The Marketing Mix | official blog of the Marketing Mentor community

Firing a client without burning your bridges

One of the pleasures of working for yourself is the freedom to choose whom you want to work with. However, that process isn’t always pleasant, especially when you have to “fire” a client. Sharon Bending, of Bending Design did it the right way – without burning any bridges – and when it came back around, it didn't bite her. Au contraire! Here’s what happened:

I recently had to fire a client. I had let the project get out of hand; it was a big, giant, hairy project that in the end taught me a ton. But after a year, I was still working on it, paying a developer and losing money.

This wasn’t the first time I had to fire a client. The first time was someone who had never worked with a design firm and for the life of me I just couldn’t translate their thoughts into designs that worked for them. I let them go, agreed to return a portion of their deposit — everyone won there – and felt like I handled the situation professionally.

Here’s the kicker – this week, unbeknownst to her, my assistant cold called the client I’d fired (she was now at a different company; the name was familiar but she didn’t know the background.) My assistant left a voicemail message and the “prospect” called back to tell us there was a better person in the company to approach. Then she said, “By the way, I worked with Sharon on a project at my last company. She had to end the project because she was pregnant and had a lot on her plate. Anyway, I’ll put in a good word for you guys.”

Wow, I was so surprised that she 1) called us back, 2) gave us the contact to speak with, and 3) said she’d put in a good word... This was someone I had fired a year and a half earlier! That goes to show – handle yourself professionally no matter what the situation. You never know what will happen. That, or get pregnant and you can use that as an excuse :)

Do you have a “firing” story – good or bad – to share?

The news isn’t all gloomy

Don’t let depressing economic news get you down. Help is here, in the form of a hands-on workshop (with a special discount) I’m giving this Thursday for the Freelancers Union (sign up here) and in the form of tips from the trenches, where things aren’t all bad! I got this message from Jonathan Cleveland of Cleveland Design last week:

We are being bombarded with work. Why? Because the economy is tanking and large companies are laying off in-house design teams (they are always the first to go). A couple of our clients have greatly reduced the size of their internal design groups in the past month. They are also cutting budgets and getting rid of large external agencies. I think the work is ripe for the picking at this point for the small business or freelancer. Spread the word.

Jonathan’s experience just proves what I’ve always noticed about the economy: when one aspect is up, another is down. The savvy business owner is observant and nimble, watching closely to see how to adapt.

So I had a little chat with Jonathan to see if he had specific tips. Here’s an excerpt of our conversation:

Q: Why are internal creative departments the first to go?
A: Because they can outsource it in a second. There are plenty of freelancers out there ready to do the work.

Q: Who specifically can benefit from this?
A: If you have already established relationships with your prospects, you’re in a much better position. But even if you haven’t already done the up front relationship-building, focus on the large companies (the ones you’re most intimidated to call). They’re the ones who had people on staff but may not anymore, so they need the most help.

Q: Do you really think they are spending money on communications?
A: The thing to remember is a majority of the work still needs to be done, especially in financial services. They still need to have active business communications to develop new business. But they’re definitely looking for easier and lower-cost ways to do it. The fact that you’re not on their payroll makes you more attractive to start.

Q: So what exactly should we say?
A: There are two things you want to convey. The first is a question: If you know they have indeed laid people off, ask, “Are you hiring freelancers to help out on marcom (or marketing communications)?”
Secondly, you want to let them know you offer a better value compared to a larger firm. You can say, “I understand your team has been reduced; I can help you out. I can offer you great work at a great value.” Then, emphasize that your creative skills are at the same level as those in a large firm but you have less overhead and can therefore offer a better value.

Anyone else experiencing this too?

CFC as diving board/kick-in-the-pants

There is so much to tell about the 42 hours we all spent last week at the Creative Freelancer Conference, but one of the things that surprised me the most was the wide range of experience of the creative freelancers who made the trek to Chicago for the first-ever CFC.

Several creatives had been in business for more than 15 years and were there to take their business to the next level. Some had been in business as long as 20 years, one for over 30 years. She started right out of college and has never had a day job -- she received one of our fancy awards for "Longest Time Freelancing" at the end of the conference.

Many attendees were freelancers on the side, playing hooky from their day job. They wanted to see if they could/should take the leap from "in-house" to "independent." (For a lot of them, the answer seemed to be a resounding "YES!")

