I had the distinct pleasure of being part of Rick Short’s Marketing Communications team at Indium Corporation. Rick is a giant ball of quirk and the definition of an “out of the box” thinker and probably the best boss I ever had. Rick is a B2B Marcom leader in the industry because he has a passion for the company, he has a passion for his craft, and he has a passion for his people.

I learned bucketfuls at my time at Indium. Two main points have stuck with me and I use with my clients every day:

“Begin at the End”

This is a phrase Rick starts every marcom meeting with:

"Close your eyes and imagine it is two weeks AFTER your project concluded. You are at a party - for you. You are being congratulated for an excellent accomplishment. You see a plaque with your name on it, you just received a bonus, and there's talk of a promotion. Wow! You certainly made a difference. Can you please describe EXACTLY what was accomplished, such that this celebration makes sense?"

You can’t accomplish something if you don’t know what it is you are accomplishing. Our project managers sometimes had “art project syndrome”. They’d come to us, insisting they needed a new trade magazine ad and they’d pull out crayons and glitter and glue sticks and get all messy creating an ad. Rick would redirect their focus back to their goal, get them to begin at the end, and often we’d discover that an ad was not the way to achieve their goal. The lesson here is before you start any project, define your goal, what is needed to achieve that goal and then evaluate your tools. Then you can play with the glitter and glue sticks.

“No, we don’t HAVE to”

Growing out of this “begin at the end” idea, Rick will evaluate the tools at his disposal and question their effectiveness. He canceled a line of ads in one publication based on ROI metrics. When deciding his yearly budget and reviewing his placement, he didn’t sign contracts because he “had” to because the company had always ran ads there. If the ad program was not effective and was not having the desired results and did not meet our goals, that’s something you must question. You don’t “have” to do anything, especially if the reason is that historically your company “always” did it. Using basic marcom rules,  look at your goals and decide if your project will accomplish your goals regardless of the historic element. He looked at the company’s trade show schedule and budget and questioned if trade shows are where he should be spending money. Are there better vehicles to accomplish well defined goals? Is it better to scale back your participation or not participate at all? Rick does not “have” to do anything just because the company has always done it.

That is bold. Rick Short is bold.

Follow Rick Short's blog and he’ll take you on a great adventure through good B2B Marcom practices. Oh and yeah, his “Four P’s” are a good read for any blogger out there!

(Rick, thanks for the mentoring and the milkshakes!)