Comments on: saying no is a powerful service to offer clients

By: How to Effectively Say No « Communiqué PR Blog

How to Effectively Say No « Communiqué PR Blog — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:27:10 +0000

[...] director for advertising agency Victors and Spoils, recently published a blog post titled, “Saying no is a powerful service to offer clients,” which I think captures some great points. Bud writes, “If communicated the right way, [...]

By: Stephen Walker

Stephen Walker — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:35:09 +0000

Clients and agencies need greater fluency in defining marketing problems and their relationship to business issues. The more that client and agency options fragment and broaden ,it becomes critical to be able to set out marketing strategies, metrics, cengagment architectures and audience plans much more clearly, much earlier. This is increasingly emerging as a core need for younger “connections/account/technology” strategists. Its no longer about being the third member of the creative team but about getting to back to what planning was always supposed to be about- the optimum links between a business and consumers.

By: reeegan

reeegan — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:23:01 +0000

totally, wholeheartedly agree. I think this is a bit more systemic than just a philosophy change in an industry though. Our particular industry has been built on these types of projects for a very long time, so saying “no”, requires some people admitting they don’t have a function or purpose (or it doesn’t require their full work day), which as you can expect is a difficult thing to do. I’m reminded of the Smykowski character in Office Space… “I have people skills damnit!”

By: Jake P

Jake P — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:26:33 +0000

In my last corporate job, the company had an official, written “Yes Policy.” The essence was that, as employees, we had to say “yes” to any client request, no matter how wrongheaded or counterproductive.

Behind the scenes, we always called it the “Yes, But” policy, because you were also obligated to explain the ramifications of the client request–extra costs, delayed deadlines, etc.

Saying “no”–as you say, politely and in the right way–would’ve been the smarter move in many cases, though I suppose that the yes-with-unappealing-strings-attached achieved a similar endgame.

By: Aditya Anupkumar

Aditya Anupkumar — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:18:21 +0000

been lurking around your site for a bit, Bud; completely agree with saying no to clients when it doesn’t actually answer their business problems, and doesn’t take their business anywhere spectacular.

My own focus on work has been from the beginning about getting into clients’ businesses – it’s important to say “No”, true; but you certainly get a whole lot more leeway when you’re proactively helping shape their business strategy from the start.

Some clients may not be so enthusiastic at first – but as that second chart showed, and as experience says – they’ll be more than happy to have you on board if they think it’ll help them and their companies grow.