The Problem: Missing Project Triangle Pieces
When
The more challenging the campaign idea is, the more insecure the client will feel if other ingredients are missing. “When” is the key piece of that puzzle.
Your client does not know much about PR campaigns: what is easy and effortless, what is hard and sweat squeezing. The client might be overwhelmed by the scale and by the apparent complexity of your brilliant plan.
You have to assure the customer that your plan is rock solid and well thought. Show deadlines on each step of your project. List all the phases or major tasks in a table. Set up deadlines and indicate major inter-dependencies. This will help both you and customer to believe that the project is feasible and realistic.
How Much
Sometimes this is the most difficult part. The customer asks how much would that campaign cost. The agency responds with the question “how big is your budget?”. The customer is reluctant to reveal it, because this might impact the price stated by the agency.
Price is an important part of the offer. Many clients do not want to tell how thick wallet they have, so be prepared for presenting multiple variants.
How to deal with it? Prepare 3 variants or “packages” of the campaign: inexpensive, optimal and extended. Instead of going too deep into defining details, give the customer a choice in a form of simple comparison table. The customer will choose the one, or will ask for some combination of the packages, while you can be pretty sure he will select the most he can afford to. So you will not lose the opportunity to earn even more.
Who
A customer might not appreciate your plan because he's afraid of being overloaded by tasks required to do.
For instance, Ethan might have been scared that he will not manage to prepare all the input materials required to perform the campaign.
What might help is to clearly indicate the tasks or phases when you will really need your customer activity. Suggest how much effort will be needed and who is the right person to do the task.
Also you need to firmly state that you are responsible for all the rest so you will do it on your own, without bothering the customer.
With
Ensure that you have all the team members required to achieve the project goals. Yeah, one of the greatest risks is to start a project without assigned by name executors of every task. Remember you should start mitigating this risk just after you identified