Sometimes it seems that the bane of my professional existence are the all the new ideas that come my way. Hundreds and hundreds, all well intentioned, all sincerely expressed, and the vast majority expected to make a significant contribution.
The reality is something quite different.
For many of us serving people in professional services, our most significant challenges often revolve around communicating with smart people with limited experience in marketing and/or business development. And the process around that relationship often entails one of those professionals becoming intersted in or at least wanting to discuss ideas or problems which in no way coorelate to their established strategy or tactics. And the vast majority of these ideas become another rabbit being chased.
So what do we do? For me and my team it comes down to three things:
> Sponsorship: Is there an attorney/partner who will sponsor and head up the idea. Marketing will team with them, but we don't do execution that is not headed by an partner champion. No event, RFP, marketing technology tool, etc gets started without a partner champion.
> Budget: Is there committed funding for the idea? No money, no activity.
If the idea passes these tests and its still a problem, I encourage you to get out of the way of it and let it get executed ASAP or die a natural death. . .and often they will.
Accept the arithmetic: If the bad idea has sponsorship and budget, then get it done quickly and move on or you watch it die. And there's always a possibility that you are wrong and it needed to get done. It happens.
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