The Great Client Partner

by Jared Belsky

  I submit that the key is to get up and draw.

  In the entire human catalog of arguments, every issue can be arbitrated with five basic drawings, which I’ve created here. If mastered, these illustrations allow great leaders to achieve nirvana in arbitration and problem-solving in most tense situations.

  Situation 1: The Mountain to Climb

  You have a client that has one hundred thousand unique users and insists on reaching a million. This seems like a grueling mountain to climb, and even the client is skeptical of the ability to improve ten times over. How do you make them confident in your plan versus one that perhaps seems like it was hatched on the spot? The key is to reverse engineer your thesis, unpack it, and make it seem as substantive as it actually is. The other key is to get the client to get into the mix with you and debate the different sources of growth. Debate is good. Silence is danger.

  So get up and draw.

  The reverse waterfall is a famous construct taken mostly from the consulting field and was taught to me by Jason Trevison, CFO at CarGurus and a board member of LegalZoom. It does two things exceptionally well. It takes what could seem like an insurmountable goal and breaks it down into achievable composite parts.

  Second, it gets you and the client talking, almost horse trading, between what components are likely to ladder up to the larger goal. The point here, as in all these drawings, is that you and the client are now talking, and even more important, the client now sees a believable plan of attack that is both numerical and descriptive.

  Situation 2: Too Many Ideas

  Picture yourself in a swirling brainstorm with multiple agencies, consultants, tech providers, and clients. Ideas are flying around like gnats. There seems to be no rudder. The problem is not too many ideas, but rather there are too many good ideas. Or perhaps too many good ideas from too many people, with too many motives. What do you do?

  What is needed here is the four-box filter. It is as basic as possible, so simple my kids could draw it. And that is the genius behind this drawing. It creates choice. Choice is difficult. What was harder in college, writing a tight, cohesive three-page paper, or vomiting up twenty pages containing anything you could think of? Being selective is hard. However, guiding smart choices is the very core of a Great Client Partner.

  I also like this framework because it has two dimensions: time and impact. The top axis is about the size of the idea, while the vertical axis addresses when this can be accomplished. Experiment with this construct, but there are plenty of other ways to label the grid, which is why it’s so powerful. Steve Jobs famously used it when he made his comeback to Apple to help his team of engineers simplify the number of products they were making.

  Situation 3: Too Many Features

  You are working with your client on delivering a brand new website. They have a large wish list of features they want to include. As the client leader in the room, you feel worried, and the client feels like the agency or consulting firm is saying no a lot. How do you make this meeting more productive?

  You use a prioritization chart.

  This illustration works really well on the fly. The best thing about it is that you can make it interactive and give your client the marker, or put these up with Velcro and let the client come up and share their view about where things should be plotted.

  Situation 4: Misused Resources

  You are the media lead on a piece of digital business. Your team seems to be spending a lot of time on reporting that does not appear to be valued by the client, and it’s certainly not important to your team. Soon, you find this person is spending so much time on reporting that they are not optimizing the media. The client needs reporting, but you need this person working on the media. Meanwhile, procurement is hardly interested in your plight.

  This is a 100 percent stacked bar that matches input (resources) against output (desired outcome). It’s meant to show that what you are doing is either aligned with the desired outcome of a project or it’s not. What this graph illustrates in our example is that 80 percent of the time of the team is being spent on reporting, yet they are only delivering 20 percent of the output and value.

  This graph is meant to be a blunt instrument, but play it out. At least now the client can grab the marker, hit the whiteboard and counter with a different percentage. At least you are both now debating the drawing and not each other’s language. Essentially, the drawing has become the mediator.

  STAR Grid

  The STAR Grid is another way to tackle this scenario. It uses the Situation-Threat-Action-Result format. It allows you to write something on a whiteboard and then debate with the client about how to size up the situation. It provides for only a small amount of space, which forces both you and the client to be concise in your remarks and how you size up the situation and conflict.

  Three Habit Changes

  Next time you feel conflict between your team or with your client, use one of these drawings. Get up and draw!

  Teach the drawings and the concepts behind them to the junior people on your team, and give them opportunities to put them into practice.

  Get your client used to the notion that all meetings will have whiteboard moments.

  Your FROM → TO personal goal:

  FROM someone who allows escalation of words and rhetoric, TO leading successful mediations and productive debate via drawing and framing.

