Matrix Group International

Tag: Strategy

  • Intentional Marketing: Who Should Attend Your Next Conference or Convention?

    Intentional Marketing: Who Should Attend Your Next Conference or Convention?

    Woman on PhoneEarlier this week, I hosted a roundtable discussion with a group of select clients to discuss the future of trade shows. Instead of sending a blast email to our entire list, my marketing team sat down with me to discuss who we wanted at the discussion. We only wanted clients that have trade shows and wanted a mix of trade associations and professional societies. We also wanted Director level or higher. We sent out the first email. We got one response.

    Rather than continue to send emails, we decided I should make phone calls to the Directors, VPs and CEOs who we most wanted at the event. I called, left messages and spoke with a few people. And then I re-sent the promo email. The response was terrific. Nearly all of the organizations we targeted sent a representative.

    When clients ask us to help them increase meeting registrations and/or exhibit sales, we ask: Who do you want at the meeting? Anyone? A specific slice of your membership? Or do you want members that meet certain criteria, like members in a specific geographic area or members at risk of canceling? And then we ask: how we can let this group of companies or individuals know that you want them at your meeting?

    No, I don’t believe sending a generic, blast email is enough. In our experience, a mix of blast emails, personal emails, phone calls, and direct mail works best.

    When Matrix Group is planning its webinar series, I sit down with my team and ask them: Which clients should attend this webinar on Sitefinity, cybersecurity, design, Twitter or x topic? If my marketing team is doing its job right, they will have a list and that list gets a personal email from me, a Director or a Project Manager, or a phone call from my Cultivation Manager, in addition to getting the blast emails. We get the best response from the personal emails and the phone calls and I bet you’re not surprised by this finding.

    The next time your organization is planning a campaign to promote a meeting, publication or show, ask your team these questions:

    • Who do want to target and why?
    • What is the best way to reach them and why?

    In the end, it’s easy to just send another set of emails to your entire list but I believe you must be intentional with your marketing to get the best results.

  • How I Came To Represent 12 Million People

    How I Came To Represent 12 Million People

    Male hand holding microphone for the interviewA couple of weeks ago, my husband got a letter in the mail from the American Institute of Consumer Studies. AICS wanted to interview him about his media viewing habits. A couple of days later, someone knocked on our door. Turns out AICS wasn’t interested in interviewing Maki; they wanted to interview an adult female in the house. Hmmmm…. so why did they send the letter to Maki? Maki reported all this to me, knowing that I am fascinated by these types of surveys and am usually game to do them, time willing.

    So I call the AICS field interviewer and schedule a meeting. He comes to our house and I end up spending about an hour with the field rep, who by the way, is a FEMA inspector. He says he doesn’t get paid much money when there aren’t any disasters, so he supplements his income by doing interviews for AICS. Fascinating!

    AICS wanted to know about my media habits: what newspapers and magazines I read, what radio stations I listen to, what shows I watch, and what websites I visit.

    To start with, I was given a huge stack of index cards listing all manner of newspapers and magazines. I was to group the cards into three piles: Don’t read, Not sure, Read. For the Not sure and Read piles, I was then asked HOW I read the periodicals: how often in the last six months, past 30 days, past 7 days; online or in print; and how much of the periodical I read (cover to cover? 20%?). At one point, the field rep said, “this is really good news for TIME, Smithsonian and the Washington Post.” Why? Because it was clear from the interview that I LOVE my TIME magazine. I read it every week, pretty much cover to cover AND I visit the website every week. The same for Smithsonian magazine, although it’s a monthly. If Joanna Pineda was good for TIME and Smithsonian, she was not so good for The New York Times. I have many friends who can’t start their Sunday without the New York Times, but me, I’m a Washington Post gal.

