Four Demands the Client of the Future Wants From You Now (The Future of Work Series, Part 2)

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You know what Elon Musk hates?

Advertising. 

You know what Elon Musk does not hate? Advertising on merch. 

Elon believes in its power so much, that when his new cybertruck’s bulletproof glass shattered during it’s live, worldwide debut, he used the failure as an opportunity to commemorate the moment, on a t-shirt. 

And when Elon wanted to raise money for his project The Boring Company (they build tunnels to alleviate traffic congestion) he sold 50,000 Boring Company hats and 20,000 branded flamethrowers. And after taking heat (heh) for the flamethrower fundraising tactic, he then sold fire extinguishers and added, “You can definitely buy one for less elsewhere, but this one comes with a cool sticker.” 

One of the hottest brands in the world who doesn’t believe in advertising uses merch for identity, memory-making, inspirational moments, radical fundraising, and even as monuments to failure. And it’s not just Elon’s Tesla and The Boring Company, but SpaceX too. 

Something’s dreadfully wrong with the thinking in our industry. 

While we’re worrying about client budget cuts, and allowing ourselves to get boxed in by habitual buying patterns due to (our own) short-sighted sales strategies, the leading brands prove, time and time again, that branded merch demands a primary place in their business. And it proves one crucial aspect about our future:

There’s not a lack of interest in what we sell, there’s a lack of strategy to our thinking and a lack of boldness in our selling. 

It has never been about the product, it’s how we’ve trained the client to think about us and our product. 

Moreover, you can’t have lived through 2020 so far and not realize that the world is radically changing right beneath our feet. And this goes for our clients’ too. We can no longer afford to see the world as the way it was, we need to see the world as it should be, and in order to do this, we need to enter the world our clients live in now.

If we do, we will lead our clients to a new future. Here are four ways we can respond to the customer of tomorrow, today:

(I) The future client needs an entirely new toolkit

Consider the revolution: study after study shows that a majority of consumers distrust advertisers, they opt-out of virtually any form of it, employ ad blockers, ignore sponsored search results, and click on the SKIP-AD button more than any other button on the web. It should be no surprise that traditional advertising is plummeting and digital advertising is largely ineffective for all but those with the deepest pockets. 

The client’s toolkit has been shaken, overturned, and dumped out. Cancellations of conferences and tradeshows are examples of how the old tools for business building won’t work anymore and we need new tools to build a new future. 

But while we’re waiting for “budgets to come back,” the client is still looking for unique opportunities to connect with every single individual in their hard-to-reach audience. The client wants less advertising and more engagement. And what creates more engagement than a 1-to-1 emotional connection through branded merch? 

And “engagement” isn’t just a buzzword for consumer brands anymore. A study by the B2B Institute revealed that B2B brands and B2C brands no longer operate on different wavelengths (B2C = emotional; B2B = rational) they now respond similarly, which means today’s client, in whatever form, needs to focus on H2H, human to human, and no one excels at this type of intimate marketing more than you do. 

The crux: ASI and PPAI have both produced studies that have proven (for years) our medium’s effectiveness over other modes of advertising but we’re still not making even a dent in changing the client’s mind by moving category spend from underperforming categories to useful and effective strategies with promo. Most of us aren’t even trying. Although the industry has grown every year, it’s marginal growth that reflects average GDP growth, we are not taking market share from defunct advertising categories and expanding the pie. If we were to do this, our growth would be exponential. 

Today, we have been given a golden opportunity. Since the client’s toolbox has been overturned, the client has more questions than answers, they are open to fresh perspectives and now, they are demanding a new type of relationship with you.

(II) The future client needs you to have an opinion.

Historically, the client had all the answers. They boxed you into a category and didn’t allow you to budge. But since clients now have more questions than answers they need your expertise. 

And what they want with that expertise is your conviction, they need you to express a strong opinion on what they should be doing -not just with their merch- but with their brand. In a recent survey conducted by Forrester Research about the future of B2B buying, clients responded that they want to be more connected with you. The customer of tomorrow demands that you understand their challenges. 

During our recent virtual conference, skucon at home, the Chief Sales Officer at BDA, Barry Deutsch, said in an interview with Jamie Mair, “What I’m challenging our sales organization and salespeople is to know your clients better than they know themselves. You need to understand their operation, their business model, you need to know their systems, you need to be so knowledgeable about your customer that you should know where they are going as an organization, whether they know it or not.” BDA serves some of the most notable companies in the world, Fortune 100 brands like AT&T, ExxonMobil, FedEx, the NBA, the NFL, and many more. And how many of us have taken that to heart and done something with it since skucon at home?

The client doesn’t need you to be more educated about supply chain or the effectiveness of promo, that’s table stakes, they expect that from you, they need you to be experts in the intricacies of their business. They need you to know the impact the current environment is having on their industry as a whole and their business-specific. 

What Barry suggests is that we can no longer afford to wait, we need to lead. How do we do this? How do we form strong opinions about our customers and lead them to solutions?

After thorough research, we unlock our potential to become better advisors by being bold with our investigations.   

(III) The future client needs you to ask the hard questions 

To learn how to build a strong opinion, you need to do your research and then, ask the hard questions. Barry continued, “Ask open-ended questions, shut up and listen. And listen to what they don’t say, learn to read between the lines.”

