The Art of Account Management, Episode 129

Episode Transcript

Carrie: Hello everyone! Welcome back to another episode of officehours.fm. Today I have Karim Marucchi, the CEO of Crowd Favorite. Karim? How are you doing?

Karim: I’m doing great Carrie.

Carrie: Karim? I love having you back on the podcast. I always love seeing you in person, but then when I can actually rope you into coming on the show, other people can experience your coolness. It’s a bonus.

Karim: Thank you.

Carrie: So if you would for people that have not been introduced to you, can you give a quick rundown of how you got to where you are working with Crowd Favorite in the WordPress enterprise space?

Karim: Sure. I actually backed into the WordPress space from working with enterprise clients. I was lucky enough to be in the wild west days of Internet consulting back in the mid-90s. I started my first web shop back in ‘94 and ever since then, I’ve been working with large clients, working with teams that ranged anywhere from 2 of us to almost 400 people, working on 2 very in-depth projects to all sorts of projects and all sorts of interesting websites and solutions for large clients.

Carrie: Awesome! Well, what I would love for you to be able to share today with my listeners is about that account management aspect that comes with managing a client in a large project and how that could actually be scaled down to be applicable in a freelance situation or a small agency. You game?

Karim: Yeah! I love that topic!

Carrie: Fantastic! So first why don’t you just describe what an account manager is and what the entire role entails?

Karim: Ok. To break it down, in larger agencies they not only have project managers who are interacting with their clients on a daily basis to just step through the details and milestones of the project to get it done, but the project manager is so focused working with their opposite numbers of the clients to just get to the next milestone or to knock things off the functionality list and get things delivered. You need somebody who’s looking at the Forest, not the trees. So they assign an account manager. The account manager’s job is to periodically come in and check the temperature of a client, not from the project management side but from the relationship side to make sure that at the end of a milestone or project you’re going to get another project. They make sure that even if that client doesn’t have another project to give you, at the end of the day they’ve had the best possible client experience. You can use them as a reference, so they’re singing your praises, just to make it you know the best experience it can be. Does that make sense?

Carrie: It does. Thank you. You know as freelancers we wear the sales hat, the account management hat, the developer hat and the designer hat. We’re all of all of these different roles. I think that an account manager (correct me if you think differently) steps into that kind of consulting part with the client. You’re not just taking a set of requirements and going. You’re really engaging with that client and figuring out what they need.

Karim: I’ll get into how we do this if you’re a one-person shop a little bit later. But the concept here is to drop the guise of I need to get something delivered, or on Friday we’re going to launch the site. In the conversation as an account manager, you have to look at what are the business goals, what makes my client happy what is going on with my client, and what are they worried about? What are they worried about besides launching? What are their key factors? You are almost getting into their psyche. You want to lead the client rather than trying to react to what they’re doing. That’s a different mindset, right?

Carrie: Yeah. You’re going in trying to solve a business problem. You’re not thinking about am I going to use WooCommerce, EDD, or whatever suite of tools. It’s just a different mindset. So you mentioned how a one-person shop would operate in that role. Can you elaborate on that?

Karim: So I’m actually going to ask the freelancer or the lone consultant to quite literally try to adopt two different personalities. I want you to be a split personality for this. In your everyday role as a project manager, developer and/or designer you need to get things done. You need to get things delivered. You’re asking about assets that the client needs to get back to you and so forth. When you decide to have an account management call or conversation, you need to leave that behind. You need to actually be able to say ok. Let me ask some questions. Let me see where they are because of course, they’re worried about launching that site on Friday. But that’s just the technology part. Ask them questions about what’s worrying them (depending on what business the client is) post launch. What’s going on with how they’re getting you that next asset if they still owe you something. Ask what their problems are, not just when they’re going to get it to you. To start that conversation you have to step out of your I’m getting paid as a professional just to get the next milestone done and step into, if I was quite literally working for the client in their own organization and I was worried about helping them produce, helping them with their next business idea, what’s the types of questions I would ask? Let’s forget building the website, where are they? If you adopt that mindset, what you end up doing is leading their conversation rather than reacting to their questions into how to help them solve their problems, right?

Carrie: I love that. So you talk about something…you’ve used the phrase called the assumptive close. The Karim “assumptive close”. What do you mean by that?