    I was asked similar questions about the radio stations I listen to. Here’s the wrinkle: in the last 7 days, I had driven down to NC and back, so I had spent a lot of time in my car, listening to the radio. While I was within range, I had my radio tuned to my 3 favorite stations: WAMU, WRQX and WMZQ (don’t judge me, k?). My listening habits that week did NOT reflect my normal listening habits but Mr. interviewer insisted that I report on my listening in the last 7 days.

    What I found fascinating about the interview was how little I was asked about TV shows once I reported that I do not have a cable or satellite TV subscription. Pages and pages were skipped in the gigantic interview book. I protested, “but wait, I watch TV, just not via cable. I subscribe to Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.” But no, AICS was NOT interested in my TV viewing habits outside of cable. A little shortsighted, I think, because not subscribing to cable certainly does not mean I don’t watch TV. In fact, the opposite is true. My husband and I now watch more TV because we’re finding all kinds of great shows on the Internet-based services. And yes, I explore shows by network. Love my SyFy channel. Hmmm…. is it still TV if I watch on my iPad?

    Many of you will probably be shocked to learn that I willingly divulged so much personal information. Personally, I felt like it was a two-way street. I learned a lot about what media companies want to know about consumers and the whole interview process was illuminating.

    At the end of the interview, Mr. AICS Interviewer said, “you know, you represent 12 million people.” Could it be true? Could one interview have so much weight? If so, TIME magazine owes me a check. 🙂

  • What’s Your Membership Experience?

    I’ve blogged in the past about Vistage, the CEO membership organization that I’ve been a member of for five years. I was talking with a Vistage VP a few weeks ago and he summed up the Vistage experience quite succinctly: strong peer advisory group with well-run meetings, effective coaching and world-class speakers. In other words, the entire Vistage organization is focused on creating a membership experience that includes these 3 elements.

    I got to thinking. How many organizations have eloquently and succinctly described their ideal member or customer experience? Indeed, how many of us have architected how our customers interact with us and experience our services in an intentional way?  Alex Pineda, the Matrix Group Creative Director, talks often about how every interaction with a company IS the user experience, from the way the phones are answered, to how emails are responded to, how products are delivered, how invoices are sent, how conference calls are run, and how disputes are handled. As CEO, part of my job is to make sure that for every type of potential customer interaction, we’ve defined how we will respond.

    Here’s an example of a situation where the staff expectations were not well defined, so we kept falling down on the job. A couple of clients complained that after approving a proposal, we weren’t responding fast enough to kick off the project. Turns out that we hadn’t defined the turnaround time for creating the project in our system and kicking off the work. Depending on how busy a project manager was in any given week, it took between 1 – 7 days just to get a project entered into the system. So the project managers sat down and crafted a better process. Today, when a proposal is approved by a client, an email goes out the same day from the new business team to announce the project to the project manager and assigned team members. The admin team creates the project in the intranet within 24 hours of the approval, sends the link to the client and schedules the kickoff call. Doesn’t this sounds like a much better, more user-friendly, and more intentional customer experience?

    I think about how pleasant it is to call American Express. I’m never on hold for very long, I’m always referred to by name, I’m always thanked for being a cardmember for over 20 years, and if I’ve called the wrong number, I’m transferred directly and the person I’m speaking with stays on the phone until the next person come on. I have to believe that every little part of this whole experience has been carefully architected and tweaked over time.

    Turns out that architecting an amazing customer experience is really hard and requires paying attention to the big picture as well as the littlest of details. For me, the most important thing is realizing that every client interaction is part of the customer experience and we can, and should be, intentional about every single one of these interactions.

  • How Can Your Organization Use Crowdsourcing To Increase Member and Customer Benefits?

    How Can Your Organization Use Crowdsourcing To Increase Member and Customer Benefits?

    lego-minecraftMy family went to New York for Spring Break. During the obligatory visit to the flagship FAO Schwarz store, my husband caved and bought our 8-year old a LEGO Minecraft kit. Don’t know about Minecraft? As far as I can tell, Minecraft is THE hot game for boys, who play it on computers, tablets and phones, basically any device they can get their hands on. Minecraft is a game that allows players to build anything out of blocks (buildings, lakes, plants, etc.). At night, the zombies come out so your house or castle better be safe. Anyway, back to my story. We shelled out $44 for a LEGO Minecraft that wasn’t designed by LEGO.

