As the president of Imagination Publishing, Jim Meyers helps clients to expand their thinking on strategic issues, new opportunities and achieving their dreams. Here, he'll write about the custom publishing industry and the importance of a custom content strategy in an overall marketing plan.
Saying Goodbye to a Client
1 Mar 2010
by James Meyers
Here’s a tough dilemma for any business owner: is there ever a time when should you say goodbye to client?
Never. For the past fifteen years, my first response to that question has been—never voluntarily say goodbye to any client. You work to hard to get clients. You invest a lot of extra hours—beyond your paid compensation—working for those clients. And in economic times like these, clients are even harder to come by. In fact, my philosophy has always been that every client is a good client, one worth sticking with through thick and thin.
However, over the past several years, I’ve come to realize that some clients are simply better than others, and that sometimes there are legitimate reasons why you might want to consider parting ways with a client. Here are a few reasons you might want to consider.
Partnership. There’s nothing better than a true partnership with a client, one where the goals and outcomes are shared and the vision to execute them are mutually agreed upon. But not all clients want or need a partner. Sometimes clients just want a vendor who can deliver high quality service in a timely fashion—and fairly paid basis. And while there’s nothing wrong with a good, solid client-vendor relationship, where both parties benefit from the relationship, sometimes the lack of partnership is too much to overcome.
Respect. Whether your client views you as a vendor or client, no relationship works without mutual respect. Treating and being treated with respect is crucial in any relationship. When it becomes obvious that a client does not respect the amount of time, work and effort that you put into your deliverables, it might be time to say goodbye. And I’m not talking about clients who are demanding. Every client has the right to be demanding, and when coupled with respect and appreciation, these are the clients we like best because they challenge us as well as themselves to reach new levels of achievement.
Constant Price Pressure. When your client relationship starts with price negotiations from day one and cost reductions are the main driver of the relationship, it may be time to rethink the agreement. Constant focus on cost reductions means the client doesn’t value your work or simply isn’t willing to invest in quality. These days no client has money to burn, so being accountable for measurable results is a mandatory part of any business relationship. But great clients don’t mind paying for great results. The best clients are those who even increase their spending once benchmarks are achieved so that they can push the bar even higher.
Redeployment of Resources. In tough economic times, every business needs to closely examine the resources they employ to make sure that they are getting maximum efficiency from them. When it takes two people to work on a $50,000 client with a 25% margin and the same two people could work on a $150,000 client with the same or better margin, you’ve got a financial decision to make. Of course, other factors such as long term potential, loyalty and marquee-value may also be legitimate reasons to stay with a client even if they aren’t the most profitable client. But every client relationship needs to be examined from both a financial and business standpoint to make sure that both parties are benefiting.
Ultimately, the decision to say goodbye to a client is one of the most difficult that any business owner needs to make but sometimes, it can be the right one.
If you’ve faced this dilemma at your business, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you handled the situation.
An Association that gets “It”
11 Feb 2010
by James Meyers
I met with the president of an association last week in Washington DC that finally gets “it”. And I knew it the moment I walked in the door. The receptionist was cheery and professional but with a great personality. The office was bright, lots of glass and had a contemporary vibe. And on the reception area walls hung beautifully framed, oversized photographs of Janis Joplin, Mick Jagger and Luciano Pavorati rather than the typical wall of photographs of association executives long gone. It felt like the offices of a Hollywood film studio rather than a national trade association for insurance companies.
As I walked through their offices on my way to meet the president, I could see and feel the same excited, friendly vibe everywhere I looked. And as I sat for nearly two hours with the president and several members of his senior staff I knew that I the entire outlook and demeanor of this association was something that is quite rare in the world of associations.
Their mission blows by the typical and tired association mantra of “serving the needs of our members” and goes to a new level of success achieved by creating the ultimate level of “experience” for their members. While this association delivers all of the “knowledge, conferences, publications and tools” that every association must, they view their members not just as members but as a valued audience that must be made to feel special, excited, entertained and enlightened by their connection to the association. To accomplish this, the CEO sets the tone and challenges his organization to think in terms of the member “experience”. Everything that the association does must add to the richness and excitement of that experience in an integrated and endless crescendo.
Like great companies such as Apple, Disney, Starbucks and Cirque de Soleil, this association gets it. They view their members as guests who have lots of choices and deserve the very best in service, quality and value all wrapped up in an “experience” that will keep them coming back for more.
