The Great Client Partner Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Jared Belsky

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  www.thegreatclientpartner.com

  ISBN: 978-1-5445-0093-5

  This book is dedicated to Jeanine, Avner, and Alex. While I do love my job, they are the reason I will always speed home.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Part One: Honing Your Spidey Sense and Improving Your Self-Awareness

  1. Your Client Thinks about You Only 5 Percent of the Time

  2. Get Out of Your Ivory Tower and into the Stores

  3. The Statement of Work Is Not the Bible

  4. Healthy Paranoia Will Drive You to Succeed

  5. Prepare to Present

  6. Organize Effective Arguments

  7. Be Comfortable Talking about Finances

  8. Don’t Protect Territory, Seek Productivity

  9. X + 1

  10. Get on a Plane and Ditch the PowerPoint

  Part Two: Getting the Most Out of Your Team

  11. Be a Servant Leader

  12. Give Factual Feedback to Experts

  13. Run the Meeting. Don’t Let Meetings Run You.

  14. See the Meeting Within the Meeting

  15. Casting

  16. Not Everything Is a Fire

  17. Help People Find Their Superpower, Then Accentuate It

  18. Enthusiasm and Optimism Are Weapons

  19. Not Every Individual Contributor Is Meant to Be a People Leader

  20. Make 6s Your Enemy

  21. Focus

  Part Three: Behave Like a Leader

  22. Don’t Confuse Like and Love, and Avoid Sweatpants!

  23. Get Up and Draw

  24. Communicate without BS

  25. Avoid Communication Sins

  26. Be Patient in Your Career

  27. Be the Reason Your Team Loves to Come to Work, Not Why They Quit

  28. Ask Questions People Just Can’t Prepare For

  29. Alignment, Alignment, Alignment

  30. Understand the Profound Difference Between the FYI and Banging the Desk

  31. The Hard Things about Hard Things for Leaders

  Conclusion

  Thanks

  About the Author

  Foreword

  By Bryan Wiener, CEO of Comscore and Former Chairman and CEO of 360i

  The trajectory of my company and career hit an inflection point on an unseasonably cool day in September 2008—the same September that Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the world edged closer toward a Depression greater than anyone had seen since the 1930s. I sat at my desk that afternoon with my thoughts swarming around my fledgling entrepreneurial company, our few hundred employees, and our consumer-spending-dependent clients in retail, travel, and financial services. Was everything we put our money, sweat, and tears into about to go down the toilet as the credit markets froze up, with our clients literally paralyzed by fear?

  So I was more than a bit skeptical when Anthony Martinelli, a bigger-than-life character in charge of business development and one of our founders, burst into my office and confidently declared that Jared Belsky was the solution to the hole in the leadership team running our mission critical Atlanta office. I’d met Jared a couple of times socially—his wife had been a previous 360i employee, so he’d attended a few agency events in the past. I knew he had started his career in the agency business, got his MBA, worked at Coca-Cola as a brand manager, and was now in some sort of sales and marketing executive position at a fertilizer company.

  I looked up from the spreadsheet showing depressing cash flow scenarios and barked, “You want me to hire a shit salesman to run Atlanta? Are you kidding me?”

  Jared was in New York City visiting family that week, so I begrudgingly offered the only time I had available—my hour-long commute home on the Long Island Railroad, which was near where Jared grew up. As we sat on a crowded train, I said, “Jared, I only have one question for you. The economy is collapsing, our clients think the sky is falling, and the country is clearly in for a rough economic ride. Why in the world should I hire you right now?” He paused for what seemed like an eternity. What followed was a persuasive argument that he was the right guy at a pivotal time in the company’s history. Jared was not yet qualified perfectly on paper for the job, but it was clear that he had big ambitions, big ideas, and big curiosity. Jared argued passionately that we needed to expand into new verticals like Consumer Packaged Goods, that we needed to graduate from just search to being full-service media, that we needed to up-level and professionalize our workforce, and that it was time to go after even bigger clients with tougher challenges. The part of his response that got him the job was he convinced me he was going to be both a learning and teaching machine, and because of that he was uniquely qualified to play a leading role in scaling this company in what was sure to be a chaotic time.

  I’m sure Jared would wholeheartedly agree that over the last ten years, I may have been harder on him than I have been on anyone who ever worked for me. I knew that nurturing his unique combination of talent, introspection, humility, and inspiration would deliver outsized returns for the company and his career. Fortunately for me and everyone else at 360i, this was a great bet.

  Marketing used to be a lot easier. You paid close attention to the 4 Ps—product, price, place, and promotion—and if you executed well, you could increase sales even for mediocre products. Those days have changed dramatically along with the shifts in consumer behavior that everyone in marketing is acutely aware of. As a direct result, the role of marketing service firms has changed and been disrupted like never before. Firms need to deliver highly differentiated specialized services to help their clients navigate a highly disruptive business climate while simultaneously figuring out how to grow both their clients’ and their own bottom line. Whose job is it to figure out how to keep all these disparate things in alignment? The client partner. A job that has always been tough now requires an array of leadership skills that can seem pretty daunting.