    For the past few years, LEGO has been accepting models from amateurs through their Cuusoo crowdsourcing platform. The model is simple enough: anyone can build and share a model. If your model gets 10,000 supporters, LEGO HQ reviews it and decides if it should become an official product. If your model goes into production, you get 1% of total net sales. Is that crazy or what? LEGO has managed to tap into the creative consciousness of its loyal fan base, who will undoubtedly bring their knowledge and interests to LEGO, at nearly zero cost to LEGO. Think of the buzz that a new kit has already generated by the time it reaches 10,000 supporters. That’s 10,000 nearly guaranteed sales! More craziness: my 8-year old has already brought his Minecraft kit to school for show and tell and he’s made a YouTube video that will join the thousands of other YouTube videos on Minecraft.

    The question is, how can non-manufacturers use crowdsourcing to generate new product ideas, generate customer and member love, and increase revenues? Here are some ideas:

    • Many professional societies accepts submissions to speak at a conference. These submissions get reviewed and voted on by an elite panel of members. What if the society blew open the submission process and let the entire membership vote? The top submissions would then get to speak at the conference.
    • How about a soliciting ideas for publications and research to be funded by your Foundation? And then let the membership vote and you fund the top vote getters.
    • Want to connect with your members? Ask them what topics they’d like your CEO to address during a live chat or in blog posts, then get the membership to vote on the topics. Your CEO would then address the top topics during a meeting, call or in blog posts.
    • Thinking about staff retention? Ask your staff for their best non-financial benefits and rewards and then get the entire staff to vote.

    It’s easy to associate crowdsourcing with websites like KickStarter, where entrepreneurs submit their ideas and people support the ideas with their money. But I think crowdsourcing can be a powerful engagement tool for organizations of all sizes, in all industries.

     

     

  • Why Matrix Group Brought Back Its Email Newsletter

    Why Matrix Group Brought Back Its Email Newsletter

    A few years ago, Matrix Group stopped sending out a weekly email newsletter.Why? We were launching a company blog, we were getting more active on Twitter and Facebook, and other organizations were dropping their email newsletters. The marketing staff was spread thin, so killing the Matrix Missive seemed like the right thing to do. We didn’t abandon email; we still send emails about events and service announcements, we just didn’t have a marketing newsletter.

    Several months ago, we revived the Matrix Missive and just today, launched a new newsletter for our Association Management Software product, MatrixMaxx. Why?

    Our target audiences aren’t all on Facebook (shocking, I know.) After years of trying to get all of our clients and prospects to subscribe to the blog and follow us on social media, we’ve decided it’s just not going to happen. The disintermediation that the media keeps talking about is true. Even though we only have several thousand people in our database, they are all over the map in terms of web use, social media and blogging. Our CEO contacts are decidedly NOT on Twitter and Facebook.

    Social media isn’t great for direct marketing and selling. All the research shows that companies and brands that do nothing but sell on social media don’t get the follows they want. So on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and even this blog, we try to provide really great, information-rich content. It’s great for thought leadership but not so terrific for direct marketing. Sometimes we really need to promote our design, development and mobile app expertise.

    Some topics are great in email, utterly boring in social media. On a regular basis, we need to tell clients about upcoming maintenance, new versions of CMS (content management system) software they’re using, upcoming CMS and AMS training, yada, yada. On our social media pages, this stuff is just boring, not at all interesting to a general audience. But to our clients, who need to know when we’re upgrading their systems and what’s in the latest release of the Sitefinity CMS, these communications are vital. Email is just better for certain types of messages.

