That’s enough about me, let’s talk about you; what do you think about me?

After I gave the first of my two presentations at?HubSpot’s?INBOUND? conference, one of the listeners in the audience reached out by email:

“It was great to connect up in Boston this week and as I said I really enjoyed your presentation.?I was wondering if you’d be interested in working in some capacity with our team.?I ’d love to get your insight as we embark on our next phase of our agency.”

I emailed back; more emails ensued, followed by phone calls, then a letter of proposal, after which my newfound client hired me as an executive coach.?

We began the engagement by considering any number of options – repositioning the agency, a revisit of the shop’s?Creative Brief, a website revamp – before we agreed the best way to approach the assignment was to start with agency credentials.?Our shared goal was to better tell the agency’s story to prospective clients, but after years – yes years, not weeks or months – attempting to chart a new approach, we reached a fundamental, irreconcilable difference of opinion.?What started out full of promise ended full of disappointment.?

The client’s original the credentials presentation was a?monologue, beginning with “This is who we are,” followed by, “These are our capabilities and here are our people,” then ending with “Why you should hire us.”?If there still was time – many times there wasn’t – my client?might?get to talking about the prospect’s needs, issues, and challenges, without giving much thought or attention to any of these matters beforehand.?

Believing?dialogue?trumps monologue, I suggested we turn the presentation on its head, beginning, rather than ending, with what the client is looking for, then proceeding from there.?If we?never?got to talking about the agency, no worries; it simply meant my client succeeded in engaging the prospect about their business.

“We can’t do this; and even if we wanted to, we don’t have time to do research” is what I heard in response to what I proposed, to which I replied, “Why not??Any smart new business person knows here?always?is time to address what a prospective client is looking for in an agency.?Isn’t this what new business is about?”

I explained if you have as little as an hour or two, you?Google-research the client, its competitors, the marketplace. If you have a bit more time, say a day or two, you buy the product or service being offered, use it then formulate impression about both the buy and the process of buying it.?If you have even more time, perhaps as long as a week or two, if you’re feeling ambitious, or if you truly want to distinguish your shop from others, and if the prospective client agrees, you reach out the prospect’s current and future customers, with a brief but pointed email-based survey your team composes and fields.?

Regardless of which option you pursue, you use what you learn to formulate thoughtful questions and arrive at preliminary hypotheses; you build these into the opening of your presentation.?You do this well enough, and you might not even get to the part about you and your colleagues, given what you present engenders discussion, debate, and even more questions from the prospective client.

I tried to persuade my client once, then again, and again, and still?again,?each time?marshalling my arguments in favor of such an approach.?In the end, instead of following my advice, he fired me.?He couldn’t have been nicer about it, but he fired me.?We couldn’t agree on the new business presentation, which pretty much guaranteed we wouldn’t agree on anything else.

The other day I read what Search Consultant Lisa Colantuono pointed out in a?presentation?to independent agencies at a recent?Worldwide Partners?summit:?“You can’t win two battles in one pitch.?Stop trying to sell your agency and build relationship at same time. Focus on the relationship.”

Focus on the relationship. This might seem like a revelation to Colantuono, but I have been?writing?and saying (persuading, pleading, cajoling actually) as much for more than 20 years, beginning with the first edition of?The Art of Client Service, continuing in the two subsequent editions, and reinforced in my blog, workshops, and interviews, being nothing if not consistent and insistent on the matter.

What does it mean to focus on the relationship?

It means opening your pitch talking?not?about you and your agency, but instead about the prospective client you’re striving to convert to an actual client.

Will my former client follow this advice?

He won’t, but he should.

Will you follow this advice?

One can hope.