I know you’ve heard this before (salesperson) but are you doing it? Questions are the key to opening a new future, they force the client to reimagine their objectives. Hard questions like, “What is your current client retention rate and how do you measure effectiveness?” “Can you define your customer acquisition strategy and comment on the weakest elements you might need help with?” “How are you inspiring and motivating your employees, and what’s the most difficult part building authentic connections with them?” 

The questions are endless, and virtually any team can sit down and (through your research) craft a unique set of open-ended questions specific to your customer and their industry. 

According to the Forrester “B2B buyers now demand an entirely different relationship with your organization, they expect to be treated as equal partners.” The term “trusted advisor” no longer cuts it, neither does “consultant,” everyone knows those are artificial words for “sales,” and even the word “partnership” is bland. What the study suggests is that your client wants you to stop viewing their business as something to extract money from, instead, they view you as an ally, someone to grow with. It’s an entirely different dynamic to focus on your clients’ outcomes more than yours, but by helping them achieve their most critical objectives, you create an alliance where you, in turn, achieve yours.

Approaching our customers with problem-solving intent rather than product-selling intent earns a seat at the table. Once we first do our research and, second, ask open-ended questions, we can now help our clients rethink traditional uses of promo by looking at their business through the lens of outcomes.

(IV) The future clients needs you to rethink purpose

One way we can get our client’s to rethink our role and the role of branded merch is to rebuild our clients’ toolkit.

Most often, as a branding professional, you are an afterthought in your clients’ minds. For example, the buyer only thinks of promo after they’ve strategically planned the conference and now need a “giveaway.” 

The chilling truth: You are an afterthought because you’ve not given your client any reason for forethought. 

Many of us still approach our clients with “newest product ideas,” or the “coolest items we saw at the 2020 Expo” and as such, we unintentionally create a commoditized relationship with the customer rather than a consultative one.

A subtle but powerful way to shift this conversation is to rebuild the client’s toolbox by thinking like a client. The chart featured here is from a research study conducted by PPAI that shows which categories clients have traditionally spent their budget on for branded merch. But keep in mind, these labels represent categories, they do not represent outcomes. 

Categories like “employee service awards” and “wearables” are only for the industry’s consumption. The client thinks in terms of objectives. We need to learn how to reverse engineer these categories into results-oriented conversations. 

For example, now that you’re armed with research specific to your client, now that you’ve asked the open-ended questions that show you where their most significant challenges are, now that you’ve opened the conversation about H-2-H versus advertising, it’s time to walk through reframing promo as a results-oriented solution. Here are just a few examples of how to take these categories and think like a client. Use these categories to ask yourself, are you embracing industry thinking and industry jargon or are you thinking like a customer? 

• Customer referral: If more and more buyers distrust advertising and millennial buyers in particular value peers' opinions over providers, then your customer is thinking: How do we get more referrals from our raving-fan customers?  

• Internal promotions and communication: With large percentages of the world’s workforce working from home and many considering it as a permanent alternative, communications, and internal promotions (inspiring employees) is imperative. The customer isn’t thinking: We need to send a gift to all of our employees, they are thinking: How do we keep our workforce engaged through all of this turmoil? 

• Safety Education: The customer isn’t thinking, I need to buy more PPE, the customer is thinking, How do we create safe, secure, and comfortable work environments?

• Tradeshows: Much has been said about this in the industry so far but this category shouldn’t dwindle because of canceled events, it should increase dramatically because your customers' objectives haven’t changed simply because of a cancellation. The client doesn’t think: Well, we’ve canceled our events, guess we should give up on lead gen, the client thinks, How else can we attract new customers to our brand?

• Brand Awareness: Consumers are paying more attention to brands that care. We’re entering a new world where diversity, sustainability, purpose, and mission are on par with product or service quality. In this new world, the client is thinking: How do we express the values that drive our organization and bring the most meaning to all of our stakeholders? 

• Gifts: The client doesn’t think in terms of product (business gifs), they think in terms of emotion. How can we show our appreciation to the most important VIPs in our network? How do we retain more clients? How do we expand the lifespan of our client relationships? How do we become more customer-obsessed?  

Use this chart as an opportunity for you to meet your clients where they are at and reframe the conversation around end-goal, not product.  

The world is changing so fast, we can barely keep up with the velocity. As such, your client’s needs are shifting quicker than ever before and their demand for personal informed service is the one unique skill that you can create, own, and master by researching, asking the right questions, and thinking like a client. 

But mostly, this crazy economy that keeps shifting (we’re now in a bull market!) is still signifying so much possibility. We must fight the perspective that “no one’s buying” when the reality is, clients have more questions than answers and are more open than ever before to opinions and perspectives, moreover, they are waiting for us to arrive to help them at the time when they need us the most.

If Elon doesn’t believe in advertising but believes that he can still make H-2-H connections, engage his audience, commemorate failures, and celebrate successes, all through branded merch, then we need to believe in the power of it too.

You can now download the complete Future of Work eBook in a free, easy to read, downloadable PDF. Click here to get your copy!

On the go? Check out the audio version of this blog post below, or by searching for skucast wherever you listen to your podcasts.