And when I asked some of them how long they'd been freelancing, more than a few said, "Three days." These newly-minted solopreneurs had essentially used the conference as a diving board to start their own business! We asked them all to stand up so we could recognize and congratulate them.

But no matter how long anyone had been in business, it was a motivating and inspiring kick in the pants for everyone, one that many creatives needed to take their business to the next level.

How do you get that kick in the pants we all need?

Guest Post: Conquering fear in one easy (cold) call

As she herself admits, Judith Reppucci should be a killer cold caller. She's a successful marketing copywriter with 15 years' experience in old-school, pound-the-pavement sales--for the Yellow Pages! So, fearless, right? No problem, right?

Well, the following account just proves that no one may be immune to fears about cold calling. And also that there is a way out, and it just might be Ilise & Peleg's no-nonsense, low-key approach to cold calls. Listen to Judith's experience of putting the information and inspiration she found in the Designer's Guide to Marketing & Pricing Podcast into action—serious action!

Six months ago, I met an mailing house exec at a New England Direct Marketer’s networking event. When she heard that I specialized in direct mail fundraising copy, she told me to call her coworker in the nonprofit side of their business. “They might be looking for some help,” she said. She even gave me the extension number, and told me to say she asked me to call.

Really, could there possibly be a better warm lead?

I have a folder of cold calling advice. I’ve read a half dozen books on how to cold-call. I’ve even been videotaped for cold call critiques. No matter. I was still stuck, mired in the fear that my value proposition wasn’t good enough, and that I’d get nervous and fumble (it’s happened before). I’m beyond ashamed that I’m such a big old wuss.

Then, a few weeks ago, while I was recovering from surgery, I started listening to your wonderful and very generous podcasts (thanks, Peleg, you’re great,too.) And, just listening to your casual, low-key delivery has made all the difference. Gee, you mean, you really don’t have to dial with all your marketing guns blazing? You don’t have to reel off a phony sales spiel when you‘re transferred to voice mail? And you can actually act, hmmm, natural and even genuine?

Yesterday I listened to Marketing Mentor podcast number six, the one with cold call role plays. “I can do that,” I told myself.

And guess what?

I did!

In fact, I just hung up from a great phone call with that prospect I’ve been avoiding.

When I gave the name of my referral at NEDMA, the prospect said, “Oh, sure.”

When I told him what I did and who I’ve worked for he said, “Oh, if you work for them, I guess you do a lot of hospital work.”

When I asked if he uses outside copywriters, he responded, “Not right now, but we’re expanding to more cause based clients, so this call might be coming at a good time for the fall appeals.”

And the rest of the call continued like something out of a cold call success story. Yes, indeed, he agreed it would be a good idea for me to send him a package of my work and my business card. Yes, he’d like it if I stayed in touch – and he readily gave me his e-mail. Yes, in fact, he wanted me to give him a call later this summer.

I've got to wrap this up because I have to send off my e-mail follow-up (gotta do it within 30 minutes, right?), but thanks again for all the easy-to-follow advice on the podcasts.

Oh—and speaking of podcasts, as a result of listening to yours, I’ve already ordered The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing. It’s very clear that you have great advice for copywriters, too!

Judith Reppucci is an independent copywriter, and she lives on beautiful Cape Cod. She crafts fundraising appeals for direct marketing consultants and nonprofit organizations. She also writes marketing collateral and online material for business and healthcare organizations. You can reach her at judith AT reppucci DOT com or at her website.

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Have you learned anything from the Designer's Guide podcasts (not just for designers anymore!) you've already put to use? Got a great story, flash of insight or other fantastic tidbit to share with the class? Email me (colleen AT marketing-mentor DOT com) and maybe we can help make everyone a little bit smarter.

Guest Post: The Girls Just Wanna Have Businesses

Marketing Mentor client Jezra Kaye has talked about her networking experiences in the field before for the Marketing Mix blog. Today's story details a recent experience in the company of women, and covers some interesting changes in the nature of networking over the years.

The best networking experience I’ve had in over a year (perhaps ever) was at last Friday’s Womensphere Entrepreneurial Leadership Summit—a one-day event in NYC that was inspiring, informative and fun.   