Karim: I didn’t coin it. It’s an old term but I use it a lot. Let’s remember guys, everybody who’s listening this podcast is being paid as a professional. You are the expert. So showing up on a call and asking the question from a point of insecurity is the worst thing you can do. That’s where it starts. You don’t need to go in there and act like the typical used car salesman that’s just so sure of themselves about everything they just gloss over every detail. It’s ok to ask questions and state that you don’t know the answer but you have to reassure your clients that you are the expert and you have to come across with that surety. That’s not always easy for folks. A lot of developers I know think they’re socially awkward because they don’t like to do this. They’re not as socially awkward as they would think because when you get them into a room of people that they’re comfortable with they just come alive. You just have to get past the initial fear and say I want to ask the client what’s going on; I want to understand what their problem is. If you do that then you can get to the step of feeling sure of yourself. Once you get to the step of feeling sure of yourself, then let’s say (this is where I answer your question) then let’s say what ends up happening is there are two possible roads. When there’s a feature that the client wants and the one road would take you double the time as the second road and you really need to watch your time on this project. There is equally a good solution for the client but you don’t want to necessarily just railroad them down that path. Instead of doing that, you basically say look there are two paths. Path A is a good path, but I think we need to pick path B. You layout the business reasons why path B is just as good as path A, but it also gives you enough time to do some extra testing and consult with them about something else. As you’re explaining choice A and B you really are explaining well we can do choice A but here is why I think choice B is a better choice. It’s as simple as that. Some folks think the assumptive close is something much more complicated than that, but it’s really as simple as leading the client down the path of what’s not only best for them, but giving them a better experience because it’s better for you.

Carrie: Ok so that was to be my next question. You’re saying layout the business case but are you also saying how it benefits you as the consultant? I think I hear you saying do share that because you can then spend time differently with the client or more effectively somewhere else.

Karim: Exactly! You want to be honest with the client. If you have the mindset that you’re trying to get away with something with a client, get out of this business. Go work strictly on products rather than services. If your mindset is how do I help my clients at every turn (even if I’m going to admit to them that choosing road B is going to save me some time). In saving that time, I can focus on better aspects of your project. You’re leaving out that saving that time will also let you work on project 2, 3 and 4 for another client but you’re being honest with them. If you save that time it gives you a little bit of breathing room mentally to worry about other aspects of their project, right?

Carrie: Yeah that makes sense. Let’s back up a little bit, if you don’t mind Karim. Typically when you look at writing a proposal for a project there are all the different components. There’s the actual technology piece, the production piece, the planning, rolling it out and testing. All of those things kind of get their own little separate line in a proposal (at least mentally). How do you account for that account manager piece and the time it takes to include doing a really good job in the project?

Karim: So here’s the bad news for my company. We actually don’t charge for that. We include it in our overhead because it’s my opinion that if you do a good job with account management you are guaranteeing more work or a referral from that client. I view this is business development time. I’m up front with my clients about that, so we don’t charge our account management time. There are companies who do charge for their account management time. Those are companies that usually have a very large engagement that goes quite literally a year or longer. I would suggest in the context of what we’re speaking about today, you’re only talking about 20 minutes a week or less with a client depending on this the size of your scope. Just backing out of that mode of what do I need to deliver next and just having a real conversation them works. We both worked with Chris Lema. Chris Lema has a great way of starting calls and making sure that the first 5 minutes (it comes a little bit from L 10 meetings and it comes a little bit from Chris’s style) starting calls not with business but in a gregarious fashion. He talks about anything but the project. He talks about anything but the need of what the project is. You need to do the same thing with your clients even on those project management calls. Things will pop up in those first few minutes of the call when you’re just asking them how they’re doing or how the weather is if they’re in the Midwest this week, or any of those other things. Those things pop up. Those are the things you bring up in your client management meeting. Does that make sense?

Carrie: It does. I know that you’re huge on relationships. That’s interesting that you see that particular piece, not as a proposal line item but rather part of your business development. I’m curious, what is your average client lifespan? Do they come back to you for multiple projects?

Karim: So recently for an interview, somebody actually asked me to get that data. I actually have it handy. Over the last 22 years, my average client lifespan has been 5 to 7 years with over 75% of those clients coming back for repeat business after that first stretch.

Carrie: Dang!