  Lesson 24

  24. Communicate without BS

  “I don’t use fancy words and am not as smooth as others I compete against, but people understand what I say, and I am consistent with my words and deeds.”

  —Bruce Belsky, Attorney and Dad

  The problem for the current eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-old generation is that they are facing three headwinds:

  There is a culture of buzzwords that is here to stay.

  There is massive discomfort with conflict.

  The art of brevity is gone.

  This has led to identifying three deadly communication sins in the workplace:

  Burying the lede and weaselly openings—these are weak, muddled opening statements.

  Using a passive voice—when you say, “Mistakes were made,” as opposed to, “I made a mistake,” you conceal who’s responsible.

  Ending weakly—this happens when you don’t have specific actions to take.

  Fear not. There are a few things you can do to improve how you communicate (if it’s your problem) or improve how you coach plainspokenness (if you are in the mentor role).

  Headlines

  The key phrase here to understand is “don’t bury the lede.” It’s important to understand the power of starting your email or presentation with the main fact you want to convey. Look at these before-and-after examples of a simulated email I’m drafting to my boss. These are meant to show the power of the headline.

  Before:

  Sarah, hope all is well. We both know that, for years, we have wanted to invest further into our performance creative capability. I think the marriage of creative and data continues on full force. With dynamic creative that can be fueled by CRM data, this field gets so interesting and of further importance to our clients. We should really explore this and gather the leadership to figure out next steps.

  After:

  Sarah, using CRM data for better creative solutions is critical, and we should have an A+ solution in market by Q4. I will arrange a meeting for the key people by the end of this week, prepare a preread and agenda, and lead this project. Do I have your permission to continue?

  Nothing frustrates senior executives more than circuitous writing or fluff. Lead with the headline, follow with an action item, and then close with a deadline to act. Trust me on this. I know from experience. My chairman once went out and bought an hourglass to help reinforce brevity on my part. I only wish I was joking. Granted, I am certain I was not the only reason, but I sure can tell
you I was part of it.

  He would tend to ask me smart and open questions, such as, “Jared, how is the team doing?” Traditionally, my answer would start with color commentary on each and every team member, and then, after several minutes, I would get to the headline: “Morale is very strong right now, our best team in years.” That was all he needed to hear.

  Just about any executive worth their salt wants to hear every answer in the following format:

  Headline first (one sentence)

  one supporting detail

  one concern

  what you are doing to address that concern

  Use this recipe for headlines and keep your boss from buying an hourglass.

  Active Voice

  Using an active voice is a key trait to persuasion for an account person.

  Look at the mundane matters in the example below and notice how important using the active voice is, even in those sentences. In active voice, the subject is doing the acting, and with the passive voice, the subject is being acted upon. Passive voice often results in sentences that are longer than necessary or that needlessly obscure the subject that the verb relates to.

  Active

  Passive

  Billy is building a house.

  A house is being built by Billy.

  You stole the cookie from the jar.

  The cookie was stolen from the jar by you.

  I can’t get no satisfaction.

  No satisfaction can be gotten by me.

  Neil said yes.

  Things were said.

  Like everyone, clients relish straightforward conversation and speech patterns. Don’t say, “An error has been made, and we are very sorry,” when you can and should say, “Our team made an error. The cost implication is $12,000. We will format a plan to rebate that money by January 12. Thank you for your patience, and we are sorry.”

  Here is a great example of a jumbled BS email, what the client likely took from it, and then the better version of what should have been authored.

  What was written:

  “Team members are working twelve-hour days to accommodate our daily workload, which I’ve come to discern as not the exception but the norm. I would like to partner with you on the solve. This is not just for July, but moving forward in hopes to find a better place where the right work is getting done by the right people with the right priority. Please let me know if you’re open for a discussion on how to solve.”

  What the client heard:

  I can’t manage my world right now and need help doing my job. My feelings are also getting involved, so really, I’d just like a hug and some ice cream, and maybe you to tell me what to do next.

  A better more active version:

  There is a conflict of priority with the current number of deliverables under deadline. Based on our attention to recent conversations, we propose to act upon the following prioritization schedule unless you suggest otherwise.

  Deliverable X—Friday

  Deliverable Y—the following week

  Deliverable Z—the first week of October

  Let us know if there are any concerns with this approach and we will discuss a new solution. Thanks!

