Discovery is not a dirty word

Have you seen the television show House M.D.? (If you have not this is NOT a recommendation.) There is one area of this show that is fascinating. That is Discovery.

Dr. Gregory House is convinced that most patients lie and that those who do not deliberately tell a falsehood fail to disclose pertinent information because the patient does not think that it is any of the Doctor's business.

Does this sound familiar? If you are involved in providing solutions to businesses, then change the word patient in the above paragraph to CLIENT and Doctor to PROVIDER and this becomes a marketing truism.

Clients lie to themselves and they lie to their providers. For example, many clients will not provide an objective evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of their competition. It is very difficult to assist a client in improving their market share if you do not have a clear grasp of the market.

The main reason that Admiral Yamamoto's fleet was defeated at the Battle of Midway was that the Americans DISCOVERED their opposition's deployment first. No major league football team would dream of preparing for a game without reviewing videos of the capabilities of the opponent.

However, some clients have an unrealistic view of their own perceived superiority and other clients seem to think that it is "none of your business" what our competition is like.

Discovery is, of course, not limited to understanding the competition. It is also important that the provider understand many aspects of the client's own business. As an illustration. let us focus on two points in discovery, but understand that this is not to suggest that these are the MOST important points.

The two points that I would like to use as an illustration are: Objective and Values.

On the second episode of CBS's "The Cut" - Princess failed to listen to the client's values. She created a design that although creative ran against the grain of the client's values.

This is something that is occurring frequently in viral marketing. It is not enough for a marketer to focus on developing more buzz and more publicity - if the company's reputation and the brands of its products are damaged by the style of campaign which the marketer used to produce the buzz.

Recently, I got into a discussion with Susan Getgood of Marketing Roadmaps. Susan had asked this question on her blog:

If your website sells your products AND you have a robust marketing program that drives qualified prospects to your site, what happens with the engines is additive, not the baseline of your marketing success. Agree? Disagree?

I do not focus on writing copy and I tell my clients that I am not in the SEO business although I will work on placing some basic tools (examples: alt tags, meta-tags, etc) into the client's website. But my answer to Susan's question was that DISCOVERY is the answer.

I need to approach my first visit with a client, not as if I were Moses descending from Mt. Sinai with two unalterable stone tablets, but rather as one who seeks to find out what the client needs.

Like a hospital doctor, there are some things that I know which my clients do not know. It is not my job to do anything that the client asks me to do. It is my job to diagnose (i.e. discover) the problem and then prescribe (project proposal) based on both my own knowledge and the information which I have discovered.
Like the television show House M.D., I may come to realize that their is an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is still undiscovered which is preventing me from solving my patient's (ooops, I mean client's) problem.