    Our best response rate comes from email. Every organization is different but when we’re promoting our events and services, email just works best. For example, we offer a Spring and Fall webinar series on a variety of web topics. We promote these webinars through email to our house list, social media, and discussion lists around town. Hands down, most attendees come from our house email list.

    No matter what the platform, the challenge is getting views and clicks. Okay, so we’re back to sending out a regular email newsletter. We get pretty good open and clickthrough rates but as with social media, it’s all about generating good content that people want to read, good writing and a hot subject line.

    So here’s the challenge. How do we create something new and different with our emails that clients, prospects and partners will want to subscribe (and stay subscribed) to our emails and still subscribe to our blogs, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and view our photos on Flickr?

    I’ve blogged before about how we strive for a layered approach with our marketing efforts. We don’t simply post the same content across all channels. Rather, we strive for a layered messaging strategy that utilizes the capabilities of each platform and features different perspectives and voices will help us connect with clients and prospects better. With the relaunch of the Matrix Missive and the new MatrixMaxx newsletter, we’ve brought email back to the mix so that we can talk about projects, promote our events, comment on webtrends and share some fun websites.

    BTW, here’s a sample of the new and improved Matrix Missive. I hope you’ll even consider subscribing!

    How about you? Do you still have an email newsletter? How is the content in your email newsletters different from your website and social media pages? How are you juggling the mix of platforms? What’s working?

  • Does Facebook Have Staying Power?

    Does Facebook Have Staying Power?

    Everywhere I turn, I’m hearing about Facebook’s IPO on Friday. The media, economists, pundits and the public are speculating about stock price, total valuation, and on and on. And of course, people are questioning whether or not Facebook will have staying power in the long run.

    Mark Evans from Forbes Magazine warns readers to “Stay away from the Facebook IPO” because of social media fatigue, Facebook is no longer hot and sexy, and Facebook has not figured out how to make money from mobile, which represents nearly half of Facebook’s users.

    A poll by AP-CNBC this month reports that half of Americans think Facebook’s appeal will fade. But if you look closely at the numbers, nearly 60% of those polled under 35 say Facebook is a good bet. And you know how we talk about the 800 pound gorilla? Facebook now reports that it has 900 million subscribers around the globe! Who can argue with numbers like that?

    Me, I’m influenced on this issue by an article written by Michael Mauboussin back in 2005 on ecosystems. Mr. Mauboussin is the Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management. In the article, Mr. Mauboussin says that “the crucial battle is not between individual firms but between networks of firms.” Ultimately, “keystone companies—businesses at the center of a healthy economic ecosystem—are the most likely to deliver sustainable value creation.” In the article, Mr. Mauboussin was talking about eBay, which has created an entire ecosystem to support its business, including hundreds of thousands of sellers, drop off stores, auction service shops, and payment processors like PayPal.

    Is Facebook a keystone company? On the face of it, I think the answer is yes. There are hundreds of thousands of companies that have created business pages to promote their products and services, hundreds of companies have been formed entirely for the purpose of creating social, gaming and business apps for Facebook, Facebook has thousands of advertisers, thousands of companies are now selling their products through a Facebook store, and there have got to be hundreds of thousands of consulting companies helping clients take advantage of Facebook.

    Like eBay, I think Facebook will lose a lot of its hip and sexy aura, and Facebook will likely develop plenty of rivals. Will Facebook stick around for decades, even generations? No idea. But if people continue to spend a lot of their social time on Facebook and companies and advertisers continue to advertise and promote on the platform, I don’t see how Facebook can be a bad bet. Does this mean I’m going to buy a bunch of stock on Friday? Nope, I’m going to see where the stock settles and then I’ll give it more thought.

    How about you? Do you think Facebook has staying power? Are you going to buy Facebook stock? Do you think Facebook is a keystone company?

    P.S. If you want a copy of Mr. Mauboussin’s article, go to the LMCM Vault, then do a search by Author = Mauboussin and date range = 2005. Sorry, I could not figure out how to get a direct link to the PDF. I think the article is absolutely worth reading. I also highly recommend subscribing to Mauboussin on Strategy, a monthly publication. (Nope, I am not affiliated with LMCM, I don’t own their stock, and I’m not related to anyone there.)

