The Art of Client Service

Chapter 44Always Think Endgame

The client was wrong. The agency had agreed to create a print ad on a ridiculously tight schedule, with the understanding that we would do our creative presentation on a particular day. Now the client was saying she couldn't meet on the day we had agreed to. She wanted to delay a day, but still make all the magazine closings. “You can make up the day in the schedule,” she said.

Normally we could. Normally we would be delighted to have an extra day to develop creative concepts. But this schedule wasn't normal. It was broken down into hours, not days. A day lost was a big deal. It threatened to blow our closing dates.

We could have insisted on holding to the original schedule. We could have won the argument, but we would have lost in the end.

The client would remember. The next time we needed her to be flexible on a date, I could see her pointing to the schedule, then pointing to me and saying, “This is what you committed to, so don't even think about asking for an extra hour, let alone an extra day.”

So we figured out how to make the publication closings, even with the one-day delay on the creative presentation. The message: working with clients and colleagues is a never-ending process of negotiation and compromise. Always think endgame. Remember that an argument won can become an account lost.