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Name Calling
The Dynamics of the Client-Vendor Relationship
By Chris Schiavone
This July, City Square Associates will celebrate its fifteenth anniversary, so I've been thinking a lot recently about the many people, companies and organizations we've been fortunate to do business with over the years. We call them "clients." They call us names.
Not bad names, mind you--at least not for the most part. What I mean is that our clients use different words to name our relationship to them, and each of those names carries a different connotation. Understanding the subtle distinction among the different names we give each other can be critical for maintaining business relations that work for everyone.
The Vendor. Some of our clients think of us as vendors. Although I sometimes find myself bristling at this nomenclature (after all, when I think of a vendor, I think of Staples or Verizon) the word vendor is a reminder that we work for the client. The client buys from us a product and a service, and our primary duty in every engagement ought to be to deliver a high quality product and satisfy the customer. The name vendor underlines the transactional nature of the relationship, and every client has the right to expect nothing less than full value for every dollar spent.
The Contractor. In some of our engagements, we are considered to be contractors. Here too, the connotation isn't necessary a pleasant one. I think of the general contractor my neighbor once hired to renovate her kitchen: He disappeared without explanation in the middle of the job, never to return. But this jargon also conveys an important truth. What distinguishes a contractor (from an employee, for example) is twofold: First, the contractor generally brings an expertise not present in the client organization, but needed and valued. And second, the contractor works for the client for a limited time with a discrete objective, and leaves once the job is done. For us as contractors, this is a reminder that we are guests with a limited scope for our activity. For our clients, there is potential benefit in the objectivity and perspective that we as outsiders can bring during our temporary stay.
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She paused for a moment and replied, "Are any of them behind the mirror? Because I know they like to be called partners,
but mostly we think of them as vendors."
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The Partner. A few months ago, I was conducting a B2B executive level interview with a CMO on the topic of media planning. I asked her, "How do you refer to these media companies with whom you do business?" She paused for a moment and replied, "Are any of them behind the mirror? Because I know they like to be called partners, but mostly we think of them as vendors." And it's true, many of us who provide professional services and business consulting like to think of ourselves as partners. We like the sense of collegiality and mutual respect the terminology implies. While you can buy decent paper clips at a fair price from several different vendors, a good research partner is unique and uniquely valuable.
As I reflect on my own business successes and failures over these past fifteen years, I'm aware of the fact that many factors have been at work: Aptitude, skill, experience, personality, resources, thoroughness, discipline, and so on. But along with all of these, there is the relationship itself between me and my client. When the client is looking for a partner and I act like a vendor, or when I want to be a partner, and really all the client needs is a competent contractor, this is when things can get tense.
The reality is: At different points, most client relationships actually involve aspects of all three. And it's in understanding what a particular client or a particular project requires at any given moment that we'll be better at our job . . . whatever name they call us.
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Another Successful Year for Flavors of Fall  On November 14th, a couple hundred food lovers gathered at the Charles Hotel to partake in the 8th annual Flavors of Fall. This year's event, the annual autumnal charity fundraiser collaboration between City Square Associates and our partners at BostonChefs.com and The Charles Hotel, was able to raise over $9,000 for Tutoring Plus, an organization that supports and encourages the academic, personal, and social growth of children and youth in Cambridge with the help of volunteers and community partners.
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Chris Schiavone speaks to the guests.
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This year we were lucky enough to welcome newcomers to the blossoming Cambridge dining scene into the mix: Bondir, Area Four and Catalyst all joined regulars like Russell House Tavern, Sandrine's, Henrietta's Table, Evoo, Harvest, Bergamot, Garden at the Cellar to create an evening filled to the brim with spicy, warming deliciousness.
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Kate Vandeveld tends bar.
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It wasn't only about the food, though. Proceeds from this year's Flavors of Fall went specifically to support Tutoring Plus's Girls, Media & You, a joint project with Lesley University that brings under-served and at-risk middle school girls together with Lesley undergraduates to focus on the influences of society, culture, and media on girlhood in the contemporary U.S.
City Square is especially grateful to our clients, supplier-partners, and colleagues who generously contributed to that worthy goal and the continued success of our favorite annual event.
