Peter WinickFounder and CEO @ Thought Leadership Leverage

Can you clearly describe what an ideal client engagement looks like?

11 May 2022 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:38

In this short monologue, Peter Winick, founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, explains a diagnostic question he asks new clients during onboarding: “What does a dream engagement look like?” He describes two typical response patterns. The first is a concise, knee‑jerk answer that clearly states the problem they love solving, the ideal client type, the timeframe, tools, cost, and process – indicating a business that is tightly focused, with clear target markets, marketing, systems, and processes. The second pattern is a meandering, vague answer that jumps between different client types, occasional problem‑solving, and unrelated projects – signaling a less focused operation with diffuse marketing and processes. Winick shares this observation to illustrate how the quality of the answer reveals the client’s operational focus, and he invites viewers to share their thoughts or reactions about describing a great engagement.

Chapters

Hey there, it's Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and today I wanted to share with you a question that I ask folks fairly often sort of early on in the relationship of them onboarding and becoming a client. So one of the things that I'll ask them to get insight into what they do and how they do it and sort of who they work best with is, what does a dream engagement look like? What does a great client and a great engagement look like? And it's really interesting to me that, you know, how people respond to this. There's one group that responds to this really quickly, really concisely, and say, I really love solving this type of problem for these people in this period of time using these tools. It typically takes this long, costs this much, et cetera, et cetera. But they know. They're in the zone. They can answer that question almost a knee-jerk reaction because they're so clear and so tight on it. And then there are others where we're meandering down the roads of possibilities of, well, sometimes I like these type of people, but other times I like these type of people. I'm really good at this, but occasionally I solve a problem like this. And then there's this thing that's totally unrelated that I've done on occasion as well. And what I find is the more vague or expansive, if you will, the answer to that question is, the less focused the business operation of that individual is with respect to being targeted, being focused, their marketing, their systems, and their processes. So anyway, thought I'd throw that out there and see if y'all had any thoughts or reactions. Reactions to the description of a great engagement, great client, great situation, and how you might answer that question. Thank you so much.