Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
business builder partnerships
by Tom Salonek
Remember the adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? The wisdom in that chestnut is especially salient when it comes to teaming up with clients to pursue your marketing goals.
While the result is wonderful, working with a client to tell your company’s story leaves you with much of the heavy lifting. You’ll drum up the opportunity, do most of the work and let your client have the lion’s share of the limelight. You’ll also have to graciously smile and nod your head in agreement when your client wants to say, or do, something differently than you might.
Yet, teaming up with a client can be the most valuable marketing strategy you ever pursued.
Clients are the real deal. They speak the language of other potential clients and they face the same business challenges of competitors. When your client agrees to endorse your product or service —as part of a trade show presentation, magazine article or case study for your Web site — you’ve struck marketing gold.
Their comments carry much more weight than straight advertising or marketing materials ever will for one simple reason: Everyone knows clients don’t get paid to make their vendors look good.
Making it work
If you’re lucky enough to convince a client to participate in your marketing efforts, go out of your way to make the experience as painless as possible. My company was in just this situation recently when a client agreed to make a joint presentation with us at an important trade conference. We spent considerable time refining the presentation concept and pitching it to the conference organizers.
Once the presentation was accepted, we worked to draft the presentation and develop the visuals. All our client had to do was meet to review the presentation and give his feedback, which we gratefully acknowledged and incorporated into the final presentation.
In the presentation itself, we follow presentation guidelines that make for a solid performance on your big day:
• Have an odd number of bullets or points on every slide. Generally, three to five bullets with three to five words per bullet works best. Too many words focus your audience on reading instead of listening. Have someone besides you verify flow, grammar and spelling
• Include something visual on every slide. Plain text is boring. Visuals, done right, tell the story.
• Highlight project success areas where the client is comfortable speaking. Presentation success requires a genuine non-scripted feel and flow. You want your client comfortable.
• Don’t have your company’s bio at the front of the presentation. As the story builds, you want the audience members who are unfamiliar with you to be wondering who is the team behind this success? Toward the end of the talk, highlight your experience.
The big day
On your presentation day, be prepared to be a backseat driver:
• Control the pace. If you are used to presenting and your client is not, guide the pace of the talk by letting your client know before the presentation the “cut points” of where you should be by when in the talk. During the talk, keep track of where you are at and give clues to your customer if you are running behind.
• Control the focus. Things haven’t changed since college. There will be attendees who will ask off-topic questions and make statements in the form of a question. Help your client if this happens. Politely handle this situation by saying something like, “That is a good question and we can follow up one-on-one after we finish here.”
• If you are a spokesperson but weren’t directly involved with the project, have one of your team members in the audience as backup for any detailed questions.
• Give the client first dibs at answering questions.
• Don’t end with Q&A. It makes for a waning, not strong, end. Have Q&A second to last and follow with a presentation summary.
• Finally, and most importantly, we were careful to mention an important truth: Having a great client made it possible for us to do great work. Everyone likes praise. Sincere praise in front of a group is even better.
The result of our presentation was powerful. Many potential clients came to our booth seeking additional information after the fact. In addition to the marketing buzz our presentation created, it gave us a chance to publicly thank our client.
This experience invariably strengthens your relationships with customers. They’ve had a chance to shine and you glow in the reflected glory. It also can be an opportunity to have some fun with your client and get to know him or her in a less hectic setting.
[contact] Tom Salonek is CEO of Eagan-based Intertech Training and Intertech Software: 651.454.0013, ext. 12; ts******@***************re.com; www.intertechtraining.com; www.intertechsoftware.com
