cheerleader or backstabber?

My voice over friend Stefania had a blog post that started my wheel house spinning. It was about relationships and how we should treat people.

It begged the question in my head: wouldn’t you really love to know what’s going on inside your client or prospect’s head sometimes?

Wouldn’t that be really helpful when negotiating your fee, for example?

Selfishly, I think we’d all (client and vendor) like that ability sometimes but just for a second, I’d like imagine we COULD know what a client is thinking – specifically about us as service providers. How would we feel about their honest, internal answers that in reality we’ll never know?

Do they think of us as competent or merely convenient?

Are we considered creative or average?

Honest or questionable?

When our transaction is done, will the client be our cheerleader or a backstabber?

The truth and the challenge is, since we cannot know, we can only focus on how we comport ourselves in both word and deed…and how we manage (as Stefania pointed out) relationships.

Or expectations.

Oooo, there’s the question! What do clients expect from us?

Well, great service, great job great value, duh!

But I think more than that, they want attention as part of their contract which I think also means/implies (maybe more importantly) respect.

We are probably polite to clients but are we respectful? Not subservient. Outwardly, buoyantly respectful of their time, talent and treasure.

I think we mostly are but I think we don’t truly think about being respectful, act on it, speak of it. We fall back to….politeness.

I guess I posted this mostly as a reminder to myself. A reminder of the code of conduct I wrote for this company in 2008. A reminder that when all is said and done, people would rather do business with friends and that friendship for me has always been built on mutual respect.

Am I talking crazy?

3 Responses to “cheerleader or backstabber?”

  1. Not crazy at all, Peter. As much as this industry is a creative one, it’s also a *service* industry. To our clients, getting the job done competently and being consistent and reliable (and pleasant, even FUN to deal with!), go hand in hand. It’s not just about the performance. It’s also about a professional attitude and a love of what we do that shines through.

    I’m sure the folks who are reading this post don’t really need the reminder. 🙂 But it never hurts to say it out loud. 😉 Thanks for doing that..

    All the best, — Jodi

  2. Jodi,

    We can only hope.

    I think sometimes about some of the big chain stores and how they spend literally millions of dollars on marketing to promote themselves as a happy, friendly locale only to have all that hard work undone by one employee who’s having a bad day and has decided to share their poison in word or deed with a customer. If you are the CEO of that chain store, that stuff must keep you up at night.

    At least, for the most part, if voice talents screw up, we have no one to blame but ourselves. 🙂

    Best always,
    – Peter

  3. 😀 Very true, Peter. Very true. 🙂