Passive Marketing: Don’t Pass Up a Marketing Opportunity

Alan Weiss has been adding insight to the development of my company for the past 7 months. My only regret, having bought his book Million Dollar Consulting almost 3 years ago, is not reading it when I first bought it.

In a recent chapter I read, Alan (yes, we’re on a first name basis, in my head) presented the idea that every correspondence you send, whether it be a reply to an email, or an invoice, is marketing for your firm. I’ve had a couple of experiences on this topic recently that I’d like to relate.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to participate in a bid for an innovative project that used forward thinking technologies. We’d been looking for a good excuse to learn this technology, but with our busy schedule, couldn’t sacrifice the time to do it. This project was presenting us a prime opportunity to dive in with both feet while justifying the time and effort to learn. My colleague and potential alliance in the project was a design firm. I’d seen some of their work and considered it top-notch. In preparation for the delivery of the bid I provided the firm a Statement of Work that I’d prepared which specified what our role and contribution would be. As preparations were finalized I joined the president of the firm in a conference call to talk about the bid with the client. The president had the completed SoW with him and offered me a chance to look at the final prepared package. I was flattered to find out that the firm had been so impressed with the organization and design of our Statement of Work that they’d adopted it for use internally. You might ask why I didn’t consider this a trespass on Protoven’s intellectual property and copyright. As far as design goes, I can hardly lay claim to the design and layout that Apple provides in their Pages software. The organization came from ideas I’d garnered from multiple locations on the net and in literature. It showed me that taking the time to care about a simple SoW, not even the final version shown to the client, or so I thought, can pay dividends in your relationships with your clients and colleagues. Providing value to a client relationship is some of the best marketing you can do.

The second example I want to bring up happened a few days ago. I had a fellow consultant call me. We share a common client and he wanted to discuss with me some details of the project. It so happens that this fellow consultant is a heavy hitter. He’s a rocket scientist for hire with customers such as the Department of Homeland Security. I hold him in the highest regard. Imagine my surprise when he asked to have an audience with me. We’ve focused our efforts for this client and have taken on a fairly minor role. Nonetheless, because I took the time to respond intelligently and concisely to a feature request ticket I’d earned an opportunity to explore working together further. It was just a comment on a ticket. It turned into a marketing opportunity I hadn’t anticipated.

Take the time to scrutinize your correspondence. Take those opportunities to show partners, clients and colleagues what sets your work apart from others.