What distinguishes a good communication advisor?
Disclaimer: Below observations are from my 20+ years of experience in the communication industry, during which I worked in China and Germany. Since they are from my experience, there will surely be some personal judgement. The reason I shared my thoughts is to make the circle round: to enable the clients to know more about the agency practice and therefore, get the best out of their agency partners; and keep the discussion live on how the consultants at the agency side can really support their clients and add value through higher consulting standard and implementation. The aim is to make the collaboration more positive, functional and enjoyable.
1. Sound judgement and sensible advice
There is no textbook reference about the best communication practice. Each critical situation requires consultants to demonstrate sound judgement and make timely decisions even under unclear and very complicated circumstances. The clear objective in mind should be to derive ideas and approaches to resolving issues to reach optimum results.
As I worked in Beijing, one afternoon when our team was doing routine media monitoring for a state-owned client, we came across a piece of news in a provincial news portal that there was an explosion in a petrochemical plant of this client in Southern China. After double-checking the reliability of the news source, we immediately called the client. By then they haven’t received any information regarding the explosion from their local plant management. We warned them that soon they would receive press enquiries and advised them to get in touch immediately with their local team to enquire the cause of the accident and the measures taken. In terms of handling the press enquiries, we advised clients to inform all the journalists who called in that they were going to hold press conference in two hours. In this way we successfully withheld the media to write breaking news only about the explosion with no further details, which would only cause panic. In this two hour of time, we worked intensively with clients’ communication team to gather information, decide on the necessary next steps and come up with the corporate statement. When the press conference started, client’s management team had the basic facts and statement handy, and the media was also happy that they got the firsthand information from the client. What they wrote about the incident turned out to be factual.
2. Treat client with respect to establish a trustful working relationship
The selection of a working partner is mutual. Normally clients will run a third-party pitch. The intensive “request for proposal” process is meant not only to fulfill the procurement procedure, but a good chance to get to know the agency partner’s capabilities and the team they are going to work with. The agency will also do their homework to screen the clients and evaluate the scenario if they take the clients up, whether there will be reputational risks for them.
Once the contract is signed, the ideal situation will be the agency partner would devote sufficient manpower and resource to understand clients’ business and the potential communication challenges and start the work. The clients should not treat the agency partner as only the extended arms and legs, dumping the work they themselves don’t want to do to the consultants, but be open with information sharing and bring the consultants quickly up to date about their business.
But just as everyone knows, things don’t always run perfectly. I once heard a senior advisor at a renowned agency tell one client over the phone that they should contact a junior team member because the contract size was too small for her to personally attend to the matter.
I also heard complaints by some former colleagues why a client always asked so many detailed questions, which to me was only natural because the foreign client didn’t understand the market regulations here – part of the reason why they decided to hire communication consultants and legal advisors. Later when we established the mutual trust, the client was willing to share that some of the previous questions were not from them, but from the regulatory bodies in their home country, which they had to handle with particular sensitivity.
I once had a client which would email or call almost every day around 5pm to allocate work, most of which we needed to hand in before the next working day started, as they needed to report back to their supervisors. Because of this client I could not join the team Christmas dinner and the New Year dinner, having had to handle the urgent requests which could be avoided through good planning.
Each person or each team has their own way of work. The way to establish a trustful and fruitful working relationship is to be adaptive and constructive, handle each other in a fair way and always be results-driven. Sometimes we are easily buried in the daily work and forget the aim we want to reach and why we chose to work with each other.
3. Always be sincere and tell the truth
Like what we always advised our clients – the reputation is easily damaged in a short time but will take years to rebuild. The trust between communication advisors and their counterparts is exactly like this.
One journalist at an international media organization once shared with me a story. She heard that a Chinese car-sharing company would soon close a deal with a big international investor, and she called the PR firm representing this Chinese company during the China visit of the investor company’s CEO. The Partner of the client-servicing team firmly denied and commented this was a pure rumor. Only two hours after the call, the deal announcement was out. The result? The journalist was very angry and said she would never work with this PR firm again. I was contemplating – professional communicators all know that we shouldn’t lie, not to anyone, particularly not to the media. We want to serve as a bridge between clients and media. Sometimes we also encountered situation that clients needed to keep the information strictly confidential, but the communication advisors already got the media calls. If we don’t know the information, we should just honestly admit it and promise to get back to the media as soon as there is some clarity.
