by Alistair Mokoena (@AlistairMokoena) As an advertising professional, what is your love language and do you know your clients’ love languages? Are you treating your clients the way they’d like to be treated or do you default to how you’d like to be treated?
I’m afraid the old adage, “Treat others as you would like to be treated,” is misdirected. It’s more effective to treat others the way they would like to be treated.
A lot said and written
A lot has been said and written about relationships and what makes them successful. Being married myself, I’ve read a fair share of these books and I still haven’t found the Holy Grail. One of the more famous relationship ones I’ve read is “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.”
As good as this best seller is at explaining the differences between men and women, it is no guarantee for success. Every relationship has its fair share of challenges, particularly once the honeymoon phase is over.
There is one relationship book, though, that I would recommend. It’s called “The 5 Love Languages” by Dr Gary Chapman and it’s the closest thing to a relationship manual.
Keep the flame burning
What the author has managed to achieve with this book is break down, in very simple terms, why some couples manage to keep the flame burning and why others, despite their best efforts, end up calling it quits.
The central premise of this book is that we all value, and therefore respond to, different love languages. And, to be effective in a relationship, you first need to understand your own love language, and then see if it’s the same as your partner’s. Your love language is what your partner needs to do to appeal to you and vice versa.
You cannot impose your love language on your partner and hope that he or she will be happy. That never works.
Five love languages
According to Dr Chapman, there are five love languages. For some people, it’s words of affirmation. For others, love means receiving gifts. For yet others, it doesn’t get better than quality time. Then, for some, love equals acts of service and, lastly, other people see physical touch as a signal of love.
Most people have primary and secondary love languages. A primary one is non-negotiable, while a secondary is something we can go without.
My primary love language is words of affirmation, and receiving or giving gifts is secondary. It took me many years to realise that my wife’s love language is quality time. It doesn’t matter how many sweet nothings I whisper in her ear and how many gifts I shower her with, it’s quality time she is after.
A little goes a long way
Are you big on personal touch? Are you a hugs-, high-five and kisses-on-the-lips kinda person? Have you ever checked with your clients if this is their love language? Or are you Mr/Ms Words of Affirmation? Do your clients give you a poker face when you go all sentimental and mushy on them or do their faces light up when you tell them they are your favourite client? How often do you complement a client for a thorough brief, a speedy revert and an objective assessment of the work?
How often do you acknowledge the role a client plays in producing outstanding work, or do you take all the glory and send them a photo of a Loerie? Ever thought of letting a client keep a Loerie for the first six months of the year and you the other six months? Some of these little gestures go a long way in cementing our partnerships with clients.
A challenge that most agency MDs face is striking a balance between the right amount of client engagement and smothering a client with attention. Some clients value quality time and others are way too busy to even take a phone call, but this doesn’t mean they don’t care. They do; it’s just that their need for face-to-face engagement with their agency partner is on the low side.
What to deliver on
What you need to do is find out what matters to them and deliver on that.
You might find that your clients value acts of service and would rather not play golf or have drinks with you because you have very little in common. By offering to do a presentation for them free of charge, or proactively sharing information with them that might make their jobs easier, you might win more love. We often refer to these random acts of service as “value add.” Perhaps you need to dial up on these and slow down on the boozy lunches.
On the subject of gifts and boozy lunches, some clients absolutely love receiving gifts. It’s about understanding what gifts are relevant and appropriate to your client.
Built over time
What all this boils down to is that successful relationships are built over time. They take hard work, dedication and sacrifice.
Falling in love is easy. We meet, we share credentials, we flirt, there’s chemistry and we sign a contract to become partners. The difficult part is staying in love. Perhaps it’s time we started discussing love languages in our chemistry sessions, followed by a love temperature check every month with our clients to see if our love tanks are full or empty.
Alistair Mokoena (@AlistairMokoena) is a Unilever-trained Chartered Marketer with lots of blue-chip marketing experience. He’s currently MD of Draftfcb Joburg. Mokoena contributes the monthly “The Switch” column to MarkLives.com.