Reflections Nov 2020 – Week 1: Client relationships, not getting feedback on pitches? Circular Questioning – consulting technique, Humble Consulting book review and more…

Agency musings

Client relationships

Which level of relationship do you have with your client? And how do you balance deeply caring for your client and giving away too much free time? Some thoughts here

Not getting any feedback on pitches?

A lot of agencies I am speaking to at the moment are not getting feedback on lost pitches. There were several reasons mentioned in this related discussion on LinkedIn:

• Clients being inconsiderate
• Clients are just fishing for free information
• Clients are currently time poor
• Agencies not asking for feedback in the right way
• Not enough trust between client and agency
• Is the buying process broken? Should we be pitching at all?

What are your thoughts on this topic? Would be interested in hearing your current experiences negative and positive... send me an email to [email protected]

Inside Polymensa

Team Mintaka

New Theme - Remote Working People Management and Team Engagement

Over the next 4-8 weeks our Team Mintaka will be exploring the topic of remote working people management and team engagement in depth. We’ll bring in guest speakers from various sectors hearing their perspectives on how they are managing the performance and well being of their teams - as we continue to work from home until further notice.

If you’re interested in exploring this theme with us, register your interest for premium Polymensa membership.

Check out these Slack discussions from last week

Anyone use Meethugo for lead generation?

Switching to soft phones as people are working from home

The beautiful mind

Circular Questioning - consulting technique

This is a technique sometimes used in family therapy. But can equally be transferred into the business environment - once a Level 2 relationship with a client has been achieved. The purpose is to help everyone at the client side who is involved in this session to understand the overall image of the relationships and problems that exist - with the goal to solve those problems that are not usually openly spoken about, yet impact the culture. Each participant in a session is asked in turn to express his or her views on the relationships and the differences between other members in the team. The key is to ask questions that involve one’s own perspective on other team members e.g. Colleague A is always stressed about working overtime. An example question to Colleague B could be: “When colleague A works overtime, how do you think it makes her manager feel?” - see a more in depth explanation here

Quote of the week

“Don’t be the hammer looking for nails.” Edgar Schein

Book recommendation

Humble Consulting - Author: Edgar Schein

A deep exploration on how to be a ‘good’ consultant. The book is filled with practical tips on how to build trusting relationships with clients and get to the ‘true’ problems that exist in your client’s business. These tips are backed up with real life case studies from the author’s career as a consultant and plentiful research.

Random information
(entertaining at the very least)

• There were 1,225 candidates running for president in the 2020 US elections. A presidential candidate must be a natural born citizen of the United States, a resident for 14 years, and 35 years of age or older.

• Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of sound perception and audiology—how humans perceive various sounds.

• A blue book or bluebook is an almanac, buyer's guide or other compilation of statistics and information.

• There used to only be two colours on a traffic light system in the UK (used on railways). Red for stop and white for go. When once the red lens broke on a light in Abbots Ripton, there was an inevitable accident.

• The "Berlin Candy Bomber" or "Uncle Wiggly Wings" gained fame for dropping candy to children during the Berlin Airlift from 1948 to 1949.

• It is believed that Ketchup is originally from Asia and the word derives from the branches of the Chinese language.

Thank you for reading.

If you enjoyed this feel free to sign up to our mailing list to get notified in your inbox when our next musings are out.
Also find us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

"Be an infinite learner." - Polymensa

Have a great week!
Cheers, Daniel :)