4. Be resourceful and eager to learn
When communication firms make new hire, they always pay great attention to whether the candidate is quick and eager to learn. Like doctors, scientists, or people of any other career path, communication advisory is not a repetitive job. When a PR agency takes up a new client, the team needs to invest significant time and energy to understand client’s business, the internal structure and their key stakeholders. Only in this way can the communication initiatives support the business ambitions. Therefore, communication advisors should be eager to learn and open to new ideas.
Now the world is increasingly interlinked. Serving clients well requires global expertise and the local know-how. Consultants based in the East should know what happens in the West and vice versa. Otherwise, the advice they gave sometimes might risk as being naive or incomplete.
Being resourceful and eager to learn is particularly important for the senior advisors at communication firms. Many of them started the career when the communication was more in person and traditional. When the digital era came, some of them might have failed to adapt to the quickly changing trend. In most of the client team set-up, the senior level advisors are responsible for client management and strategy but rely on the junior team members to come up with digital communication ideas. With the digital communication a sustainable trend to stay, everyone should take time to understand the distinctive features of it and hone the digital skills to provide solid advice.
5. Be passionate about the work and always keep clients in mind
Communication advisors always have the feeling that when working on a crisis case, all the team members were fully motivated and really stretched to the limit to work to the extra miles. The quick turnaround time and the fast-changing scenarios are one of the reasons to fuel the consultants. But the ultimate drive is the sense of accomplishing something, contributing to a good course or even save lives. When the crisis is over and the mandate goes into the reputation rebuilding stage or the routine work, the level of devotedness normally subside. Similarly, after a communication firm won a new contract, the attention given to the new client might reduce. The leading partner might only offer high-level guidance or even moved on to the next business development project.
Clients can surely sense whether an agency partner is committed. If the service offered is not the same as the promise made, it might lead to disappointment and bad working relationship, or even the termination of a contract.
Of course there are many good examples too. Once in a client review session, the client shared that he thought the leading Partner of the external communication firm did a great job. This senior advisor really took great care of the clients: He called the client regularly to share what he observed as good industry communication practice and brainstormed with the client what his company can learn or even do better than the peers. They also constantly reviewed the progress together and compared the achievements so far with the goal and adjusted if necessary. The regular alignments made jobs at either side much easier.
6. Possess good interpersonal skills
A good communication advisor or a team leader should have the ability for empathy and act openly and transparently. The client-servicing team should be managed in a way that everyone has the equal access to certain information and can share the responsibility, have face time with clients and learn new skills. The team leader should be hands on as well as know when appropriate to delegate and give credit to other team members if deserved. Inter-cultural adaptiveness is also important, especially if the client has a global presence and the agency partner needs to support client’s team based in a certain geography.
Take-aways: what clients can do to make sure that they appoint communication advisors with the before-mentioned traits?
First, when selecting an agency partner, besides considering the industry reputation and the fees, clients need to look closely at the client-servicing team that they are going to work with. Normally a communication firm will allocate 3-5 persons to serve a normal-sized mandate. Therefore, the client team matters more than the agency scale.
During the selection process, clients should take time to have sufficient interactions with each core team member at the potential agency partner. Besides the short biographies of each team member, which are normally included in the pitch deck, follow-up interviews with each person will enable clients to better understand their roles within the team, capabilities and personal traits, which will set a good foundation for the future collaboration.
When the actual work starts, the working chemistry is of particular importance for both the clients and the agency partner. It is not only about the personality match, but more about holding the same working principles. Each side should try to understand the viewpoint of the other aisle. For the client side, they should not treat their communication advisors as only the service suppliers but should trust them with the information, take their advice seriously and believe in the collaboration to optimize the communication results.
Do you share similar or different views? You are more than welcome to contact me, and I’d love to discuss more!
