The call you put off, and what it cost.

In 2012 I was twenty-eight and an account manager. The work kept coming and I worked it out on my own. Nobody was checking whether I was getting better or only keeping up.

So I asked to be moved to another team, somewhere I could learn more and do more. It was the first real thing I had asked for at work.

They did not say yes and they did not say no. They said we would talk about the move at the next annual evaluation, a year away. Same seat and same accounts until then.

I could not see myself in that chair for another year, so I handed in my notice.

Nobody there ever said no to me. The calendar said it for them.

It took me years to see how ordinary that answer is.

When you ask for something and get a date back, the date is the answer, and it usually means no.

That day I was the one asking. Since then I have sat on the agency side, where the client asks and the agency holds the calendar.

A client asks whether you can take on their social channels, which another agency runs, and this is what comes back.

We will pick it up at the quarterly review. Let us take it into the next planning cycle. Leave it with me and I will come back to you in two weeks.

Every one of those lines is said in good faith. None of them is an answer.

So answer on the day, and put a decision in the answer. You have three answers to choose from.

Yes, and here is when. No, and here is why. Or: I do not know yet, here is who is finding out, and here is the day you will hear.

For those channels it sounds like this. Yes, and we start in March. No, we do not have the team for it this year. Or: I do not know yet, our head of social is costing it, and you will hear on Friday.

The third answer is the one most people avoid, because it sounds like admitting you do not know.

Clients trust it most. They now know who is working on the request and when they will hear, and they can hold you to both.

The whole thing takes one sentence in the meeting and one line in an email afterwards.

That sentence is the call. A date is the call you put off.

A timetable feels like the careful answer, which is why good people give one. Nobody wants to decide fast and get it wrong.

The date itself is not the problem. A date with a decision attached is a plan the client can work with. A date on its own is a way of leaving the meeting without answering.

Answering on the day will cost you something. Sometimes you will get it wrong and have to change your answer a week later, in front of the client.

You are still better off. The client saw you decide, twice, and both times it was you deciding and not a calendar.

Clients forgive a wrong answer far more easily than a missing one.

Give them a date and nothing else, and you have answered them without meaning to.

A date is a no with better manners.

And the client hears it that way. If you sit on the client side, you already know this. You have been given a date, and you knew what it meant before you left the room.

By the time a client asks you for something out loud, they have usually been carrying it for weeks. It matters more to them than it does to you, so they do not wait for your quarterly review.

The request goes somewhere else. Someone in-house builds a workaround, another agency gets a quiet call, or it turns up in next year's budget under a different name.

The channels they asked about now sit with the agency that said yes on the day, and the rest of the work is following.

By the time your review comes round, what they asked for has been settled without you, and your part in the meeting is to be told.

The fee buys a decision. Every request you answer with a date is work somebody else picks up, and they rarely hand it back.

An account rarely ends over one of these. It ends over the habit.

A client who has stopped asking you for things is not an easy client. They have decided something, and renewal is when you find out what.

In 2012 the cost was one account manager. They kept the evaluation cycle and lost the person, and the cycle went on running exactly as before.

I do not think anyone there ever made a decision about me. That is what a date does. It lets an answer arrive without anybody having to give one.

I never sat through that evaluation. I knew the answer long before the date came round, and so does the client you gave a date to last week.

Until the next one,
Karim

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