When I’m not herding cats for our clients at Access Marketing Company, you’ll often find me drumming for my 90s rock cover band. Music has always been a big part of my life from when my dad would blast Led Zeppelin and the Doors on an ancient reel-to-reel tape machine to my college band days to my current “grown up gig” here at Access Marketing Company. Music has not only influenced me as a person, it has served me well as a tool in my arsenal for perseverance, concentration or “getting in the zone”. I remember early in my career – I’m a rehabilitated engineer – I plowed through an all-nighter on a project with one song on infinite repeat (I believe it was STP’s “Still Remains”). It got me so focused on what I was doing, I think I stopped hearing it after it looped for the 32nd time.
Even today, I use music to affect my mood, get energized, or help maintain focus. But if I’m tuning in for the message and meaning, here are my picks for some songs that help with developing high quality client relationships (musicianship may vary)…
No Excuses – Alice in Chains
See where I’m going with this? I believe in transparency, so our team doesn’t make excuses. We may share reasons when warranted so that we can communicate the lesson to be learned in a situation or to help bring about a positive change, but if we did it, we own it.
All the Small Things – Blink 182
The details matter. Some of our team here would say details are ALL that matter. Wherever we fall on the nit-pick spectrum, we strive to make sure we pay attention to the little things that impact what we’re doing for clients.
Going the Distance – Cake
Our company does one-off projects or “helping hands” marketing every now and again, but it’s not common. Most often, we partner with customers for the long term, tackling the big but fun challenges in their marketing or running programs throughout their lifecycle.
You – Candlebox
I can’t accurately describe how many times we’ve brought a client from me/us thinking and messaging to you/your thinking and messaging, but it has been a LOT. It’s critical for longevity of a trusted brand and it definitely makes it easier to engage with customer audiences. “No really, let me tell you more about me.”
Good Times, Bad Times – Led Zeppelin
A solid client relationship is a lot like a marriage…at least in that there are, well, good times and bad times. We love celebrating the full-on successes with clients, but we have hung in there through plenty of tumult, too. Heck, if our clients didn’t have problems to solve every now and again, we’d be out of business.
Figure It Out – Royal Blood
This is our favorite way to delight customers. If I’m on the phone or in a web meeting with a client and they start a sentence with “do you think you could…”, I get all tingly inside. That because they are about to make us figure out how to add/enhance/incorporate/determine/decipher or otherwise noodle on a problem they, or we, haven’t yet solved. Think about it. Your closet friends have probably helped you out with something really hard at some point in your relationship and that made it all the stronger.
I could go on for hours (I have over 15 DAYS of music in my iTunes library), but I think you get the idea. Music is a valuable part of our lives here at Access Marketing Company, but the values we bring to our client engagements are what has made those relationships long lasting and truly rewarding for all of us.
Rock on!