  Plain English

  Speaking in plain English just means using simple words, as opposed to buzzwords, overly technical, specialized jargon, and speaking as a human. Over the years, it seems truth and grit have been polished away in favor of obfuscation. When is the last time you had someone at work tell you that he “just plain dropped the ball?” It probably doesn’t happen too often. Instead, people have a tendency to complicate their responses in order to save face, but this usually backfires. Even though most people learned as children that when you try to hide the fact that you made a mistake by being clever with language, you were still going to be found out, usually through a series of uncomfortable interrogations of your speech. So just be up front at the beginning.

  Also, people use twenty words when a few will do. What I can tell you is that executives are desperately searching for people who will share bad news as fast as they will share good news. On the client side, they are desperate for agency partners who speak in simple terms and can be trusted.

  Powerful Endings

  This is the art and craft of always ending an email with some action statement.

  Too many emails trail off: “And so we will circle back and regroup and all get together within the next month or so to talk about progress.” Not that I don’t like to circle back as much as the next American, but this is a call for nothing.

  I have a good friend named Anthony. Anthony has had a great career as the head of sales for one of the best tech companies in the country. Besides being a relatively good-looking and tall Italian guy, charismatic, and a scratch golfer who can also sing, he happens to be loved by clients because he is not just passionate about their world, but they can always understand him. If his team is not performing well, he is the first to put his arm around the client and say, “Listen, Bob, I need to be the first one to tell you that we are bleeping the bed and not living up to the promises we made you. I am going to get our top three minds in a room and get you a plan of attack within forty-eight hours that will get us back to where we should be. I am sorry. This is important to me.”

  Anthony understands the power of plain English combined with passion.

  Three Habit Changes

  Make a game of it to keep jargon in-check. When someone on your team talks about “gaining traction,” for example, call them out politely. Words that should be pointed out might include (but aren’t limited to): circle back, marinate, stakeholders, strategic, missed the mark. The point here is that if you, as a leader, do not correct useless language, you are condoning it.

  Go find fifty random emails you have written to clients recently. Print them out and highlight every sentence where you know you sound like a bag of hot air. Circle buzzwords as well as every sentence where you say nothing but take thirty words to do so. Now, go ahead and see how much yellow you have. Is that how you want to sound?

  Before sending an email, read it again, start to finish, and ask yourself if it has a ring of authenticity to it. If not, rewrite it in a way you wish people would communicate with you.

  Your FROM → TO personal goal:

  FROM indirect and passive language patterns, TO a direct and active voice.

  Lesson 25

  25. Avoid Communication Sins

  Client leaders are always on the frontline. Most of your actions are responses to hairy issues. Given that, you can count on the fact that you often need to communicate under some level of pressure. Not falling into pressure-related communication traps like the ones described in the previous lesson is an essential attribute of the Great Client Partner. Here are some more strategies to improve your communication.

  Pro Tip: Use Your Email Drafts

  For processing your thoughts, prioritizing your messages, and just getting out your frustrations, email drafts are cheaper than a therapist and just as effective. Your employees, clients, and partners (and maybe even loved ones) will thank you for venting your thoughts in a draft that you’ll never actually send.

  This is a visual from the actual panel on the left side of my inbox (at time of picture). It shows I had drafted almost four thousand emails that never went out. I began those emails but then never sent them, all for various reasons.

  The top two reasons are:

  To count to ten

  To better finish the thought with more rigor

  Of the two, counting to ten is the real reason I use my email drafts. The truth is it takes
no courage or management ability to hammer out a mean, rude, or angry email. For a brief moment, it feels better than anything to get your frustrations out on a keyboard and write “WTF” or some such oblique phrase, but it takes greater discipline to hold that email. So what I might do is draft it and then count to ten, maybe sleep on it for a night, and then do a ton of deleting and corrections the next day. You will be a far better leader if you get into that habit.

  What’s more, it’s a sad truth that email can make or break your career as a client leader. Tone, timing, and content all have to be perfect, and that is difficult if you are a living, breathing, emotional person, and not a cyborg.

  Before sending, you might even want to print out the email, read it out loud and ask yourself a simple question. Could you comfortably say this out loud if someone you respected was in the room with you?

  Be Old School

  I mean it. Be Miles Davis. Be old school. Be jazz.

  We have enough corporate pop stars who run huge machines focused only on bringing attention to themselves. In a lot of ways, that’s great, but being old school in a new school world only makes being old school cooler.