Say You'll Change Course Before Anyone Signs

A client hired me to generate leads. We built a plan together, and we stuck to it. Then we got to the actual creative, the specific message and style that would go out into the world, and I didn't think what we'd planned was right. So I told them we had to change it.

They agreed to go with the adjusted plan. It worked. Leads came in faster than they could handle, to the point where they almost asked me to turn it off.

And the relationship took a hit anyway. I was getting pressure from above my contact: this isn't what we talked about, this isn't the plan. They were right. It wasn't the plan. To their credit, they stuck with me. But I'd made the right call and still managed to make it feel like a broken promise.

Cara said it before anyone signed

When Cara Steinmann came on my podcast, she described the same habit in herself, except she'd figured out where to put it. Near the end of her marketing years, she realized she was most of the problem in her client relationships. "I'll show up and I will change my mind," she said. "You could count on it."

So she started saying it before the retainer, not after. If we sign this, it may not be the same thing every month. I'm going to gather information as we go, I'm going to come to different conclusions, and if we need to change course, we're going to. And if a client needed a six-month plan that never moved, she didn't take them.

That's the whole move. She didn't stop changing her mind. She made it part of the deal, and she let the people who couldn't live with it walk before they paid her.

I work the same way. If I drive home a different way, it's because I felt like I needed to go home a different way. On a project, the plan is where we start, not a promise about every piece of creative that comes after it. I learn things once the work is in front of me that I couldn't have known in the first meeting. Ignoring them to stay on plan would be easier for everyone in the room and worse for the business that hired me.

Plenty of people want exactly that. When somebody has been let down by marketing before, one of the things they say they want is somebody who'll change course when something isn't working. What they don't always picture is that the change shows up in the middle of the work, looking like a departure from what they approved.

Why it goes sideways

It isn't the same reason every time.

Sometimes I just didn't say it. When you're running things solo, the sales call is one more hat. Somebody tells me their problem and I go straight at it. What do you need? What's going on? How do I fix it? I have a shelf of books behind my desk about exactly what to say in that conversation, and in the moment I lose all of it. The one thing they most need to know about working with me never comes up. Cara named part of why. She loves a good puzzle, and so do I. Hand either of us a problem and we want a shot at it, even when it isn't the right one for us.

Sometimes I said it to the right person, and the wrong person felt it. The person across the table agrees that things might change. Then the change lands on somebody above them who never heard that conversation, and all they see is a plan that moved. That's what happened with that client.

And sometimes it's just who the client is. Some people need the plan. They like to decide what we're doing, stick to it and finish it, and a mid-course change feels like something went wrong even when it's working. Saying it up front doesn't change how they're built. It just lets both of us find out early.

So I say it out loud while it's still cheap, before anything is signed, and I say it to whoever is going to feel it. Strategy is a plan, and a plan is my best read of the business with what I know on day one. I'm going to learn more, and when I do, some of it will change. If that's going to be a problem, this is the time to tell me.

Some people will hear that and pass. That's fine. It's the same thing Cara figured out. The ones who pass were going to feel it later anyway, and I'd rather they find out before they sign than halfway through the work.