Karim: Yeah. So what does that mean when I say repeat stretch? Just real quick because that was very quick information, you will lose the client eventually. Just know that. If you’re in client services, at some point the client will hire a developer in house. They will hire that designer and move to another shop. No matter how much of a good job you did, somebody is offering a better price point or they met somebody that they just want to try. Don’t sweat about losing them. If you had a good relationship with them in the first place, they will be back. That’s what a 75% repeat rate is about.

Carrie: That’s incredible. Not that I doubted that you knew what you’re talking about but I reckon you do. I just know from working with you at Crowd Favorite, another part of that relationship role means face time. It’s not necessarily physical face time…but can you talk a little bit about your philosophy of phone calls or Skype versus email communication?

Karim: Yes. I’m very well known at Crowd Favorite for showing up to meetings and slacking somebody in the background to turn on their video turn. Turn on your video! In a distributed company, people sometimes decide you know what? Today I’m not going to get dressed for the office or something. I don’t have the number in front of me, but I think the number is something close to 90% of nonverbal cues come through on your face right. There was a show on TV in the 90s on Fox about that. You need to be able to communicate fully with your team members and your clients. So if you’re not in the physical same city as your team member or your client, I sort of demand video calls rather than phone calls. The client is always right. If the clients says “I just don’t do video calls”. I say ok. I even have a rule that says when a project reaches a certain level of complexity, you either have to get on a plane or they have to agree to client video calls. That costs them money. All of a sudden they’re like “I guess I can install Skype”.

Carrie: Oh that’s funny!

Karim: It makes such a difference. No matter how much you think you’re not the most social or the most experienced person at this, I guarantee you that you will not even realize how much more information you’re getting with a video call than you’re getting over voice.

Carrie: I don’t doubt you, Karim. I am much better when I write things, like constructing an email than I would be “off the cuff” on a phone call. I just don’t necessarily think that quickly on the spot. I do not feel very eloquent. It’s obvious by this question I’m getting around to right now. How would you suggest presenting that confidence, comfort and all of that when you don’t really feel that?

Karim: Ok. So I’m going to use you an example. As the audience might know, you and I have worked together. So you come across in a written format as an expert and extremely knowledgeable, but there is no context. I have seen clients react to you on calls because of your personality. It’s not necessarily about being an expert; it’s also about your personality. For your listeners, you are this way even with clients and they love it! The Carrie you hear on this podcast is actually the Carrie that brings the client experience. It’s a wonderful thing. They’re paying you not only to be the expert because you know your subject in depth but they also signed the contract. They hired you because they got something from you…a personality and a feeling. Show that personality! Show that feeling! That’s not going to come across in the written word. I’m reminding my own team of this as well as our clients all the time. You will never get the complete story from an email or from a slack message. It’s the nature of the human being that you put so much thought into it even if you’re writing a constructed email into the message. You’re trying to get there. You are telling your side of the story. There’s a lot of a lot of training out there that talks about the two sides to every story. There’s your story, their story and the truth in the middle. That’s very true. If you’re going to spend 20 minutes to 2 hours crafting an email to tell a client something, you are telling your narrative. I say get on the phone, get on the video call, meet in person and discuss it. Then send the email as a sort of follow-up to what happened (not as the conversation) especially if it’s something important.

Carrie: Gotcha! So have the conversation first and document the take away in an email.

Karim: Exactly.

Carrie: Well thank you for the compliment. I invited you on the podcast solely in the hope that you would make me feel better about myself. Assuming that all goes well… those are obviously simpler conversations to deal with… but what about when something goes sideways? You learn about it via an email or maybe the conversation starts to go to downhill when you’re on the phone, do you have some tips you can suggest for regaining control or change the tone of that?

Karim: First of all, never react. If something starts spinning out of control live on a phone call or in an email, don’t react. I work with (you have too) with Jason Rosenbaum who is an expert. One of the tricks that he used was sometimes he’d write the email he wanted to write in Word or something that’s not an email client and put that away just to get it off his chest. Then he would come back and write the email he needed to write. It’s the same thing even if you’re on the phone call and they start asking you very uncomfortable questions and they start blaming you for things that you have no control over. The last thing you want to do is react. Take a breath if you’re live on the call and listen. If they’ve asked you a question and you realize that you’re about to say something that’s not positive, a trick to use is just to ask another question about the direction they’re going to let them keep talking for a second. So they asked you why is this late and not working? So you dig in and say well can you tell me a little bit more about the problem you’re having with the baited link I gave you (whatever the case may be). So keep them talking for a moment to re-center yourself. If you’re not positive and you are in a positive place, it’s going to keep going negative. You need to regain what I call positive control in the situation. To do that, you need to take that breath and take a second, right?