  Leadership is a tricky thing. Many people confuse managing a lot of people or having a fancy title with being a leader. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In today’s marketplace where collaboration is essential, influence—not authority—is the currency of leadership. The simple definition of a leader is one who has willing followers, whether they’re your direct reports, coworkers, clients, or partners.

  This book is a practical guide to becoming a better leader and navigating a minefield of challenges, from managing cross-functional teams to having difficult conversations with clients, all delivered in easy-to-digest, relatable stories. I recommend you read the book with a notepad (physical or virtual) next to you to consider how you can apply the lessons in real time to your own universe. And then keep the book near your desk and pull it out when you’re facing a challenging situation with a client or an employee. It’s a good living reminder of the struggles we all deal with as managers and in managing client relationships. Don’t worry about getting all thirty-one lessons perfect all the time. God knows, I haven’t, and Jared shares many of the lessons born out of mistakes learned at 360i. Just remember, being a great leader is a never-ending, lifelong pursuit.

  I have learned so much from Jared over the years, an
d I’m grateful he has taken the time to provide a framework for sharing lessons learned from a career on the marketing frontlines in the most disruptive period in history. The student has become the teacher with insights that can help us all in our professional and personal lives.

  Introduction

  As the CEO of a large marketing communications agency, I’ve had the privilege of hosting a group of eight or so new employees for some candid conversations each month. They are full of curiosity, wonder, and optimism. I encourage them to ask me any question that might help them navigate the business or their careers. Over the years, I have hosted a hundred of these meetings, and they all have their own unique feel. The question that I seem to get most often is a flattering but backhanded one, which amounts to something like, “Hey Jared, how did you get this gig…when you’re still so young?”

  First of all, I am reminded by those who love me that I am no longer all that young. The second and more serious answer is I have been very fortunate to have had many people take an active interest in my career, all whom have helped me understand that very few (if any) skills in the business world are natural.

  More fundamentally, they have helped me understand that most things are not intuitive. There is no such thing as a natural leader, just like there is no such thing as a natural Olympic gold medalist or a natural rocket scientist. Soft skills are not soft at all. They are just more nuanced, harder to teach, and harder to learn. In fact, a very rational argument could be made that it’s easier to master statistics or coding and perhaps far harder to master how to read a room during a big presentation or give a life-changing review to an employee.

  I have spent most of my career in and around communications agencies, Fortune 500 companies, marketing entities, and consultancies, and I can tell you that the secret path to the C-Suite relies on the accumulation of soft skills. The best leaders tend to be vulnerable, are great listeners, are good communicators, have healthy paranoia senses, arbitrate tension well, create trust quickly, motivate others, and speak plainly.

  Sadly, in too many circles, that list can be tossed aside as soft skills that come naturally to some and not to others. How many of us have heard someone say, “Well, Billy is a people person. He is just a naturally good listener.” We were told that certain folks naturally “put others at ease” or “can sell ice in a snowstorm.” Because these things appear to come so easily to some, we got brainwashed into thinking the talents were innate. We also assumed, often with jealousy, that our friends with engineering degrees were smarter and more important.

  I am in violent disagreement with that hypothesis. Learning how to be a great listener, for example, is no different than learning how to be a master at using Excel. Each skill can be broken down into parts to practice, use, and optimize until mastery is reached. However, where there are literally thousands of books, courses, and videos on how to master Excel, there are only a handful of credible books on how to be an active listener or to build trust. Further, most of those books tend to be written from a vantage point where everything is seventy-two degrees and sunny, whereas the truth is that soft skills tend to be most useful when things are chaotic, tense, and high stakes. So why is it the case that so few books exist in this area of industry to help people navigate and improve their soft skills?

  The problem has three origin points. First, most employees do not realize how critical these softer skills can be. Second, the journey to mastery necessitates self-reflection and vulnerability, and neither are comfortable emotional states for the average worker. Third, there are just not many good books on this topic and even fewer teachers.

  We are failing our future leaders. We are taking individual contributors who did well at their craft and putting them in charge of many other young workers. We are then disappointed when they don’t lead well. We are surprised during their first review cycle that they demotivate more people than they motivate. We are surprised when they can’t seem to arbitrate arguments on their team or they do not know how to run a meeting with twenty people in the room.

  If you are reading this book, it is because you want to grow as a leader and ensure you personally invest in more soft-skill acquisition or because you want to find more ways to pass it on to others. Even more specifically, in certain fields like advertising, marketing, creative, consulting, and most marketing communications businesses, the difference between thriving and failure is emotional intelligence and true understanding of those around you.