  • Your New Website Isn’t Done, It Probably Needs Tweaking

    My family moved into our new house last July and guess what? We’re not done with the unpacking and decorating. Yes, the new house is worlds better than our old house, all the furniture is in place, we have stuff on the walls, and most of the boxes are gone, but we’re not done and it’s taken months of tweaking to make the house fabulous.

    Our move reminds me of every single website launch at Matrix Group. When a Project Manager reports that he or she will be done with a project when it launches, I warn that there could be weeks of tweaks and that we should just expect it. Here’s why:

    Sometime, you just don’t don’t know where to put something until you’ve lived with it a while. I wish I could say that our information architecture process is perfect and we account for every piece of content, but it’s not and we don’t. Clients often have to live with a site for a few days or weeks before they figure out where everything should go. In the meantime, content doesn’t go up or it gets stored under some generic navigation called Resources. I feel like Resources is like our garage; there’s a lot of great stuff in there but it’s hard to find what you’re looking for and you know you need a better organization system.

    The little tweaks can make all the difference in the world. The new master bathroom in our house is wonderful but it had a few problems. You had to walk inside to reach the light switch and the towel bar was several feet away from the shower. We were unhappy from the beginning but we didn’t know what we wanted or how to fix the problem. Then one day, my husband came home with a wireless outlet that he attached to the wall. Voila! We can now turn on the light before entering the bathroom! And a hook added to the wall just outside the shower solved the towel problem. Same with a website. We often need a few days or weeks of real users road testing the site before we can make the slight improvements to the flows and paths that make the site really great. For one client, we added a Google map link to a calendar application; it was amazing how much happiness 2 lines of code created.

    You can’t finish decorating right away. Our new house is laid out in a very similar manner to the old house but nearly everything had to be re-arranged. Bookshelves got moved around the house, we re-arranged the closets, and the living room is completely different, even though the dimensions are the same and we didn’t buy new furniture. With website redesigns, small changes to the navigation sometimes means a total rework of the content and CMS. And clients often can’t conceive of how to “dress up” pages with images and formatting until they are live.

    You’ll get more done if you throw a party. My mom always says that if you want your house to look good, throw a party. You’ll get the boxes unpacked, the pictures hung and the furniture arranged – just in time. When a client picks the launch date for their website, we ask if they will be unveiling the site at a conference or event. I love having a deadline tied to a conference because conferences don’t move, which means everyone hustle to get things done and it’s amazing how much content gets written right before the event and launch.

    Anticipate the tweaks. At Matrix Group, we know that it takes time for clients to get comfortable with the new site, use its new functions and figure out what’s working and not working. Leslie Blum from Carolinas AGC calls them “iron outs” and she’s right on. It generally takes between 2-4 weeks to get the help text just right, all the new content loaded, and the integration use cases all worked out. So rather than fight the tweaks, we anticipate them and plan for them in our schedule. I will caution, however, that tweaking past 30 days can get counter-productive. You run the risk of the team losing steam and experiencing launch fatigue.

    In the last 30 days, we’ve launched new sites for the Ironworkers, the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the Washington Building Congress. Although the sites look great, we’re still tweaking. 🙂

     

  • Why Your Organization Needs a Mobile Strategy

    Why Your Organization Needs a Mobile Strategy

    Woman on a mobile phoneDuring a meeting with other CEOs last month, I noticed that nobody pulled out their laptops; instead, every person with a device was using an iPad. At least two of my clients have said they’ve turned in their laptops in favor of tablets. And a mom friend says she manages her entire household with her blackberry.

