After kicking off the week with the loss of a long-term client, James hits the road with colleague Rhys for a series of in-person client visits across the South West. In this episode, he shares how face-to-face time unearthed new opportunities, strengthened relationships, and sparked fresh thinking
Video Transcript: A week full of variety | Wins, loses, travel | Black Lab
Hi, welcome back. We’ve had an interesting week this week. We’ve started actually off with a client that we’ve had for four, maybe five years dropping off, which was really disappointing.
They cited commercial reasons, however they have had a new starter in the marketing department and they’ve added another agency to the account, so I’d be disappointed if they do actually continue working for somebody else rather than somebody just being completely straightforward and honest with us. It’s been an account we’ve kind of struggled to develop over time because they’ve not necessarily had the resource in-house to support what we’re doing. We’ve always come up with a lot of ideas and tried to drive things, but it’s just the way I think having an account for four years is pretty good going and we’ve really enjoyed working on it.
It’s quite an interesting brand. That was the start of the week and then this week my colleague Rhys and I, we’ve been all the way down to just outside Exeter and then to Southampton, Portsmouth area to see two automotive clients, two separate clients we’ve got down that neck of the woods, although admittedly they’re both quite far apart. That was great.
I think my big takeaway from this week is just FaceTime with people. It is great. This is the first client we saw.
We’ve actually met physically once, but we talk to them every couple of weeks and then we have our reporting each month with them, so we get plenty of time chatting to them, but actually time together just unearths those little bits of pain points where they potentially need a little bit of help and I think them realise that we can support in some slightly different ways than we already do, so I think that was worth it from kind of a business point of view, but from a relationship point of view it was just nice to spend time with them and find out, you find those little bits and pieces out like what they did on the weekend and what’s going well for them, what’s not and again stuff that’s just really tricky to get out on a Teams or a Google Meet call. So I was pleased we did that and then the second client over in Portsmouth, Southampton, both these visits were just essentially a check-in, just to say more of a hello and you might say well it’s a lot of effort to drive, I think the round trip was about 650 odd miles, but actually just being in the room with them again, I don’t think there’s any opportunity there as such, but that was not our objective of seeing them, it was actually spending a bit of time with them, letting them know that we’re still thinking about them, talk about stuff again that we wouldn’t maybe talk about on a call, maybe in this instance more business related, but we found out a few things that they’re doing which will be really interesting to be able to follow up and again just building that connection, that relationship. So yeah, whilst it was two days out of the office for Rhys and I for the equivalent of two and a half hours worth of meetings, it’s worth it and I think again on a personal level, I got to spend time with Rhys and we got to talk through ideas, talk about again more social things, so we can I think sometimes get distracted from, if you like, with the small talk, but I think it’s important, understanding who you’re working with, whether it’s a colleague or whether it’s a client, those little bits and pieces of nuggets of information is so powerful.
And then following that, there was a meeting I couldn’t go to, but some of our team, Adrian and Nick went out to see a new, we’ve had them a couple of months, client, but we only had them on a short-term contract, but it sounds like that’s going to continue and it’s a big client, so it sounds like some great opportunity and work we can do there. So this week’s been a really, really positive one, coupled with Rob, our head of BD, he’s been doing loads of great outreach and for prospective clients and also planning ahead for our next Flatlab event that we’ll be holding in Leeds, a slightly different location this time. So after probably a week that started quite, a bit of a downer with the loss of that client, we’ve had a strong end to the week and it feels really good.
I think helped by the leaves and all the spring has certainly sprung where we live and it was nice driving around the country and seeing big green fields and trees full of leaves, so everyone’s probably feeling a little bit more positive. But yeah, as I say, great end to the week, well it’s still Friday, so we’ve got some work to do still, but I’m sure there’ll be some positive stuff that comes out from it. Anyway, I’ll speak to you guys soon.
Watch Video 1: BTS Journey of A Digital Marketing Agency in Growth.
Watch Video 2: Two Guys, One Agency | BTS at Black Lab
Watch Video 3: Working with a Mentor | BTS at Black Lab
Watch Video 4: 6 Years & No Arguments | BTS at Black Lab
