communication

[greenoak]

we have a guy who is offering taking on our marketing..which i would love to delegate......im very willing to spend on this...and have no problelm with his price.....i like that it would be more coherent, more on track with the message......
when we talked a few weeks ago i said if he could come up with something that i thought would work on my target customer i would go for it...he said he was pretty tied up.so i dint push for any more details.......
he saw the store full of people, he talked to me quite a bit,i talked a lot about my target customer,,,, i did a short 300$ tv project with him...
lately he came in the store and said if i needed any advice to just call him..as if he could do anything i needed.....i said thanks , but really we are at a standstill.
i think i already told him what i needed....a plan aimed at my target customer...
any thoughts? am i expecting too much?...

ive marketed our store for a long time and have pretty high standards and have tried a lot of the basics....

[Steve B]

I don't understand what the quesion is.

[greenoak]

i really appreciate

[Spider]

From this brief description, Ann, it appears to me that he is unclear what you want. And you don't appear to have made it clear.

You had a long discussion. He said he was tied up. ie wasn't going to do anything right then.

You then did a short project with him and you appear to have been satisfied with it.

He comes in later - clearly free now to attend to your needs. All you appear to have said is Thanks.

Do you want to hire this guy or not? If I was him and this happened as I think it did, I would assume you weren't interested or didn't have any work for me at this time.

[Patrysha]

I do think that asking for an in-depth plan including the wording is asking a bit much on spec.

Unless I have a different idea of what a plan looks like than you do, that's hours of work...work away from paying projects on the chance you might like the approach enough to consider trying it. That's risky to someone who lives on their thoughts alone.

As a marketing consultant, it's one thing to toss out general ideas, quite another to come up with even rough drafts of the collateral.

That said, if he has been given a really good description of your target market and has been in your store several times, he should have already been able to give you enough general scenarios to be able to choose one that you could hire him to flesh out into a test campaign.

[Steve B]

I don't understand how you can "like his price" if you don't know what he's going to do for you. I think there has definitely been a communication slip.

[lav]

tell him again that if he can bring me a good plan for my target customer i will consider hiring him... The majority of the work is the creative process and the planning. Implementing that plan is the easy part. This guy may not feel motivated to put in the work if he is unsure if he will get paid for it. The same happens in the design industry frequently "do the work first then I'll decide if I want to pay you for it". If you are expecting someone to operate this way, then I think you will only attract inexperienced marketers.

[huggytree]

i say go with your gut feeling. Youve been in business for a while, so your gut instinct must be good.

when i go with my gut feeling about someone or something i find it to be correct 90+% of the time.

give him a shot if you like...but if it doesnt work end the relationship quickly and move on to a new idea.

[greenoak]

thanks everybody..... i think i will just let it pass.... we are on good terms.

..ann

[Paul Elliott]

Ann, define your target customer for us. Be as specific as you can with your description.

We'll try to help you back into the project that way. Whether you use him or not in the future, it may help you with your definitions and expectations when dealing with other vendors in the future.

Paul

[greenoak]

thanks paul....im not too interested...and have dropped the project....
..but for fun, ..my target customer is
under 40, owns a nice house..adventurous and creative in her style....has money to spend...
if you know about that kind of woman and have the good words that would appeal to her and make her come to my store, i would love to hear...
. advice about talking to vendors isnt really what im trying to talk about...i do that all the time.... in all the parts of my business...and have pretty good experiences for the most part.....
i like things very out in the open and straight forward. with as little grey area as possible...which saves me a lot of trouble........

[handprop]

Don't worry Ann, you can use the index card box for that also.:D

Mike