Carrie: Yeah this is where I would just hope that you or Chris Lema were on the call and could take over. We need pocket Karim for these conversations.

Karim: Rebecca Gill might come up with that.

Carrie: I know, right? Pocket Carrie has made its way around the states. So ok. That’s good. Take a deep breath. You know what? It’s really hard not to react and take things personally even though it is just business. You shouldn’t be taking things personally but I think that’s (I don’t know if this is as true in an agency environment as it is for a solo artist) but when there’s criticism of the work it feels like personal criticism. So it’s hard not to react negatively. I could use some techniques there.

Karim: Ok. One thing to remember is none of this is personal. It’s a very fine line because I like to elect to try and follow is what our common friend in the WordPress world (Steve Zehngut says). I think he says “I don’t have clients. I have friends.” But the reality is, they’re paying you. Your friends aren’t paying you to show up to a party. Your client is. So if they’re paying you, they are paying you for your best possible expertise and they’re paying you to be a professional even when they’re not. There are all sorts of sports analogies about being the professional even if you’re opponent isn’t. The bottom line here is you’re being paid to be that professional so don’t take it personally. It’s easy to say and harder to manage but if you have that mindset before things go south it’s easier to take care of. It’s one of the reasons why it’s very hard to work with family or friends as clients (people who are already in your life). Anybody that has tried that knows that can devolve very quickly because they know how to push your buttons and vice versa. So if you’re not taking it personally that’s a start. Then the next thing to do is if you’re asking questions when things get done and you’re taking a breath, what you do is you try to turn it around and go positive. In regaining that positive control, what you’re going say is “Ok. Yes, it’s late”. Admit what your fault is but turn it towards here’s what we’re doing to fix it and here’s how it’s going to make it a better project in the next phase. You really need to make sure that you’re getting that across. We have situations that happen even at large agencies. It’s not just a solo-preneur or freelancer problem. We get behind on projects and we need to go to the client and say we screwed up and here’s why. Sometimes an even harder conversation is that you didn’t screw up. If you’re doing design or there is a developer that the client used that screwed up that affected your project…if you go in there and you’re acting very defensively, then you’re not their ally. You’re not helping them solve their problem. You’re just trying to take blame away from yourself. In that case, it’s not about saying it’s my fault. It’s about saying ok. We’re here. Let’s talk about how we are going to get out of this. Let’s figure out how we solve your problem. What a lot of people do is they talk about what they’re good at. So if you’re a developer they talk about code. A designer talks about design. In moments of stress with your client, bring the conversation back to their goals and what they’re looking to do. Ask what their end result is, past just launching the website. Talk to them about what they’re looking to get across. What does their website do? Does it bring them clients? Are they selling a product? Bring the conversation back to what the goal is. Once they’ve leveled out from being upset, you can then dig back into the issue. Here’s a list of things we are going to do in detail. Here are the next steps. But if you try to dig into those details before you’ve brought them back out of their headspace of being upset, you’re just going to continue that downward spiral.

Carrie: Yeah. I’m actually reading a book right now called The Art of Negotiations. One of the things it talks about is when something has gone wrong and it’s your fault. Throw it out on the table, label it and get it out there. That disarms the other party from feeling like they have to tell you what you’ve done wrong. You can come out and own it like you said.

Karim: If they’re a really good client, they’re going respect you even more for owning it before they’ve laid it at your feet. Not all clients are perfect, especially if they’re in an upset distracted space, they might continue to dig into even if you’ve taken ownership of that. In doing that, even if they continue to dig in, at some point they will realize that they are beating a dead subject here and they can move on, right?

Carrie: Well we’ve covered a lot of territory. We’ve got a few more minutes left together. I’m thinking…I’ve got something that I want talk about…but I’ll let you throw in any topics that you want to talk about too.

Karim: Oh please. I’m your guest.

Carrie: As an account manager, you do something called easy wins. Are there things that you can give to the client or pull out your back pocket maybe in one of those stressful or unhappy moments that doesn’t necessarily cost you a ton but is very valuable to them?