  At the end of the day, what makes a great leader in this business is the ability to deal with the hard things, to anticipate complex moments, and to work around them successfully. Navigating those moments is what defines your career.

  Here are some examples of those hard things:

  How to have a conversation with a client about fees they think are too high.

  How to tell an all-star employee they no longer seem to be an all-star.

  How to tell a client you overspent their budget by $220K. Oops.

  How to recognize when your product is poor and when the market beat you.

  How to listen for signals that your business is in trouble.

  How to convey bad news to your boss faster than good news.

  How to indirectly influence creative, production, sales, product, or executive management.

  How to arbitrate an argument between analytics, creative, and media.

  It’s dealing with those hard things and all the accompanying nuances that inspired me to write this book and share the benefit of all the amazing advice I have received, as well as the lessons I’m still learning.

  Whether you work at a services company, an agency, a consultancy, a customer group at a Fortune 500 company, or any company or division that has clients (internal or external) in need of leading, I expect this book will be applicable to you. I hope it’s a book you can share with those curious souls you work with who are trying to hone their craft. I have been so lucky to have been taught what seems unteachable, and my main purpose in writing this book is to pay it forward.

  Part One

  Part One: Honing Your Spidey Sense and Improving Your Self-Awareness

  Lesson 1

  1. Your Client Thinks about You Only 5 Percent of the Time

  “What you need to understand is that my pie chart is the opposite of yours.”

  —Former Client, Jean Pundiak, AstraZeneca

  When I was twenty-four or so, working at Avenue A (now SapientRazorfish), a leading digital marketing agency, as a hybrid account/media director on the AstraZeneca business, my amazing client, Jean Pundiak, was well overdue (in my mind) to send me approvals on creative display banners to traffic and run. So one Monday morning, I aggressively pursued that permission. Then again on Monday afternoon and on Tuesday afternoon. I was getting worried. Did she not care about her banner ads getting rotated in? I reached out again on Wednesday. Finally, by Thursday morning, she called and said she’d come over to my offices to chat.

  This wouldn’t be a big deal, except that I was in New York City and she was hours away in Delaware. I knew whatever she had to say must be important.

  She burst into my office the next day and with a slight smile, she proceeded to draw two pie charts on the whiteboard. She carried the wisdom of someone trying to school a well-intentioned twenty-four-year-old.

  This is what she drew.

  The circle on the left indicates that Jean spent 5 percent of her time focused on me, our agency, and our activities, and she spent 95 percent of her time on other matters, most likely consisting of HR, legal, distribution, PR, sales—and everything else required of her position.

  The drawing on the right, meanwhile, was me. It indicated I spent 95 percent of my time thinking about her. She was the queen in my life—my client. The fact that there is such a gap in these pie charts was the crux of her visit.

  I had to better understand how to fit my needs as her pa
rtner into that smaller available sliver she had available for me. I had to be humble, efficient, and helpful. Not to worry, though. This is only a negative if you are a needy, not self-aware, unconfident client partner. (But that’s not you if you are reading this book!)

  The worst sin a Great Client Partner can commit is not knowing where they stand or the context for which the battlefield lines are drawn, which can contribute to low self-orientation. Poor self-orientation in the services business is when you are spending too much time focused on your needs and that of your agency versus understanding the client and their ecosystem. It’s vitally important to truly grasp the ecosystem in which your client spends their day to better understand where you, your needs, your advice, your requests, and your team fit in.

  A Great Client Partner comes to work every morning with one singular goal: to advance the best interests of your client’s business in a way that is mutually compatible with your own agency or enterprise. Now, while we strive for mutual benefit (a win-win for the agency and the client), the fact is that the agency must live and die with their client in mind.

  This means from the time you wake up until the time your head hits the pillow, you are dreaming and thinking of your clients and their business, and you’re parsing every email and every word spoken on the Tuesday status call. “Oh my god, the client just went silent for three seconds and put us on mute. What could that mean?”

  We obsess, we parse, we scrutinize, and we even look at short or curt emails and wonder if the client still likes us.

  Okay, so what is the issue? What is there to learn here?

  The thing to understand is your client is not thinking about you in that same way. This is nothing personal—it’s practical. In most cases, your client has a long list of work to do. Theirs is a world that is often bigger than the slice you ever get to see. They have to think about pricing, distribution, HR, career mapping, commodities prices, and the like. In many cases, if your client is a Fortune 1000 company, they experience reorganizations, layoffs, new C-suite leadership shifts—and those things rock their world such that they can’t always focus on, say, pushing your new tagline through legal that Thursday. However, you continue to forge ahead, wondering why they simply won’t confirm the details you asked for around the fifty-two-person integrated planning meeting coming up on the calendar. You just don’t understand how it takes that long for these approvals.