Strategy Basics: Getting your Client’s Ducks in a Row
By Jaan Orvet & Andreas Carlsson
29 March 2010 | Category: Web Apps
This is a companion post to "Strategy Basics: It’s Really all about having a Plan" from 11 March. It is a good idea to skim that post before reading this one. Otherwise the combination of the web and orange flavored milk might not make much sense.
Congratulations, your client the Think Vitamin Dairy have had a few weeks to mull over what you presented and are now fully on-board. They are super excited about how you will help them sell more orange flavored milk. So exited in fact that they seem to be rushing it a bit.
You always want a client to drive their project forward but sometimes you need to slow them down. Preparation and double checking every aspect of the plan is crucial. You don't want to pay for sloppy prep later on in the project.
It is What’s on the Inside that Matters
If you read the previous post you may have spotted Darryl’s comment about helping clients stick to the plan. He is absolutely right, that is part of your work, and you need to do it early on.
There are many ways to help clients stay on track, two of the most important ones are:
- Making sure the strategy is tied to the client’s business goal
- That the plan has internal approval and backing.
In the case of the Think Vitamin Dairy we know point #1 is covered. Point #2 is a tad unclear.
When a client rushes something it can indicate they are not sorting out their internal bits as they should. Sometimes it is because they assume everyone is on the same page and at other times they don’t want to deal with internal politics.
While you don’t want to get involved with the latter, you have to make sure a few key steps have been taken. If not, your project will not be seen as the success it undoubtedly has the potential to be.
The Bare Minimum
Make sure you always talk to your client about these four things early on.
Stakeholder Support
Are all the people or departments that will be affected by the project fully on-board? Have their concerns been addressed and issues resolved? It is not your job to run the Think Vitamin Dairy, but at the very least you need to know people are on-board and able to provide you with what you need in order to do your job.
It is fair to assume you will be working with people from marketing, sales, maybe logistics and IT, and certainly customer support during the life of the project.
Resource Planning
How will these people and departments be affected, and what steps have they taken to prepare? Highlight risks throughout the process and make sure you come back to them with an intent to resolving them if your can (like demoing the app to your client’s sales and customer support teams).
Measurable Goals
Set and stick to clearly measurable goals, and split them in to clearly defined categories.
For the Think Hiking campaign it would be one category for the activities (number of apps downloaded, hikes shared) and one for actual sales (increased sales from existing resellers, sales from new resellers and so on).
Advantage/Adjustment Planning
This one goes by many names, A/A is just one of them. Regardless, the idea is always to plan for two different scenarios: the good and the bad.
Once the project has launched you may see that it does incredibly well from day one. Make sure you and your client have a plan to take advantage of it. Maybe you’ll celebrate the 10,000th bottle sold with a marketing… something. Like what? Think about it now so you’re not put on the spot when it happens.
If the project doesn’t take off, and app downloads barely brake the two digit mark, you need to make adjustments. Having talked this possibility through with all the relevant stakeholders (say, marketing and sales) beforehand, you will have a contingency plan in place.
Not only will your client be happy that you turned things around, but you’ll look like an absolute star for thinking things through from the start.
If you cover these four areas, your client will be better prepared to steam ahead with the project as a whole. And your success is if not guaranteed, than certainly a very likely outcome.
In Conclusion
These four points might sound like a lot, but by addressing them with your client you will be a better professional, a better web designer.
Your client wants to work with someone who understands their challenges, and showing that you grasp the basics of how successful projects and businesses are run will be to your advantage.
If the client doesn’t commission you to do the strategic work for them they might still pick you for the project team. Why? Because you think beyond the components you yourself will deliver. You care and you take responsibility for the project by speaking intelligently about it as a whole.
In combination with your incredible design or coding skills that will help you beat your competition.
Now, please pass us another bottle of that orange flavored milk
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