NameCalling4Good

At a recent meeting, I was both listening and minding my own business when the word came drifting across the table. One of my favorite clients told a co-worker I was a “blob”.

Believe it or not, she meant it for good.

Thank goodness.

Part of me was slightly offended, but the rest of me got exactly what she was saying and I quickly adjusted to a place where I embraced the purple goo that my team had become to them: spreading and taking things over.

Stickiness2Grow

The thought took me back in time to my very first project with this same client. It was over seven years ago.

My company was only a few months old and I was building a new relationship with a particular client. Like many prospects, this client wasn’t sure they wanted to engage my services. I knew I could offer a great deal of assistance, but I also realized I needed to take slow and steady steps with them. So, we started with a photo project for an upcoming sale. I successfully completed the project and they were happy with the results.  

A year or so later, they asked for help on another project. Then another project. And another. Before long, we were doing several projects at once.

Now, nearly a decade later, we do so much for this same client it gets hard to list: we supervise their website marketing, produce print ads and invitations, handle social media, organize their television interviews, direct public relations efforts, help organize major parties and sales events, interact with their manufacturers, buy digital ads and TV commercials, and I’ve even been known to carry a customer’s purchase to their car.

It’s one thing for a client to break up with a web company, or a PR firm, or a vendor. It’s a very different thing to part ways with a company that does so much to solve problems and build sales. We’re an integral part of their leadership team now and, in this case and many like it, it would be very painful to part ways with our company. That’s called stickiness and it’s an actual goal of ours – we’re entrenched with them.

Like the blob that took over your marketing.