My first client meeting

Today I had my first meeting as a marketing consultant. I met with the marketing director at the Museum of Life and Science. Since this was my first meeting as a consultant, and my first meeting as a consultant, it was a great learning experience.

The meeting went very well. If you call yourself a professional and you interact in an intelligent manner, people take you seriously. This is an important thing to understand as you present yourself as an expert.

I learned that in targeting small businesses/non-profits, especially science museums, they have no musuem. The museum in Durham is a decent size museum and has a small marketing budget and no web budget.

In offering several suggestions for places I could help with, the marketing director responded that their was no money available.

I offered to explore an on-line membership form where members can renew on the web site. My point was that if I can generate additional revenue, then there is some money to pay me. I suggested that I could develop and pay for the infrastructure and charge them a cut of each membership. I would probably need to charge a monthly fee until I have a better sense of the number of memberships.

She certainly was amendable to this idea because there is no risk. Now I’ll have to see what I can do. I told my friend Debbie (my goal-setting buddy) that I would have something to the museum by the end of March.