JCI Marketing is launching a new series titled “Echoes From the Client Coffers,” in which we tell the story as it unfolded. In our tales, we go well beyond what other marketing agencies might consider their remit. We delve into the situation until we uncover the truth simply because it’s what we love to do. We’re marketers, at the end of the day, even above business professionals.
So, why a coffer? Much like a small storage box you can use to keep your treasures safe, we are collecting these gems to share with you in the hopes you’ll get the same value from them as our clients, and we did.
With that, let’s open this story. You may be shocked to read that our first client coffer case didn’t involve a client at all but someone who just happened to ask for our advice.
A business owner, let’s call him Bob for simplicity, reached out for some help with their marketing content planning tool. Now, we use Monday.com to manage our workloads. We’ve also tried an assortment of other platforms, including Trello, HubSpot Service Hub, Asana, and more. Over the years, we’ve learned some tricks and tips for controlling our costs and best utilizing our resources. When our team received this call asking if we knew a way to avoid upgrading their current project management tool to the next tier without breaking their process, we were happy to lend a hand.
Like so many good tales, it’s all in the backstory. The project management tool in question is built on groups of five user seats. If you create a sixth seat, you are automatically upgraded to 10 seats. That’s a real problem for companies that pay annually and have already budgeted for the next year’s project management costs. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear whether a seat is truly necessary. In this situation, Bob was asking if we knew of any way to avoid the issue? To make matters worse, it turned out they had already upgraded. So now, the company was going to be billed for the additional costs at the end of the business day. Time was of the essence.
Fortunately, we knew exactly what to do.
Rather than focusing on the project management tool from the viewpoint of seats, we considered how the company itself was operating. Many organizations operate with and employ a host of freelancers as well as part-time and PRN employees. In these cases, adding another seat just doesn’t make a lot of sense, and the company would have been paying $1000 more a year than they’d anticipated.
As Bob had already taken the step of adding the person to a seat, we had less than 24 hours to act and provide our insight before the upgrade charge hit their business account.
We immediately explained the seat versus user rules. A guest user could achieve the same goals, provided they were not needed across the entire platform. Thus, the company could continue operating in the same way without changing its subscription. Following our advice, Bob removed the additional seat, added the additional user as a guest, and averted the added charge. Phew.
10 minutes saved big
How long did this fix take us? About 10 minutes on the phone, and most of that time was a hey-how-you-doin' conversation. In fact, Bob instantly realized what we were saying, so the action was very simple.
“Don’t do that. Delete the seat. Add the person as a guest. Happy Tuesday.”
How much money did the company save?
$960 within the hour.
Not only did we successfully help the company keep costs far within their control for this year but also for years to come. Oh, and Bob also realized that they could scale easily with this process, at least until a full admin was necessary.
In addition, Bob learned that they could add their extensive list of connections to the tool without impacting total costs. This single conversation with JCI Marketing will easily surpass $10,000 in soft cash savings. And on top of that, is all the time savings that will inevitably come from team alignment, including a massive volunteer poll.
JCI Marketing is dedicated to improving marketing know-how and efficiency, especially in the online space. Conversations like this one are just part of how we work. Will this company become a JCI Marketing client? No. Will they send us referrals? Probably not but making money on every interaction isn’t in our DNA. We do what’s right, even if you’re not a client.
We value relationships both under and not under contract, and sometimes, a quick call is all it takes to show the real difference at JCI Marketing.
Feeling inspired and want to talk? Schedule a call with the JCI team today.