Life’s Greatest Reward
“Evolving is life’s greatest accomplishment and its greatest reward”
Ray Dahlio
4 Client Trajectories
Every prospective client will tell you that they are looking for a long-term partner, whether that is true or not. It sounds better, and gives you the impression that they are worth investing in disproportionately to the actual value of the client’s business.
But all clients of professional services providers are on one of four trajectories. Some clients are on a long trajectory, some short, but they will all follow one of the following:
- Take it in-house
- Move to another provider
- Kill the program [that requires the professional service]
- Stay forever
Many clients will eventually take steps to do the work you’re providing for them on their own. If they are ambitious, committed to growth, and having success with your service there will come a point when they outgrow you. Outgrowing a client requires multifaceted investment and attention from senior resources. Clients on a trajectory for in-house will hit the inflection point where you can’t argue the cost-benefit ratio – it’s just a matter of when.
Many clients will eventually move their business to another provider. If they are ambitious but find excuses and blame their problems on others, there will come a time when the going gets tough. You will take the fall when that happens. Even if you owned your services at or above the industry standard and the client’s issues contributed to the hiccups, the client will fault you for the lack of foresight that they expected from a provider. Clients on a trajectory for another provider have track records of turnover and mediocrity.
Some clients will kill the program that requires the professional service they hired you for. If they are not ambitious and take responsibility for failure, but do not experience success with you, they will bring an end to things. This could mean shutting down a business, but more often than not means shutting down the area of business that necessitated your existence. Clients on this trajectory tend to find their way there within 6-12 months and operate rationally.
Some clients stay with you forever. If they are ambitious but busy, they will tolerate varying degrees of success and even temporary decline. It is imperative that you are generally working on their business and earnestly caring about their success. Clients on this trajectory lack the will to stomach switching costs. They rarely sustain breakout growth but rarely make dramatic moves.
Knowing what trajectory your clients are on will help guide you to make better investments in clients and into services. Helping a client move along their trajectory faster will improve the relationship, increase the business they do with you and reduce missed expectations on your end.
Opportunity or Obstacle
If someone offers you an amazing opportunity and you’re not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later.
Richard Branson
Are You Ready To Take a Title Shot?
Competition is rising for advertisers. But it’s not just rising Cost-per-Click bids, it’s rising for the attention span of consumers everywhere. The average 30-second ad spot for the Super Bowl has been over $5M for the past 4 years. $5M to reach over 100M consumers.
For advertisers who wish that more people knew about their product or their service, the options are out there. And obviously not all options have a $5M barrier to entry. It just so happens that the cost of awareness is more than just the cost.
The stakes involved in advertising at scale for Small and Medium-sized Businesses is equivalent to that of a title fight. You must be willing to put everything on the line.
As I’ve found, it’s not that options to gain awareness are in short supply. It’s not that marketers don’t understand how to get consumers to take action. There’s just a lack of brands willing to take a title shot.
Most companies aren’t willing to train relentlessly, risk losing on national TV and accept the reality that training for the next fight starts the very next day. Most companies are legitimately afraid that they’ll come home bruised and bloodied. Or worse – that the fight might their career.
It’s okay if you’re not ready for a title shot today. Many winners work their way up strategically before putting it all on the line. But if you want to win championships or truly be the best in your industry, being interested isn’t good enough. You must be committed.
If not, step aside because someone else is already willing to take that title shot.
Anticipating Amazon’s Next Moves With Principles, Then Speculation
Experts in my field are advancing “What Should Brands Expect From Amazon in 2019?” theories. These theories are expectedly speculative, ranging from data-driven to gut-driven. If you’re not up to speed with the data or the 2018 in review, these are two particularly good articles:
- Amazon 2018 Review published on Vox
- Online Marketplaces 2018 Review by Marketplace Growth
When it comes to theories, let’s remember that nobody can predict the future. Que sera sera. Let’s also agree that anticipation is an advanced leadership skill worth developing. Bezos just emphatically reiterated this in this short 60 second video (shared on Linkedin).
Any theories about the future should aspire to use principles as described Stephen Covey’s famous book and Ray Dahlio’s recent book, Principles. These naturally occurring rules about how things work produce stronger conclusions. For example, one applicable principle is that Amazon’s eComm business is governed by rules of a search engine. 75% of customers start their visit with a search (according to Amazon). Search engines have been around longer than Amazon, and there are more of them to study.
Amazon is a huge company, comprised of modularized units which is brilliantly described in this post by Ben Thompson. Because Amazon’s isolated modules behave differently from one another but on the whole the organization moves ore uniformly, theories founded in macro level behaviors (top-down) are superior to micro-level behaviors (bottom-up). An example of this is that Amazon’s responsibility to shareholders will supersede the responsibility of its individual teams like Amazon Fresh. Amazon will follow profit and scale wherever it exists.
Lastly, assume that past decisions are an unreliable foundation for generating conclusions about the future. Amazon is a company that moves fast, tries new things and thwarts convention. It’s better to look at Amazon Leadership Principles to anticipate what they’ll do: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles. Not only is this a solid foundation for developing hypotheses, but it’s also fun.
Hopefully this helps guide your interpretation of the predictions, and informs your ability to make your own theories.
The Wilderness
True belonging is not passive. It’s not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It’s not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it’s safer. It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments.
Brene Brown
Another Day in Paradise
It’s 2019 and conditions are perfect for young professionals with a knack for digital. Especially for optimists like me. After all, eCommerce is growing, Amazon is growing, business is growing. I’ve been able to ride the wave by showing up consistently with a desire to learn and grow. End-consumers and my clients are always willing to shop something that might be better than what they currently have. As Bezos says, “customers are divinely discontent.”
While I’m optimistic about the future, I am troubled. It is so rare to find a digital marketer painting something other than a rosy fucking picture of the future in this environment where everyone is always shopping. Keeping up with voraciously increasing expectations is not easy. To do it, you must be outstanding in a lot of areas. Few people are outstanding, and even fewer companies are outstanding.
Pretending to be outstanding is far easier than actually being outstanding. It’s a lot easier to pretend to be outstanding but only be average. Odds are that this will probably be an average blog. But I hope that in the process of writing a lot of average blog articles I’ll deliver some outstanding ones along the way.
…you can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.
Seth Godin