I'm a charitable type, I sponsored a rescue dog for three years, not that it rescued anyone in that time, although I might have misread the terms of the sponsorship.
But right now, I'm going to donate a gift to those many communications agencies that ring me up, email me, approach me on linked.in, or hide in the bushes near my house and fire business cards with catapults at me. Think of me as a kind of corporate pick-up artist giving out advice. No. Don't actually. That's a terrible simile.
There are some really good ways to turn off prospective clients, and here are just a few things I recommend you stop doing if you'd like to work with me, or those like me:
In general...treat me like I'm stupid
Example number one. Phonecall. "Hi Tim. I'm Berty Buffin from Aqua Beachball. I've got some information on some cloud hosted algorithim plug-ins for email deployments that we'd really like to talk to you about."
Woah. Back up there. I'm relatively up to date with technology, but you're making as much sense to me as The Matrix Reloaded. Do what we do as communicators, explain it quickly and simply and how it makes a difference to me. As they say, if you can't explain it simply in a sentence then you probably don't understand it yourself. Fill me with confidence, not suspicion that you don't know what you're on about.
On the phone...leave a message
I do have voicemail on my work phone, have done since, ooh,1997. So if you ring, leave a message. Don't just ring and ring and ring and never say anything, that's just stalking. If you leave a message, I can get back to you. And if you do insist on never leaving a message please bear in mind my phone shows the number of who rang. All I need now is a series of computers, connected to some sort of 'web', and a programme that can access this 'web' to search for that number, so I can find out who is ringing me all the time. Once someone invents that, you're in real trouble, as I'll know who you are.
When networking...look at what I do
If you are as paranoid as me, you'll always notice when someone has viewed your linked.in profile. It's a joy of modern life. I genuinely once got a notification that said "Your profile was viewed by someone from the Mental Health industry in the Ukraine." But if you're looking me up, see what I do and genuinely think if I'd be interested.
And then target your request a little "Hi Tim, I'd like to connect as we do a lot of internal comms work and would be good to showcase some of our work" is preferable to a "Harry Bondivitch (Founder/CEO/Lord of Purple Ampersand) wants to connect to you". In communications, more than any other area, you have to make that first impression stick, because if you can't connect with me then you aren't the right person for the job.
Via email...don't cut and paste
"Dear TIM, I hope you don't mind this email out of the blue, but here at Buff Banana we'd like to talk to you about a new comms service. Working as you do in the RETAIL industry." Ok, I'm paraphrasing but there are a few companies who genuinely send me cut and pasted emails. Some of them, my details are in a different colour. One company wrote them in a different font, throughout the email. And one other company, who if they do it again I will name, have sent me the same 'personal email' three times in two years.
And finally...be original, we've spotted the whole colour & noun thing
If you're going to give your agency a name, try something other than colour & noun. I don't know my Black Yams from my Pink Whistle. Maybe it's just me, but give yourself a name that really stands out and you've probably done half the job already.
Anyway, there you go.
I hope you found that useful INSERT WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS HERE.
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