Is that how your association or organization thinks and treats your members?
Maybe it’s time to think about recreating your member experience!
Top Ten Soft Skills
27 Jan 2010
by James Meyers
Too often, when companies are looking to fill an open position, they become overly focused on the “hard skills” and experience of the candidate’s resume. Where did they go to school? What is their degree? How many years of experience? Where have they worked? And probably the most flawed barometer of all: What is their current or desired compensation?
While it’s true that all of these questions are important, I’ve come to the realization that hard skills in most cases should account for no more than 40% of the hiring evaluation process particularly if you’re in the agency business.
At Imagination, we’ve always lived the Einstein quote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. That framed quote has hung on my wall for more than twenty years and was not only the inspiration for the name of our company but a credo that has served us well in hiring new talent.
With that in mind, here is my “wish list” of The Top Ten Soft Skills that we look for in every prospective new hire.
- Passion: The most important of all soft skills. You either have it or you don’t. If you don’t have it for custom publishing, custom media, working in a highly creative, high energetic, demanding environment where our customers’ needs always come first, you can’t work here!
- Personality: Our people need to have an outgoing personality. We work with clients everyday and they like working with people they like and respect. Everyone likes to be around people who make them feel good, who they respect, who can laugh and who can light up their day!
- Relationships: This goes closely with personality. Our best, most successful associates love and nurture relationships with our clients, our teammates and oh yes, did I mention our clients? For them, happy clients are the only measure of success!
- Listening: Clients expect our associates to listen and engage with them to find the best solutions that will exceed their objectives and expectations. From listening can come opportunities to grow and to identify and correct potential issues. The inability to listen to clients is the number one cause of missed opportunities!
- Curiosity: We look for examples of personal curiosity as a sign that prospective candidates can break out of the comfort zone, question why things work or not and will pursue activities that will lead to self-learning and new ideas!
- Initiative: It’s critical that a successful marketing agency like Imagination is filled with associates who take the initiative to get things done, to make a difference, to do whatever it takes to achieve our client’s goals. We look for associates who are constantly demonstrating their initiative rather waiting for direction or approval!
- Confidence: The most alluring trait I love to see in our associates is self-confidence. Self-confidence is earned and present when we have put in the work and gone the extra mile to achieve success. People are drawn to self-confident people but are turned-off by arrogance. Self-confidence is earned. Arrogance is assumed and cannot be tolerated in any organization!
- Presentation Skills: When an associate has passion, personality and confidence, they are usually exceptional presenters because those characteristics make all the difference in making a presentation electric!
- Flexibility: Behind passion and the ability to create and nurture relationships, flexibility is key in today agency environment. Everything is changing everyday in marketing and with our clients so if you’re not flexible you’re not going to be happy or successful. Like listening, flexibility is key to winning new opportunities!
- Innovation: Last but not least, we always look for examples of innovation in our associates. Rarely that means coming up with a new idea that’s never been tried before. Usually innovation comes from the curiosity I spoke of earlier. Being aware or what’s working or not working for others and adapting the best ideas to benefit our clients and our company is what we look for. Remember, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”!
Of course it’s extremely rare to find all of these characteristics in every candidate but a few times we’ve come very close. Some, like passion, are more important than others but I’d say that unless a prospective candidate can demonstrate at least five or six of these soft skills, they probably aren’t going to be a good fit for Imagination Publishing or any other successful marketing agency.
By the way, if you think you have all of these soft skills, our door’s always open!
$30 Billion to Small Businesses Equals 346,154 New Jobs
18 Jan 2010
by James Meyers
I read a fascinating article in today’s Chicago Tribune business section by Greg Burns about Leonard Maniscalo, the President of a manufacturing business in Chicago that promises 150 new jobs if he can get a $1.3 million federal grant. He’s owned the business since 1982 and currently employs about 40 people. He has a vision and strategy to grow the business by re-engineering its focus and manufacturing capability resulting in hiring at least 150 new workers. To achieve this vision, he needs $1.3 million and when he looks at the money that the federal government has handed out in bailouts, he wonders why more of it isn’t going to small business.
Here’s the simple math, if Mr. Maniscalo can really create 150 new jobs with $1.3 million, then with $30 billion, the amount given to General Motors and Chrysler, small business owners could create 346,154 new jobs compared to the zero net new jobs that GM and Chrysler have created with their bailout money. And most economists and analysts agree that there’s little chance that taxpayers will ever be repaid by the auto manufacturers even if they do survive.
