“Why do you think the same five guys make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker EVERY YEAR? What, are they the luckiest guys in Las Vegas?”
– Mike McDermott, Rounders
Last night, my wife and I were having amazing conversations with new friends with whom we are infinitely impressed. The husband of the couple is running his own agency and when I asked how it was going he sighed and responded resignedly, “Ya know…. clients are gonna be clients.” Having worked in agencies for 8 years, I understood what he meant and I hazard to assume that anyone reading this also understands what it means. He elaborated later in the evening, “Everyone has been marketed to all their lives so they think they’re marketers, too.”
It’s a little disrespectful to a marketer to assume that all of their training, expertise, and results can be dismissed by a client’s gut feeling or opinions on why someone should be their next customer. It’s disrespectful in the same way that it would be if a marketer told the CEO that they weren’t fit to sit in the chair and they are going to run the company the way the marketer would. Sure, we can all have opinions – and we do. But, in the face of expertise, those opinions ideally should be expressed and turned into suggestions that hopefully lead to collaboration, at best, or considered at worst.
See, marketing isn’t all art. I’ve often compared it to Jazz, part art, part math/science. When you chalk it all up to gut instincts this gives you the license to ignore the actual needs of the audience you’re trying to reach, take credit for the wins (if they come), and easily dismiss (the most likely) losses to bad luck. This isn’t marketing. This is gambling on a hunch. Anyone can do that. Children can do that. Sometimes that kid might be right, but the odds aren’t going to be in that kid’s favor.
What I suspect these clients are really looking for is glory.
“I didn’t listen to the experts. I drowned out the noise. I knew, in my heart and because of my experience, that THIS IS GOING TO WORK. Everyone said I was an idiot – but it worked so well that, against all odds, here we are at the top of the pile.” This quote comes from a Wall Street Journal article that I entirely made up. I’ve had these same conversations with myself at various points in my life. It’s a small lift that ideally drives massive results – so it’s a desirable way to go. It’s also mostly the stuff of fiction. If only we had the technology to know what’s behind the motivation of these clients, I’d bet dollars to donuts that visions of the future like this drive the behavior that suddenly makes marketing non-experts turn into…. marketing experts. If it’s not this thinking, what could it possibly be?
Alright, annoyances aside, it’s a magnificent waste of resources for the client to behave this way. Theoretically, you’ve employed a marketing expert to help get you where you want to go. That marketing expert has earned your trust through soft skills, their past results, their ability to see the start point, the endpoint, and all of the steps in between. We experts were hired to do a very specific job. What happens when we are told that someone else with a different skill set is going to do it? Also, we experts aren’t free. So, because of this behavior, the client wastes on-hand expertise, accountability, money, and worst of all, time. What a waste.
Can you imagine if people dismissed other experts? The toilet’s clogged so they call a plumber and then proceed to tell the plumber that he has to work toward (or validate) their assumption that by changing the showerhead, the toilet will work properly again. Would they do it to an electrician? To a proctologist? Are the stakes any lower in those scenarios?
The bottom line is this: Trust your experts. We want to be on the hook for the results. We even want your collaboration, but we can’t prove our worth and make your company a case study if we’re being directed to ignore the things that make us experts.
By the way, if you’re one of my clients and you’re reading this and wondering if it’s you…. absolutely not. You’re great. I’m talking about a different client.
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