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DoorDash mobilizes a community of 7 million Dashers, 600,000 merchants and 56 million customers. It has run around 120 digital campaigns this year, many of them state and local fights that come up with little warning.
“You find out on Monday there’s a hearing on Wednesday,” said Sharon McBride, DoorDash’s Global Head of Policy Mobilization.
McBride and Rachel Jung, DoorDash’s Global Public Policy Digital Mobilization Senior Associate, joined Cassie McPhail, Speak4’s Head of Partner Success, for a Public Affairs Council webinar on building strong client-consultant relationships. They talked about earning trust, spotting warning signs early, measuring a consultant’s value and staying aligned when campaigns move fast, including how they worked together on No Tax on Tips.
For Jung, it starts with a partner who doesn’t need a refresher every time: “We needed somebody to understand the urgency of the situation… without having to explain or re-educate every single time we have a new campaign going on.”
Watch the Conversation
Webinar Transcript: Getting the Most Out of Your Consultants
Speakers:
- Sharon McBride, Global Head of Policy Mobilization, DoorDash
- Rachel Jung, Global Public Policy, Digital Mobilization Senior Associate, DoorDash
- Cassie McPhail, Head of Partner Success, Speak4
- Alex Donovan, Senior Manager of Communications and Global Affairs, Public Affairs Council (moderator)
How DoorDash Approaches Advocacy
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
Rachel and Sharon, I know that many people are aware of DoorDash’s business and issue interests. What is your team’s philosophy towards your public affairs operations workflow and projects?
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
My work at DoorDash and eBay, I think, is quite different than a lot of folks’ grassroots organizations, because we organize and leverage our customers. Very few companies ask their customers to help them in public policy fights, but because of our unique business model, DoorDash does not succeed without Dashers succeeding and without merchants succeeding. What makes it really fulfilling work is that we’re giving a voice to workers and small businesses.
When it comes to working with consultants and vendors, I found the most success with those who listen. I take a lot of pitches and I’m interested in hearing everything that’s going on out in this world, but I’m always surprised at how many people come to a pitch and talk the whole time. There’s very little listening or asking questions of the potential client or the client.
Because of our unique business model, the volume of our advocates is quite high. We have 56 million customers, 7 million Dashers and 600,000 merchants. So the volume, as well as the speed and flexibility that’s required of not only Rachel and I, but of course our consultants, is quite unique. I think it’s important for folks to listen.
The one thing I remember, and Cassie will remember this: the reason why we let go our previous consultant was this very notion that, because we’re dealing with our customers and because we’re a global organization, we needed 24/7 support, and that was not not the case. Setting those expectations and what your needs are going to be before you get too far into a relationship is also very important.
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
I’ll echo what Sharon said. I think a lot of times with all of our campaigns, timelines, and workflows, we often don’t get to set or determine the timeline ourselves. It’s dictated by other external factors like local governments or other partners that we’re working with.
So when it comes to managing our relationship with our partners, consultants or vendors like Speak4, what Sharon said was exactly what we needed. We needed somebody to understand the urgency of the situation and who can be aligned with us whenever we are trying to approach a certain campaign with that sense of urgency and priority, without having to explain or re-educate every single time we have a new campaign going on.
I think our partnership internally and our partnership with Cassie and her team has been great because of that mutual alignment and understanding of how things are moving very quickly. It is not up to us, and the urgency is everything because we strive to be the best in the field and in the industry. So, having that mutual agreement was something that has helped us a lot, and that’s what we embody in every day of our work.
What Partnership Means at Speak4
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
Cassie, on the other side of that, how do you describe your value proposition at Speak4, and what kind of collaborative work style do you and your colleagues have with your clients like DoorDash?
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
I love that both Sharon and Rachel mentioned partnership because partnership is who Speak4 is. We’re proactive, responsive, and genuinely interested in our clients’ success. We want to know what’s working, what’s not. We want to be an extension of their team, and I think the best way to describe that is they know my name and face, and I know theirs.
I want to know exactly what’s happening with them, why they need this campaign up and running, what’s going to make it successful, and then actually invest in that knowing that going forward we can implement more strategies, faster response times, and so on. So again, we’re not teaching every single time, but learning all the time.
Setting Expectations From Day One
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
Sharon made me think of that level-setting at the beginning, before things get kind of too far along. What does a strong client-consultant relationship and alignment look like from the very beginning? Before any campaign starts, what should both sides establish around goals and expectations to set up the partnership for success?
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
I’ll start with that one. A strong relationship comes from consistent communication and honesty. You need to know exactly what both sides are expecting before anything goes live. What is deemed success? What is the expectation of a response? What is the expectation of job responsibilities? Is there QA? How long does it take to QA? How long is it going to take for this campaign to go live? If something’s not going to work, communicating about that sooner rather than later is important too.