So my question is why hasn’t the President Obama and congress provided TARP or economic recovery money directly to small businesses? Clearly, providing bailout money to banks, insurance companies and auto companies has done nothing to create new jobs or improve credit availability to small businesses. Recent NFIB surveys show that lack of credit is the number 1 or 2 top concern of most small business owners. And it’s been well documented that small business has historically been and will continue to be the economic engine of America.
Why not give small business owners a chance to create new jobs for Americans by making real recovery funding available directly from the SBA? One more government bailout program or czar might actually work this time!
Small Businesses and American Idol
14 Jan 2010
by James Meyers
Okay, stick with me for a couple of minutes while I develop the background needed to make my point about small businesses.
I commute two hours every day and I couldn’t exist without my XM satellite radio. I have to admit that I spend most of my time listening to national sports talk shows, CNN and CNBC.
This morning, one of my favorite sports talk show hosts, Colin Cowherd of ESPN, went on a three minute rant about why he loves American Idol and why it is the number one rated show on television. His belief, which I totally share, is that American Idol isn’t about great singing, it’s about American Sociology. The entire show is set up to create the “opportunity” for anyone in America to become successful, to go to Hollywood, to become the next American Idol! It’s about not only having dreams but also having a “stage” where those dreams can become real.
I, like Colin, watched last night’s show where you saw all kinds of people who believe they have or really have, talent. Cowherd talked at length about a 19 year old girl from a tiny, backwards town, in a dress she paid $5 for at WalMart, get up on a stage in front of celebrity judges and television cameras and sing her heart out. She hoped that she could do well so she could leave that small town, fly on an “aeroplane” for the first time and maybe start the new life that she has always dreamed of! And when she sang fantastically and got her yellow ticket to Hollywood she broke down and wept because part of her dream had come true.
Colin Cowherd went on to describe that American Idol is really about what makes America great and completely different from countries like Canada, and Europe and other places where dreams can’t come true. “In Canada, everyone makes $36,000 a year, has free healthcare and free college” said Colin. No one falls through the cracks but no one skyrockets either; not athletes, not politicians, not entertainers, not business owners. It’s both the desperation and dreams in a country like America that creates phenomenal success stories.
Which finally brings me to my point. Google, Apple and even Zappos were once small businesses. They were founded on dreams, desperation and innovation by small business owners who had a vision for the future. But they also were lucky enough to be in a country where their dreams, with hard work, determination, passion, money and luck could become a reality.
Small business always has been the backbone of America and it will once again, if given the opportunity, lead us into more prosperous times. But there is one thing that terrifies me and could put an end to our future prosperity. Government leaders who want legislate their views, their agendas and their personal beliefs into a new America where dreams, innovation, risk and reward are no longer valued and realized.
It’s time for our government leaders to realize the importance of small business growth to America’s future by creating a “stage” where dreams can be realized!
Shifting Gears
13 Jan 2010
by James Meyers
It’s time to shift gears. 2010 is not a continuation of 2009.
After slugging our way through 2009, 2010 has started with a bang. In the past two weeks, we have seen an outpouring of new business opportunities from both existing clients and from prospective new clients. It’s encouraging that the interest and excitement is coming across the board from financial services, to package goods, to technology and even from a few associations.
Clearly, some marketers have shifted gears from being hunkered down and cautious to taking advantage of opportunities to spring-to-life while many of their competitors are still in the wait and see mode.
It’s starting to feel like 2010 is going to be a year of renewal and excitement for smart, opportunistic companies. Just the way we like it at Imagination!
Publishing Talent is Everywhere
12 Jan 2010
by James Meyers
One of the unfortunate realities caused by the 2009 recession is that a lot of very talented people are out of work. One of the hardest hit sectors has been the publishing industry where powerhouse newspapers and magazines have cut staff or gone out of business entirely. New graduates are finding it nearly impossible to find publishers who have open positions and are hiring.
Even if your particular company has weathered the recession fairly well, like Imagination Publishing, the atmosphere of uncertainty that surrounds our clients causes everyone to be overly cautious about adding staff even when business is growing.
Consequently, publishing talent is everywhere. The state of publishing has allowed us over the past year to have a number of outstanding contractors and interns in our offices who would not have been previously available. These talented individuals, hungry for opportunities, have made significant contributions to our work and as a company we could not be successful without them. These positions offer both the company and the individual the opportunity to see each other in action. As a result, several interns have been offered and accepted full time positions at Imagination as they became available.
