I have been very vocal about my disdain for the MBTA, particularly over the past winter when they were significantly late nearly every day. When asked about why, they flat out lied to us about why they were late and we later found out that the conductors themselves were on a soft strike. To top it off, instead of trying to fix their problems with timeliness, they changed the schedule, basing it on the times that they could actually arrive. They did all of this without ever consulting or communicating with their loyal customers. They eventually resolved their labor issue and I (sort of) got over the fact that they wimped out and made changes to the new schedule that still, in my mind, works against people who need to get their kids to day care and then to the train.

Things have been going well until recently. You see, it has been hot outside. Our line, the Worcester line, uses CSX tracks. When it gets hot enough to bend iron outside, CSX puts speed restrictions on the tracks. This causes issues. MBTA’s normal strategy is to make an annoucement in the station that says that trains are delayed. There is usually no further communication until recently. The conductor on the 6:30 Framingham train has taken it upon himself to be more… social. Instead of just saying “The train is late. It’s CSX’s fault.” He uses a very warm and apologetic (for a dude with a wicked awesome Boston accent) tone.

Matt Rogers emailed me a about great article on best practices for companies using agencies by Sam Decker. The article is called 6 Best Practices for Agencies. The article summarizes some of Sam’s experiences using 10 or more agencies and technology service providers. This (combined with Matt’s suggestion) got me to thinking about what makes a good client for an agency or consultant.

Alignment with Vision

A good agency will spend some time up front learning about the client’s vision for their work before they even pitch. A good client will afford them some of their time. Agencies that go in and try to roll out their entire tool belt without a sense for what the client wants are destined to either fail because they came in too expensive, or scare the client because they thought they were only looking for a customer segmentation exercise and not a full re-branding of the organization with a new TV campaign, a CRM database and a media optimization tool that tells you how to exactly spend your ad bucks. Giving the client a sense for what you are going to propose before you propose anything will allow them to give you feedfront before you spend valuable time putting your pitch together. In other words, be careful not to be that eager puppy with the sock in your mouth who is just happy to be playing tug-of-war with anyone.

They Seek Partnership

Trust is not something that happens overnight, but you want to increase responsibility and data sensitivity as your time passes and the relationship evolves. If your agency is a strategic think-tank, then you want to find a client that shares information like

• Key Performance Indicators
• Past performance
• Campaign results
• Customer data
• Product information
• Profitability data

That data thing is really important! If you are a tactical execution or delivery shop, then make sure that your client is sharing their brand, mission and vision with your team so they can make decisions as if they were spending their own money. Having a client who does not share the big picture indicates a lack of trust and an unwillingness to partner. Tread carefully.

Involvement

The client sponsor should be a part of the agency team and vice versa. Be very leery of situations where the person who ran the pitch process and brought your team on board is going to be “too busy” to participate in the actual projects. Make sure that they assign people with appropriate decision making responsibility.

They need your help

Projects are great, but in order to form an ongoing relationship where an agency can make a difference, you want to seek a client with a recurring budget for consulting. It takes time to iron out the kinks in working together. A client should be willing to give you at least 6 months to figure out how you best work together and to provide them results that make a real difference in their bottom line. That said, your agency’s goal should be to start adding value on day one and continue until the end of the relationship. Your client is paying top dollar for your services. Earn them.

Trust

The client trusts that the agency will deliver and allows the agency leeway to execute their best ideas. What good are your ideas if they end up being diluted of tossed out?

Notice I didn’t say: Knows exactly what they want. Agency folk often converse about the varying degrees of client vision. Most clients are paying for fresh, new ideas, not someone who only does exactly what they tell them to do. If that was the case, what would they need agencies for?

What else makes a good client?

Looking at my LinkedIn network of over 200 people, most people have been at more than one organization. If you take a random sample and interview you are bound to hear politically correct stories like

• I wanted more money.
• I felt under appreciated.
• I did not get along with my boss.
• I found a better opportunity.

Or you might find out that the person felt like they had their soul sucked out by Dementor kisses. Glassdoor.com is the place to air their filthy laundry about employment experiences anonymously. Registered users can review their previous position and talk about the benefits and gotchas of the employment experience. Registered users can also see the salaries for various positions within the companies.

We rely on the Internet to do everything from communicating with our friends, families and colleagues to choosing a new cappucino maker. A good deal of the technology we provided for your webbing enjoyment is free, but supported software with guaranteed uptime generally does not exist without a revenue model (for long). Companies like Yahoo! and Google provide us with oodles of free tools without so much as having to say “Oh Toodles”. We know the juggernaut model. They sell ads and they roll in dough. So when people complain about Yahoo or Google tools being down, I am sympathetic because whether the notice it or not, those companies are earning money by having you as a user. But what about those that do not have a revenue model to speak of?

YASMMeT /yaz’ met/ 1. (acronym) yet another social media messaging tool

Plurk is the latest yasmmet. It’s clearly a “competitor” to the popular twitter system. Twitter essentially is an open version of popular instant messaging platforms like MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. Plurk has an opportunity to capture social market share, [Notice that I did not say anything about revenue share as neither currently has a revenue model to speak of] primarily because twitter is horrible about stability.

Plurk has had the benefit of watching twitter flop around like a fish on the beach, but twitter has a big head start. Plurk’s user interface is a lot different. Twitter’s advantage is that most of its users are already longtime instant messenger users and bloggers who understand the technology and have easily adopted and embraced its value proposition. Because Plurk takes a few times to get used to, it puts it at a huge disadvantage in a space where people will give you about 90 seconds before they decide if they want to pursue something– unless they get some of the Twitter elite to convert people.

Was Mama Cass an inspiration for twitter? My 5 year old was singing this song the other day and I immediately thought of twitter. I find myself putting things on twitter just to see if someone else will identify with my references. Other times because I tweet just because I need to get something out of my head and move on. It’s not exactly singing, but the whole tweeting for tweeting’s sake is a lot like making your own kind of music.

If you have not been to Twitturly.com, you are missing out on the second most most important Twitter resource. The twitter search tool Summize is number one.

Joel Strellner has thoughtfully created a tool that gives us insight into the most popular URLs from the past 24 hours. Each time someone types in a link, Twitturly thoughtfully counts it as a vote for that URL. The best part is that it doesn’t matter if you’re using a tinyurl, is.gd or one of those other tools that help reduce the size of URLs (to rickroll your friends). Twitturly follows the URL to its destination.

I am ecstatic to see my (former?) client and good friend Matt Rogers embracing social media and blogomania. Matt is currently in Baylor University’s Executive MBA program and has been sharing insights from his life and his Baylor coursework via his new blog, Free Flowing Thoughts.

Matt recently told me that he was starting a blog war with his good friend, Bill Townsend of Interminds LLC over a presentation that Bill gave to Matt’s executive MBA class. I have never met Bill, but after reading his presentation entitled the Black and White of Internet Marketing, I can see that he CLEARLY knows his stuff and that he is actively monitoring the pulse of the digital space. So this is not a knock on Bill, but an attempt to change his thinking on one point: advertising on social media.