The Unspoken Skill of Great Planners

We spend a lot of time speaking about planners craft of getting to a great strategy or brief. However, we seldom talk about the other side of a great planner: The ability to sell the shit out of work with conviction. Think of it like this: taking your skills away from the safety of Powerpoint and into a client’s text messages.

We need to hear more planners telling the story of that award-winning creative that was saved by texting the client a reminder that this would be the 4th round of ‘on brief’ creative that they would kill.

That they never wait for the official feedback and always catch the client in the hallway afterwards.

That they purposely leaked the ideas to the day-to-day client so they could get positive momentum around the idea in the meeting the next day in front of the most senior client.

That they got the social platform to co-present because they knew that held weight in the client’s eyes.

We should teach planners the art of getting their hands dirty in the selling of ideas, otherwise we risk getting planners perfecting the art of Ted Royer’s Step Back Planning.