    In case you hadn’t noticed, the world is going mobile. Check out these amazing statistics:

    Which is why I think every organization needs a mobile strategy. Here are my top recommendations for getting started:

    Include Mobile in All Of Your Marketing and IT Activities

    Over a dozen years ago, I urged clients to be the person in the room who always said, “what about the Web?” Today, appoint yourself as the person who says, “what about mobile?” Know what tools you have available in your mobile toolbox, including mobile stylesheets, mobile sites, text messaging, and apps. Talk to your customers and ask them if, how and when they access your website and e-mails on a mobile device.

    Budget for Mobile Initiatives

    I believe mobile needs its own line item in your budget or it needs to added to your marketing and IT activities. For example, do you have the hardware you need to view your website on an iPad, Android phone, iPhone, iPad or Android tablet? Be sure to ask your Web partner (like Matrix Group!) to help you budget for mobile, whether it’s developing an app for your convention, designing a mobile version of your website, or using text messages to generate traffic at your exhibit hall.

    Planning a Website Redesign? Plan for a Responsive Design!

    Here at Matrix Group, we’re really excited about building websites that look and behave differently depending on the size, platform and orientation of the device, including widescreen monitors, standard size monitors, tablets and smartphones. Responsive Web design uses a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and javascript to customize the experience for the device. For example, if I’m looking at a website on a smartphone, the large branding area could disappear and the horizontal navigation might turn into vertical text navigation. If your organization is thinking of redesigning your website, please consider a responsive design. You will spend more time and money on wireframes and design, but the results will be worth it. Just imagine: less pinching and squinting for smartphone users and lots of gestures and swipes on tablets.

    Pay Attention To Your Mobile Stats

    As always, pay attention to your usage reports. Google Analytics has a whole, new set of reports that tell you what your mobile users are doing and what devices they are on. I’m using our usage reports to figure out what functions to include in a new mobile version of our MatrixMaxx software since we don’t believe mobile users want to use ALL database function.

    How about you? What’s your organization’s mobile strategy? How are you getting started? What kind of results are you seeing?

  • The Matrix Minute is Born!

    The Matrix Minute is Born!

    Even though Matrix Group has had a YouTube account for years now, we weren’t doing much with it. Well this past week, we finally, fully integrated this platform into our overall marketing and social media strategy by launching a new series called The Matrix Minute.

    Why so late to the YouTube game? As I’ve explained before in previous blog posts and webinars, I believe that it’s important to create a layered experience across different media. In other words, don’t just post the same stuff to Facebook, Twitter, your website, YouTube, your blog, etc. Have an overall strategy, but take advantage of each site’s capabilities and culture to maximize followers across all platforms.

    Until recently, we didn’t have a clear idea of how we wanted to incorporate YouTube into our marketing, sales and client engagement strategy. We had videos from Matrix Group staff events, but we had reserved our Facebook page for information and posts about the project we’re working on and corporate culture. I didn’t want to use YouTube as another place to promote corporate culture. And until we hired a new Marketing Coordinator, we didn’t have the bandwidth to staff an active YouTube channel properly.

    But this past week, we launched The Matrix Minute, which is a series of interviews with in-house and outside experts who discuss web technologies, mobile technologies, social media, design and web development. Occasionally, we’ll feature local CEOs who will talk about leadership and what their organizations are doing to stay relevant and vibrant.

    Here’s how the Matrix Minute fits into our overall sales and marketing strategy:

    • As a company, we’re extremely committed to ongoing education for staff and clients so content-rich interviews make sense for us.
    • It’s a way to showcase the expertise we have within the staff.
    • It’s a way to leverage the expertise of our clients and partners.
    • It’s a way to continue demonstrating thought leadership.
    • We get to show off our video production capabilities.
    • YouTube is owned by Google and Google favors keyword-rich videos and descriptions so the channel is good for search engine optimization (SEO).
    • It’s a way to layer YouTube into our strategy in a way that’s new and different from what we’re doing on our website and social media.

    The Matrix Minute has also been a lot of fun.  So far, I’ve been doing all of the interviews and I’m learning a ton. Ray Stankiewicz, New Biz Manager at Matrix Group, is the producer and Melissa Bader, Designer at Matrix Group, does the video editing.