The 200+ women (and over 40 speakers) who gathered to present, learn and brainstorm on topics ranging from Web 2.0 to Angel Investing to The Entrepreneurial Life Cycle ran the gamut of business types—from college women launching their first ventures (one example:  leak-proof, stain-resistant panties) to recent biz school grads (“HBS” was a much-heard acronym) to venture capitalists to celebrity bloggers to CEOs of long-established firms.

Every age, stage and ethnicity was represented—yet there were two big areas of commonality among these extraordinarily diverse and interesting women:

1.  They were NICE. The passion for entrepreneurship is a great leveler.  But credit for the collegiality at this event also goes to the Womensphere team, led by CEO/Founder Analisa Balares, which set a tone of warmth, enthusiasm, curiosity and inclusion.  This atmosphere of easy acceptance meant that everyone spoke to everyone else—and the business cards were flying.   

2.  They had GREAT SHOES. “Dress for success” used to mean ugly navy suits and white broadcloth shirts, but the vividly dressed entrepreneurs at this conference made it clear that those days are gone for good.  We aren’t just blazing new trails—we’re doing it in pumps, peek-toes, platforms and spikes.

Carrie Bradshaw, eat your heart out!

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Jezra Kaye is a master speaker coach and speechwriter who helps her clients say the things that matter.  On 7/29, she’ll be leading “PRESTO! Presentation,” a workshop on how to talk to anyone about any topic, in New York City.  Learn more at Jezra's website, or sign up for her newsletter.

Ilise's Bizjam Highlights

Boy, did I feel behind the times at Bizjam last week, when everyone was not only talking about all the different social networking tools but using them right then and there. Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, Utterz, Facebook, MySpace, Seesmic, Dogster (and Catster, of course) and so many more. I'm overwhelmed just trying to name them!

I went to the FreshBooks Supper Club where I sat across from social networking maven, Aliza Sherman, whom I hadn't known before last week but thought I did. I had confused her with another journalist with a similar name, so I introduced myself as if we'd been in touch before. She of course had no idea who I was. That was sure embarrassing but we got over it and ended up having a lovely time chatting about all sorts of things.

Then, on Thursday, during my session on the topic of good, old fashioned, in-person networking, Aliza twittered a request for other Twitterers to email me to let me know what a great networking tool Twitter is. And a few of them actually did it, although it probably felt way passé to them to be emailing me. I have a feeling there's a whole population that doesn't even deal with email anymore. Is that true?

On Thursday night, I was planning to only make an appearance at the wrap up "soiree" (I'm not really a late night person) but I ended up hanging out with my new friend, Saul Colt, Head of Magic at FreshBooks, who also blogged about my session, watching this incredible show of aerial dancers from Versatile Arts. Then, Dan and Lara, founders of Bizjam, surprised me with an award for traveling the furthest to attend the event. But of course, I told them, "I have to practice what I preach, right?"

Change in an unfamiliar territory

I was reading a fascinating statistic the other day.

Every second, 14 Nokia mobile phones are sold. And Nokia is not happy about it.

It promoted me to look a little closer at what Nokia is doing these days with positioning themselves in the digital media delivery world now that iPhones are starting to take over the world. Nokia has been a world leader in mobile communications for many years and suddenly the rules of the game are changing. Nokia is realizing that it needs to position itself as a promoter of social networking, with photo and video sharing and games for users of its cell phones. The market is changing and it’s a new and unfamiliar territory for them. Mr. Tero Ojanpera, Nokia’s CEO, was quoted saying “Change is painful, but you have to figure this out in order to be successful. The question is, are you willing to play by the new rules?”

If a giant corporate company is having this big a-ha moment and shifting their products and marketing efforts, what are we, the small business owners doing to keep on top of the changes in the market today? I am realizing more and more the importance of teaching myself about all the online and social networking avenues out there to stay current and grow my business. A year ago I wouldn’t have cared about Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn but it seems that the world is moving in this direction whether I like it or not at a speed that is hard to keep up with. So am I willing to make the change? You bet. It’s an unfamiliar territory for too me but I am slowly getting more comfortable in it. Everything flows from the market and the market is saying “get active online!”

So how has this change affected your business? Are you getting more connected? Is it an unfamiliar territory for you as it is for me?