I suspect that this will continue to be both the situation and an opportunity throughout the publishing industry for the foreseeable future. For publishers and marketers, I say you should seize this opportunity to tap into the wealth of available talent by constructing creative scenarios where the best talent can demonstrate what they have to offer. For editors, designers, marketing professionals and digital specialists, now is the time to impress innovative companies with your creativity, passion and energy. You need to create your own opportunities to be noticed and prove your value to companies who can afford to be highly selective right now.
Harvard Business Review Article Reinforces The Core of Custom Publishing
11 Jan 2010
by James Meyers
The new January 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review has a fabulous article called Rethinking Marketing. It is a must read article for all chief marketing officers but even more so for agencies who make their living by supporting marketing initiatives and have seen their traditional advertising business continue to erode.
The article correctly identifies a fundamental shift in marketing that custom publishers have benefited from over the past ten years. This trend has resulted more than ten straight years of increases in custom publishing spending by marketers while mass media advertising has fallen dramatically. The secret that custom publishing “gets” is that customers today expect to interact deeply with companies, and with each other to shape the products and services they consume. It is the customer who has the control to determine whether a product is successful and no amount of traditional advertising can change that.
In order to be successful, HBR points out that companies must shift their focus to building their long-term relationships with their customers rather than trying to “influence or push” customers to buy. Today it’s about understanding the complex needs of customers, nuturing them, cultivating them and retaining them for the long run. Smart marketers are shifting from measuring product profitability to measuring customer profitability. Just as importantly, traditional marketing goals like brand equity and market share are being replaced by new objectives like customer equity and customer lifetime value.
Customer, rather than product objectives have been the core of custom publishing for more than a decade. The essence of custom publishing has always been focused on building long-term relationships between marketers and their customers. The unique ability that custom content has enhance customer relationships and increase lasting loyalty is the secret to custom publishing’s stellar growth. Custom publishers have a ten year head start on traditional advertising agencies on understanding how to use content to build customer relationships. With the explosive growth of digital delivery channels giving customers instantaneous access to content as well as each other, custom content providers will continue to flourish as more and more marketers shift from pushing individual products to building long-term customer relationships.
The Aha Moment of Print Magazines
8 Jan 2010
by James Meyers
I had a wonderful lunch yesterday with a prospective client in Washington, DC. At one point, they asked me that question which has been asked so many times over the past several years, “Do you think that print is going away?”
I’ve thought about this question many times and so I answered it with an unequivocal, no. Of course, there’s no denying the seismic shift that is sweeping media and content delivery because of the Internet. Digital delivery of information has changed everything and will continue to do so as technology, communication and innovation rapidly allow all of us to choose how we want to consume whatever it is that we are looking for.
But there are some very strong reasons why print will continue in the future as well. First, we all know that there’s intangible quality and texture to print that will continue to attract it as it always has. Second, the portability of print will also endure. But I believe the most important attribute about print is the “Aha” factor. Print dominates over digital in its ability to create the Aha moment. The thing that I love about browsing a magazine or newspaper is the unexpected article that excites me, interests me or enlightens me in a way I never expected and wasn’t looking for. With digital, I search and learn, with print, I browse, learn, think and am entertained all at the same time.
As I boarded my plane back to Chicago, I once again proved my point. I purchased The Harvard Business Review, Yoga Journal and The Atlantic at the newsstand. Although these three magazines have nothing to do with each other, they all mean something to me and all three provided information, entertainment and stimulated some action on my part.
Let me give you an example. The new January issue of The Harvard Business Review is completely reinvented from an editorial and design standpoint which is what first caught my eye. I highly recommend that you pick it up the new issue for many reasons but particularly for the article on “Rethinking Marketing”. It is an enlightening insight into the changes that are occurring for every company and organization that will necessitate a complete change in strategy and organizational structure.
This HBR article, that I wasn’t searching for, provided such an Aha moment that I’m tingling with how I can communicate the breakthrough thinking to my company and our clients. I’m certain that I’ll be committing my blog tomorrow entirely to this future trend but for now, back to my original point.
Print will always be a strong delivery channel for target audiences who crave well-written editorial content that informs, provides thought-leadership, entertains, provides the unexpected and delivers that Aha moment.
