Does this scenario sound familiar? You've done a great job of generating cool, custom and effective marketing ideas, but once it is time to make a choice, the client is reluctant.
You'll hear things like, "Oh, just write these up and I'll take the whole list back to my team." Or maybe the client brought an entourage to the session and the head honcho doesn't want to decide without knowing what his team thinks.
You can honor the client's need to know the opinion of several people in the room and still maintain their ability to make the final decision by using the soft choice technique.
Try this the next time your client hedges:
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Distribute five dot stickers to each member of the resource group.
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Tell the group you'll be reading the entire numbered list of ideas back without stopping.
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Ask the group members to write the number of each idea they think has the ability to accomplish the marketing objective on a piece of scratch paper. Let them know that ultimately, they will only be able to vote for five ideas.
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Read the entire numbered list of ideas back to the group.
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Before anyone posts his or her dots on the idea list, ask the participants to transfer the number of each of the five ideas they want to vote for onto a dot. There should be one number on each dot.
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Once everyone is ready, the group will post their dots next to the number of the five ideas they have chosen.
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Let everyone know this technique helps the client see where consensus exists, but the client still makes the ultimate choice, whether the idea got lots of votes or not.
It is common for participants to ask for more dots or to ask to combine ideas. For the initial voting, ask the group to pick the five single ideas with the best shot at accomplishing the marketing objective.
Ideas with a similar theme can be combined once the client has made his choices.
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