11. Keep us involved. It’s common to get us to write briefs, but then just attend the odd creative review or development meeting. We like seeing good work happen. We also have a skill to not talk about creative work being good, but how it is working. It saves time in the long run to keep in the development process, the work isn’t just right, it works
12. Make time. Creative reviews and such are CRITICAL. It’s very common for creative reviews to be quick and not allow time for feedback. We need time in these sessions to talk through the work. Please respect our role in the process – quite rightly, our briefs are scrutinised to be watertight, so the work that comes out should be given the same respect.