CSA Turns Up the Volume
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Chaparrals Members: Ryan McGuire, Erich Wiernasz, Matt Masuzzo, and Ryan Kozin
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City Square's own Erich Wiernasz has entered the Boston music scene at full force as the lead singer and guitarist for indie rock band Chaparrals. Chaparrals recently released their debut EP, "Bridge Don't Break," in February and their music is available on iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify.
Among the Chaparrals' many admirers are Chris, Rachel and Kate, who've had the pleasure of attending a handful of their shows, most recently at the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge right across the street from CSA's Central Square office. Check out their tunes for yourself here:
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14 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups packed dark brown sugar
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
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Brown Butter Cookies
Recipe Adapted from America's Test Kitchen
These cookies are dense, chewy and packed with brown butter, caramel flavor. Do not be tempted to bake both pans of cookies at once - they really do require being baked one pan at a time in order to achieve that beautiful cracked appearance.
1. Heat 10 tablespoons butter in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue to cook, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has aq nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes. Watch it carefully as the foaming makes it hard to see how dark the butter is getting. Remove skillet from heat and transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl. Stir the remaining 4 tablespoons butter into the hot butter to melt; set aside for 15 minutes to cool slightly.
2. Meanwhile, adjust the oven rack to middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 large (18 by 12-inch) baking sheets with parchment paper. In a shallow baking dish or pie plate, mix the granulated sugar and 1/4 cup packed brown sugar, rubbing between fingers, until well combined; set aside. (I don't actually measure the two sugars for this step because I find 1/2 cup sugar total to be too much for just one batch of cookies - just eyeballing the amount works better for me). Whisk the flour, baking soda, and baking powder together in medium bowl; set aside.
3. Add remaining 1 3/4 cups brown sugar and salt to the bowl with the cooled butter; mix until no sugar lumps remain, about 30 seconds. Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla and mix until fully incorporated, about 30 seconds. Scrape down the bowl as necessary during mixing. Then, add the flour mixture and mix until just combined, about 1 minute, making sure there are no areas of unincorporated flour remaining.
4. Divide the dough into 24 portions, each about 2 tablespoons, or portion using a standard sized cookie scoop. Then roll the dough into balls about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Working in batches, toss balls in reserved sugar mixture to coat and set on the prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart, 12 dough balls per sheet.
5. Bake one sheet at a time until the cookies are browned and still puffy and the edges have begun to set but centers are still soft (cookies will look raw between cracks and seem underdone), 12 to 14 minutes (this time can vary widely depending on the strength of your oven). Rotate the baking sheet halfway through baking. Do not overbake - they really are best when they are still quite raw in the middle.
6. Cool the cookies on the baking sheet 5 minutes; then transfer cookies to a wire rack, you can simply transfer the entire sheet of parchment paper to the rack. Let the cookies cool to room temperature before serving.
Yield: 2 dozen |
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We've Got an App for That  We here at City Square are always trying to offer clients new and innovative ways to go about research. One effective research method we've found is having respondents keep a journal or blog for the week leading up to research, keeping track of all the media content they've consumed, each day. The benefit of this is threefold: we get additional data from the respondent that is unsullied by peer influence; we have the chance to monitor respondents information before group selection day of, giving us an additional piece of screening info; and perhaps most important, the process gets respondents reflecting on their media use, priming them for group discussion and providing an anchor point for the discussion.
This all sounds great in theory; however, finding an existing tool to implement the media journal that is both intuitive for respondents and easy for us to custom tailor for each project proved challenging, if not nearly impossible. Considering ourselves a bit of a custom shop, we decided to create a custom app.
Ultimately, we were able to create our own tailored app that had all the features we wished the other non-tailored solutions lacked, specifically that the app:
- Could be adaptable and used on multiple projects/field locations/groups synchronously;
- Have a customizable front end that can be tailored to individual projects and is intuitive to use for a wide range of respondents with a wide range of technical proficiencies;
- Generate unique usernames and passwords for all respondents;
- Provide a robust back end so that projects can be entered simply with all data exportable by all project variables, whether that be field location, group or respondent.
The app was developed in September, 2011 and we've had the chance to use it on several projects thus far with great success. |
How Carrots Became the New Junk FoodWhat do carrots and potato chips have in common? Maybe a lot more than you think...
(Fast Company - March 22, 2011)
If the eyes are the window to our soul, the hands are the gateway to our culture. The language of the hands is the language common to all men. (Lapham's Quarterly - Spring 2012)
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