    We’ve got a half dozen interviews already online. For example, Jill Foster of Live Your Talk talks about videoblogging. Jennell Evans of Strategic Interactions shares her tips for managing remote teams. And Sherrie Bakshi of Matrix Group talks about why 2011 is the year to start a corporate blog.

    BTW, we call it The Matrix Minute, but the interviews are usually 2-3 minutes long. 1 minute just didn’t provide enough time for a meaningful interview and Matrix Minutes sounded goofy.

    I hope you’ll check us out on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/MatrixGroup) and you’ll rate, comment and subscribe. Tell us what you think of our latest initiative!

  • JP Rule #3: Never Let Your Client Make a Mistake

    JP Rule #3: Never Let Your Client Make a Mistake

    The Matrix Group running team wanted t-shirts for a couple of races this Spring and Summer. We ordered black running shirt with our logo printed using a sublimation process, meaning that instead of being an applique, the ink is fused into the shirt fibers. This ensures the shirt remains breathable and the logo will be long lasting. We ordered the shirts from a company Boombah. Unfortunately, the shirts were got had the logos applied with a Fusion process, which is essentially a high-end iron on transfer. The shirts look and feel like plastic.

    We called Boombah to complain that we ordered shirts with a sublimation process, which, incidentally, is what our e-mail receipt says. The Boombah sales rep said something to the effect of “the sublimation process is only available for the white and gray shirts. Our receipts say sublimation as part of the template, but it’s wrong. Our website is very clear that you can’t get sublimation with the black shirts.” (Don’t get me started on what happened when I asked to speak with a manager or the owner. It was not good.)

    Okay, forget that the invoice says sublimation. Boombah violated what I affectionately refer to as JP Rule #3: Never let your client make a mistake. In my mind, if we had called asking for black shirts with logos, the rep should have made sure we were crystal clear on the concept that sublimation, which is the nicer printing method, is NOT available for black shirts. Knowing that fusion on black makes for a crappy shirt, the rep should have at least tried to prevent us from making that mistake. Yes, we ultimately placed the order and we take responsibility. We paid for the shirts and promptly ordered a batch from another company.

    Whether it’s shirts or websites, clients rely on their service providers for expertise and recommendations. It’s up to us to educate our clients, make sure they understand the options, make recommendations, and warn them if we think they’re about to make a mistake. Yes, clients ultimately need to make their own decisions and they are big boys and girls, but if we hold technical knowledge they don’t, shouldn’t we at least make sure they are aware of the impact of their choices?

    Case in point. A new client was implementing MatrixMaxx, our association management software. Our main contact told us that the association didn’t need any company demographics as part of the setup. We questioned this decision several times and he maintained that no, the organization did not need to collect company data outside of contact information. Knowing this is wrong and a waste of an opportunity to gather member data, we took the issue to the VP. Without making it seem like we were going over the manager’s head, we let the VP know that we thought the organization could benefit from collecting additional data as part of the member profile and membership application. We even suggested a package of fields. Sure enough, the VP, who has a bigger picture view, agreed on the demographics. We *could* have dropped the issue after confirming with the manager. We would have had tons of documentation showing that the client rejected the additional fields so that if the client came back to us a year later, we’d be perfectly justified in charging extra money for a change order. But that behavior would have violated Rule #3.

    We try to live Rule #3 and we don’t always succeed. There isn’t always clarity about what’s absolutely right and what’s absolutely wrong. We don’t always realize a decision will be the wrong one in the long run. And clients don’t always agree with us. BUT, I believe that we have an obligation to our clients to at least give it the old college try and help them not make mistakes.

    How about you? Got any stories of a vendor who let you make a mistake or saved you from making a bad decision?

    P.S. I have a total of 23 rules. I’ll try to blog about them all in the future. If you’d like a copy of the list, let me know.