How to be a great client

All us agency types know that we belong to the legion of the irredeemably gifted. It also seems that there may be some clients who are similarly touched by angels. My excellent colleague Morgan McLintic has even put up a guide explaining how to be a bad client, which as usual, is funny, to the point and insightful. However, as I'm not that keen to encourage bad clients, I thought I'd produce a few points on how to be a great one:

1. Use more than money to motivate. Small tokens of appreciation mean a lot, but cost a little.
2. Share your enthusiasm & vision. PR is about intellect but it’s also about heart.
3. Evangelise PR to your colleagues and get their teams on board. PR is bottom up & top down.
4. Be honest about whether you should be the public face. Differentiation helps creates opportunities.
5. Make sure speakers are trained (regularly) to make the most of opportunities the team create.
6. Examine the output and share it with your colleagues. Surprisingly, some don't.
7. Accept that all teams have seniors & juniors. Not all PR is about strategy. Juniors can be deeply motivated by a senior client who’s prepared to talk to them.
8. Spend time with your team in their environment. Listen in on calls. Suggest ways to improve.
9. Work through problems. The perfect account team hasn’t yet been invented. Until it is, accept that occasionally things will go wrong. You can let them know, but give them a chance to fix it.
10. Let your PR team take you out socially. You can learn more and you might even have some fun.

Comments

[Octavio Isaac Rojas Orduña]

Great post!!

How about: accept that you can learn from your agency?