How I helped an agency give back

Last Thursday I was invited to present a talk to a group of freelancers here in Los Angeles.

The evening was sponsored by Artisan Creative, one of the leading  creative staffing agencies in town. The idea for this event came out of a lunch date I had over four months ago with Jamie Douraghy, the founder of the agency. I gave Jamie a copy of our new book and he was so impressed with the book that he immediately wanted to create an event around it. He thought it would be a great gesture to give a copy of the book to each of his talented freelancers who are signed with the agency.

Now, you may think that helping freelancers grow their own business could ultimately hurt his business down the road—after all, he needs this talent for his own business—but Jamie is a smart man. He knows the power of networking and good relationship. He is genuinely interested in helping others grow and succeed. He knows that other people’s success will only inspire more success for his business.

He invited me to give a talk to all his current and past talent that has been signed up with Artisan. I was impressed to see a nice turn-out considering there was a Lakers game on at the same time. Putting on this event was an internal marketing effort for Artisan. It created a stronger relationship with their talent and gave an opportunity for creatives to network and improve their business skills.

Thanks a million to Jamie and the Artisan staff for planning such a great evening. It’s no wonder they are the best at what they do!

When time wasted is time well-spent

One of the questions I get from old-school business people who are just coming online is how the hell I can justify spending so much time on pursuits that are non-monetizable (not a word, and if it was, it would be an icky one, but you get my point.)

Believe me, sometimes I wonder the same thing. I spend ridiculous chunks of any given day online. Some of it (news, industry-related blogs, LinkedIn) has more obvious value than others (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter), but one could make the argument that all of it should take a backseat to what I call "money work": endeavors in which you trade hours for dollars.

Here's where it gets tricky, though: you need to do a lot of being somewhere—hanging out, reading, commenting, creating content—to get somewhere. If you translate it into old-school terms, you could make a similar argument that the extensive traveling (5+ days/week sometimes) that my father did Back In The Day was largely wasted. Or to draw a finer analogy, that the time he spent on those airplanes or in those airport lounges talking to people who weren't prospects was time wasted—time that would have been better spent on higher-return activities like drafting articles, catching up with paperwork or dictating stuff for one of his three (yes, really) secretaries to type up.

What Dad would have said, though, is that some of those random conversations wound up delivering the richest rewards. One of his best friends and greatest business relationships grew out of a series of conversations he had with the man who regularly drove him around when he was in New York; one day Artie told him about another guy he drove around—a guy from L.A.—whom he thought my dad would enjoy meeting.

Stuff like this still happens in meatspace, of course, but what's great is that it can happen online now, too. Just recently I wound up with a consulting client who came to me because she found me online: posting about something completely non-work-related in a Yahoo! group that has nothing to do with my areas of work expertise; I just like the community and free-flowing advice on tap there.

I can't help but wonder if one of the reasons these "random" things work is because we don't feel like there's much at stake: we're just relaxed, being ourselves, and so we end up showing people what we're made of instead of telling them. As it turns out, one of the things she found appealing was the way I appoached answering questions, something you'd definitely want in a coach or consultant.

So now I'm curious: have you had experiences like this? Where you ended up getting work from some activity or gathering where work was the farthest thing from your mind?

What weird stuff has come over the transom for you, and how do you think it happened?

More marketing in local politics

Last Tuesday, June 3, while most of the US was focused on national politics, here in Hoboken the focus was on our local primary, which once again included the race for seats on the Hoboken Democratic Committee.

You might recall last year when I ran for the first time for one of 72 committee seats. I won with 37 votes to represent the 2 block radius around my apartment.

So it is with a bit less fanfare that I announce this year's victory -- less fanfare because the turnout was very, very low (a total of 79 voters in our district) plus, my neighbor, David Tornabene, and I were running as unopposed incumbents for Committeeman and Committeewoman.

From a marketing point of view, I learned the lesson I am constantly teaching my clients: target your market. Last year, we knocked on the door of every Democrat in the district. What we realized is that very few of them actually vote. So this year, we carefully selected the Democrats we thought were more likely to make the effort to vote in a primary. And we focused our efforts on them. 

That's how we got 33 votes each, enough to win but not better than last year.

We'll see what happens next year.