Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 1:49AM
No posts in over a month...now that's a stale blog. The issue goes back to one of the original questions, to blog or not to blog. The risks are numerous: frequency of posting, relevance of topics, saying something stupid, blog forum or specific topics may undermine appearance of professionalismm. Yet, in the face of these risks, David and I chose to adopt the blog in order to promote transparency in our work. Of course, not blogging in a month isn't very transparent. OK, I'll work on that. Actually, I'm going to keep working on a bunch of things.
So then, what's been going on over the past few months?
In short, LOTS, and also, in honesty, not enough, and yet, in fairness perhaps, the right things.
Among other things, the last three months has included the fall semester at the Atkinson Graduate School of Management at Willamette University. This semester I've had the opportunity to teach my first course, Research for Marketing Decisions. There's much to say here, much that I've learned. Let me save this topic for a complete post following finals (two short weeks away).
In addition to teaching, I've been developing a course for the spring semester in the area of databases and data access for managers and research analysts. Preparing for this course has been a good way to solidify what I've learned over the past decade regarding databases from a user perspective as well as incorporate some of the fantastic tools and work in the area of open source database and data analysis technology from such organizations as the R project, OpenOffice, Palo, and others. This should also be another complete post, so let me put this aside for the moment.
All of this to finally get to the real reason for this post, the topic of rainmaking and relationship building. In setting this up, let's consider a simple model of the enterprise with only two components (Yes, Dan, I'm stealing one of your constructs). The first component is production or whatever is needed to make the product. The second component is marketing and sales or whatever is needed to position, price, and sell the product. In thinking about launching a data analytic consultancy (that really is what we're trying to launch here even if it's not been made completely clear), the early focus was on the production component and thinking through the necessary processes, chops, tools to get the job done. Now we get to reality where we're saying "I know this has value but how do we communicate that value and to whom do we try to communicate that value?"
As I reflect on the consultants I've worked with in the past, I can identify two modes of operation with respect to client relationships. The first model is where the words are used (partnership model, relationship, win/win, etc.) but the actions are not 100% in line with those words. This is I call the sales model; we sell our services to you in the same way we might sell a car. The second model is the true relationship model and is characterized by an earnest effort to seek win/win, understand client needs, and the strength to say 'no' when it's not in the best interest of the client. While I won't name names with respect to the first model, I will say that John Bird of TNS and Scott Laing and Chris Robson of Parametric Marketing are excellent examples of consultants who follow the true relationship model.
Surely I've already tipped my hand and you know that the true relationship model, one in which win/win is the prize, is the goal of tenpoundsledge. But relationship doesn't happen overnight and so we've) been thinking about how best to build the relationships we have, we've been developing our ability to listen for needs, and we've been telling a few folks about what we have to offer and getting feedback on that.
That's it. Relationship.
It's late so I'm going to leave it here for now and pick it up tomorrow or maybe later today which would be even later but then, oh well.
MD