Karim: I feel like you’re leading me, but I’m not sure exactly where you’re going.

Carrie: So say let’s say that we had agreed to do 8 layouts and I’ve only given you 6 layouts. I’m late on getting you the other 2.

Karim: Exactly. This is this is a great example of preplanning as well. So hopefully when you’re when you’re approaching a client, you’re saying to the client ok. Your request for proposal or in our first conversation, I understood you want these 10 things. These are the 10 pieces of functionality or business goals that you have for your website or product. Then you start on your project. Well, let’s say you get 70% through your project and you got them 7 of the things. Thing number 8 has taken a wild turn. All of a sudden it’s going to be more complicated and take longer. Hopefully back when you were planning the 10 things you had to get them, you saw a couple of quick wins. You were able to understand that they had maybe left something out of what they’re looking for. You were just going to give them that anyway or you were planning on doing that as part of your overall process. If you need to give them those extras steps, part of setting expectations and constantly re-resetting them is to make sure that you have something in your back pocket. So you have an 11th or 12th thing that is easy for you to implement. I’m trying to stay away from purely WordPress examples but you know my what I’m saying basically is think of another feature that in your interactions in the first 70% of the project they might want. You can give that to them and it takes relatively little time. You’re not going charge them for it and it is a win-win on both sides. There’s always something there, 100% of the time. I haven’t been in one situation where I haven’t been able to say you know what? We screwed up on this. We’re not going to be able to get you thing number 8 the way we wanted to. While we’re figuring that out we saw that there was a need to do X and Y. Then X and Y in the way you explain it sounds like it’s an added feature. It’s feature 11 or 12, but in reality was something very easy for you to implement.

Carrie: That is a killer tip right there. Karim? We have chatted about the average length of the podcast here. Is there anything that you would share with my audience that I didn’t ask you about?

Karim: Let’s see. I guess the one thing in being an account manager…I don’t know if this happened to anybody else or I’m the only person in web history that this has happened to in web consulting… but sometimes, believe it or not, my clients have their own delays. Can you imagine that? I must be the only person, right?

Carrie: My clients always have things right on time.

Karim: Well it’s is just me. Pretend it might happen to somebody else. If it’s going to happen to you, make them work in your favor. Make those delays mean something to you. This is a great time to talk about the need to get things in a more timely fashion or there’s going to be a ramp down because I have other clients, or there is going to be a fee or a change order or something. You know that could be a podcast itself. Never set the precedent that client’s delay doesn’t affect you. Even if it won’t, make sure that you’re communicating that a client delay is affecting you. That way if they handle this first one well but the second time that happens and becomes a larger problem, you’ve already set the groundwork. This is a problem. We’re going to have to have a change order or we’re going to have to ramp down (whatever the goal is that you want).

Carrie: There’s a whole art form to this. Karim? That you could be a whole other podcast. You are veritable fount wisdom and I appreciate you coming on and sharing your experiences on the show. If you are not part of the officehours community head over to the website’s officehours.fm/community and you can join our free slack channel. There are lots of good conversations about these podcasts and whatever else is on your mind. Of course, you can catch a replay of this episode over on officehours.fm as well.  Karim? Where can people find you and say hello or stalk you for further tidbits of wisdom?

Karim: There are 3 places that I know about. 1) If you need help with a project obviously come to crowdfavorite.com and get in touch with us. We can help you even if you are a freelancer who is a little bit out of your depth and needs to work with a larger agency. We can help you. 2) On Twitter @Karimmaruchi. I am happy to talk with anybody publicly there. 3) I’ll make a special offer to you guys. I’m in your slack community at officehours.fm. If somebody wants to hit me up there and has a specific question that their little bit embarrassed to ask in public, I will be happy to follow up with them privately.

Carrie: Karim you rock! I know you speak at a number of WordCamps. Do you have any right now that you know you’ll be at?

Karim: I think I’d be pushing my luck if I asked for a third speaking slot in a row for WordCamp Europe. I’m planning on attending but I don’t have any set plans at the moment for speaking. I’m looking at some non-WordPress events at the moment. I’ll be tweeting and talking those as soon as they are locked in.

Carrie: Fantastic. I’m looking forward to the next time I see you. Thanks for coming on.

Karim: Thank you, Carrie. It was awesome. I appreciate it.