The Story

Good news–after a bit of drama, I’m happy to follow up to my previous post, It’s Hard To Eat Your Own Dogfood, and report that we did the right thing. We’ve separated from a client who was not a good fit. Does it hurt revenue? Yes. Is it frustrating as hell? You betcha. Does it feel good? Like you wouldn’t believe. In fact, we’re having a pizza party to celebrate.

Perhaps most importantly, I feel the genuine support of my team in this decision and change. As I mentioned, my single biggest risk in this situation was NOT losing a client. The biggest risk was backing down to our ideals and making my team members question our commitment to purity, brand experience innovation, and our mission as a whole. And fortunately, that’s a risk we’ve avoided.

The worst part is trying to figure out exactly what to learn from this. Honestly there’s nothing I’d really do differently over the past several months. What I’m left wondering is “if it was a bad fit, how did I let it get this far?” Looking back, I’m super confident that I set all the right expectations about what it’s like to work with CBC (example: “our recommendations are going to make you super uncomfortable…be forewarned”), and I screened and tested the client to make sure they had what it takes to go the non-traditional route. Still, at some point, it turned out they were not as open to those ideas as they said they would be. I’m left wondering now how I can avoid repeating that situation. Any advice or experience is welcome!

The best part, on the other hand, is the super high level of motivation we all now feel to go out there and find some more GREAT clients that really get it (because we already have a few…and they are AWESOME!). Stand back, conventional thinking, you’re toast.

(Thanks to all of you who commented either electronically or verbally to me on my prior post, I sincerely appreciate that.)

PS: You may be wondering why I’m comfortable blogging about this, when the client could be reading it. It’s true, they could…and if they are, that’s OK. But since I had to explain to them what a blog even WAS a couple weeks ago, I’m not too concerned (I know, I know, that was a sign in itself!)

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 10:40 am and is filed under Bank Branding, Credit Union Branding, Bank Marketing, Credit Union Marketing, Other, Branding, Kick Ass Ideas & Musings, Corporate branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.