You Are Only As Good As Your Results
This is truth.
You can put together the best-looking PowerPoint presentation, the most well thought out communications plan, or the most concise messaging for a marketing campaign.
But all of it amounts to a hill of beans if you don’t get results.
Clients don’t set aside significant portions of their budgets just to hear you tell them how you’re going to generate leads or get their name in the press.
They pay you to put their money where your mouth is and generate results.
This is a mantra I’ve always subscribed to, and it has always been top-of-mind when I deal with clients, both old and new.
Sometimes you do have to temper expectations by counseling them that the Wall Street Journal won’t write about their hiring announcement, for instance. But those moments are few and far between, and most of the clients I’ve worked with have realistic expectations.
It’s up to us to help meet those expectations.
It’s very easy to wrap yourself in the warm cocoon of deck building and editing that we, as communications people, are so fond of. But, eventually, you have to ship and start giving the client hard numbers that map toward agreed-upon metrics.
Otherwise, what separates you from everyone else?
Not a whole lot.
So the next time you start planning for a new campaign, put the emphasis on how you plan to meet the metrics, then work as hard as you can to deliver.
