Garbage In, Garbage Out

The other day, an architect client posted on his various social media sites an article on how to talk to an architect. It drew this response from another architect: “I think it would be better if some of us learned how to talk to our clients.”

Good point. Clearly sellers of products and services…be they doctors, financial advisors, car salesmen, architects or marketers, have to know how to talk with clients. Theoretically, it should be more important that we know how to talk with them than for them to know how to talk to us.

But then I got to thinking about the old Garbage In, Garbage Out line. You get garbage as input, you produce garbage as output.

If you receive garbage as input, whose fault is that? Yours! If your client does not know how to provide the right input, it is up to you as a professional to get it.

There are a variety of ways to help your clients give you the input you need. For example, you can provide them with tools. When I first start working with clients, I send them a document called “Let’s Play 20 (Marketing Questions).” Here is a link to an article outlining these questions. http://www.lsternmktg.com/wp_images/articles/20_Marketing_questions.pdf

The document asks a whole series of marketing questions that hopefully entice people to think about what it is they want to accomplish from a marketing perspective.

For very specific marketing projects, I, along with many others, ask clients to fill out creative briefs. These briefs address topics such as;

• Target market
• Positioning
• Core benefits
• Offer
• Desired tone
• Budget

This is not much different than a doctor taking a medical history or a financial advisor asking questions to build a financial profile and financial plan.

We also get input just by talking with people and knowing how to ask the right questions. Just the other day, we had a call with a client for a logo project. We had already conducted research and helped us decide on the name, tagline and positioning statement. But we still spent an hour on the phone with the client asking a series of questions. At the end of the conversation, we were confident that we had the information we needed to create a compelling logo.

So don’t trash the idea of sending clients an article on how best to talk with you. The bottom line is: knowing how to talk to your clients includes helping them to talk to you to eliminate the garbage.

How do you educate your clients on how to talk to you?