Traps
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The client thinks the project is not your key focus. If you don't focus on the client, it won't stay interested in you for long.
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Your project team forgets that clients, including the difficult ones, pay our salaries (try and like them, try and help them).
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The project dies while we wait for someone to get back to us (keep putting up ideas and proposing deadlines).
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Mistrust and hostility creep into the relationship - particularly regarding the monthly invoice. Address such issues with a director as soon as you sniff them (leaving them unchecked can be fatal.).
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Staff become selective with their communication workload, potentially risking PRs ability to deliver on promises to achieve objectives, meet or exceed expectations on time and within budget.
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PR staff ignore the brief and do what they think is best.
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Fail to demonstrate confidence in own judgement (if you don't think your idea will work, why should the project manager or the client).
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Your team fails to do the best it can on everything, every time. (Consulting is like a restaurant, everyone wants what they pay for).
Tips
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Your project manager is your client - they don't owe you billable hours, they owe the client good outcomes.
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Project managers are not there to redo your work, or micro-manage it - unless they have to.
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Get involved, be a team member, stay interested in the projects and offer assistance.
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Remember the idea is at the centre of everything - what are we trying to achieve, what is the story, what is the message. Don't re-invent the strategy and the messages all the time.
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Meet deadlines, don't make excuses. Who really cares if your dog died?
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Provide a thorough brief and keep the team informed so that the work will continue if you were to be away sick.
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Manage your time, learn how to do several projects at once. Consultancy and monogamy are not compatible concepts.
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Do the very best you can do - in the first draft (rough drafts are for no-hopers). Check your spelling and grammar. Remember its PR, presentation really does matter.
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Read it, write it, read it (writing is the spoken word written down and read what you wrote critically before you pass it on).
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Spell check it - confidence in your performance is zapped at the sight of the first typo or spelling error.
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There are no great writers, only great rewriters - so review your own work, be hard on yourself.
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Learn how to present your work - sloppy presentation makes you look amateurish (use the format - style area on the toolbar - no kidding, the program really works).
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Don't just ring the journalists, sell them the story. Remember its outcomes, not outputs.
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Make the client part of your team, generally the more contact the better.
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Provide reports, have regular 'kitchen' chats - send them interesting stories do stuff you're not getting paid to do. Be friendly. Don't just ring when you want something.
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Get interested in other things the client does, make suggestions - again, read stuff.
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Stay flexible - look out for opportunities and threats.
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Crow about your achievements - to the client, to your colleagues. Let's feel good about life beyond the bottom line (no really, there is one) and feel good about our achievements and our professionalism.