0 Starting The Kickoff

Here are a couple of things you need to prepare for the kickoff:

Stop Pitching, Start Listening

Chances are at the begining of the meeting, you have your account managers armed with sales kit in the room, ready to hard sell the services your agency offers.

A brief intro of your company and the services you offer & flashing that killer portfolio is cool. But what you need to explain carefully, is the value you're bringing to the client.

You need to listen to the stakeholders and understand the business problem they are facing. Empathize. Stop shoving design solutions down their throats. Understand and cultivate the diagnostic phase of learning and listening to them. Design solutions are useless if you're solving the wrong problems.

Explain Your Design Process

Assuming that you've never worked before with the client, you need to guide the stakeholders with your process - this way, as early in the beginning expectations are already set and no mismatched client expectations happen. (You don't want to go into the rabbit hole of endless client revisions) When they hire you, they are hiring your workflow as well.

You can refer to the Branding Workflow Guide here below. Feel free to modify it according to how you work best.