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
To add on to that: being open, honest, and direct. There’s the old saying that in your annual review you shouldn’t be hearing something bad for the first time. Those open, honest, and direct conversations need to be ongoing, and it shouldn’t be a surprise if we were to want to make a change in a consultant, right?
You have to build and earn that trust, on both sides. One thing that we’ve done with Speak4 is even before we signed on, there were some features they did not include, and I said I can’t switch until you have, in this example, Australia and Canada capabilities. They earned my trust by saying, “We’re going to build Canada.” And I said “When you build Canada, we’ll come.” And they did. They did what they said they were going to do, and they had the agility and flexibility to customize some things, because again, the volume and the urgency and the uniqueness of our program is not going to work for other vendors or consultants in this space. A lot of them are too cookie cutter for us, quite frankly.
So that was a little bit of a test, and they earned our trust from that. Be open, honest, and direct as you go, and be able to say “That didn’t work, fix it.”
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
I agree that having that clarity up front is super important. As Sharon mentioned briefly at the beginning, we learned a lot from our first relationship with our first partner, and we knew exactly what we needed and what we wanted from our new vendor. We were pretty straightforward about that, and thankfully, Speak4 was able to agree to the new standard that we set, and they came with all the new features.
For me personally, it was not only the features that they were able to develop, but also the attitude and the alignment of the approach of “We are willing to make this partnership work, what can we do for you to make it work?” And having that personal touch with Cassie looped in was just amazing for us.
Spotting a Consultant Who Overpromises
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
Sharon, you say it’s important to be direct and transparent from the beginning. But is there a sixth sense that you have with someone kind of overpromising from the get-go? What sets off alarms for you in seeing some of these pitches?
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I do have a sixth sense. But I do think reference checks are important. What are other tools people are using? And tests like the one Cassie did.
The other thing I did want to touch on, that I’ve said to Cassie and Tyler and that group all along, is that I want to help make y’all better, right? This is a two-way street. DoorDash is not going to be the first company that wants Canada and Australia capabilities? So if you build it, you’re not building it just for us. You’re going to now be able to sell that to other potential clients as add-ons. We just had a conversation about that this week: here are a couple of things that we need that I bet you’ll be able to to sell or upsell to other folks.
So I think that’s important too. It’s not just “We pay you, so you do this for us.” You’re a service provider, and it’s about helping them grow and helping them be better as well.
What to Bring to a Partnership From the Start
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
Cassie, back to you because I’m interested to hear a little bit more about Speak4. The organization emphasizes a partnership model, and you work with agencies to launch and manage grassroots campaigns. From your perspective, what information do you think a client needs to bring to a technology or advocacy partner from the start about audiences, policy objectives, and history on similar campaigns, to get more value out of that relationship?
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
I always want to know what’s actually happening on the ground. In this case, is this issue affecting Dashers, merchants, consumers? Is it all three? Is it one city? Is it several states? Could it go national? Are we expecting it to stay local and then eventually go national? When someone takes action, what’s the expectation? Is it one and done? Are we adding them to a list?
I also really like to know what the partner has tried before: what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, where have people lost interest. And then internally – who’s approving the message, how quickly are we needing to move? Whether the team needs us to help build that campaign or just work alongside with a couple of QA features and move on.
Those details give us useful advice, instead of recommending something that looks good on paper or is good for somebody else, but not this specific partner. We want to act as a member of their team and work with how they operate. Speak4’s partnership model is hands-on and human-centered, which opens up opportunities like dedicated strategy sessions or campaign optimizations. But we want to make sure that we’re recommending things that actually work for that specific partner.
Giving Context While Leaving Room to Push Back
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
As a follow-up, how do you strike the right balance between giving the consultants enough context to succeed while still giving them the freedom to challenge these assumptions and bring a fresh perspective?
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
I think one thing that the consultant has to understand, and I think we do this well here at Speak4, is that the client’s going to know their organization, their people, and their advocates the best. They’re going to know more than I will. Our job is to listen to that context and then bring what we know, which is the advocacy and technology side. We’re saying, “We understand why you’ve done it that way, here’s what we’re seeing, and here’s what we think will work better.” Again, not recommending something completely off, but more, “We know what you’re trying to do and here’s how to do it with us.”
We show up. As Sharon mentioned, 24/7 support: you need it, and we make sure that we’re offering it. If it’s not me, it’s somebody else on the team. If I’m on PTO, somebody else is looped in to make sure that they understand exactly what is going on at DoorDash. Bring what you know to the table, accept what the client or partner knows, and work together as a team to constantly learn from each other.
Making Decisions Quickly Without Losing Alignment
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
For the full panel: we all live in an environment where people and campaigns need to react very quickly to any legislative, reputational or any regulatory developments. How do you recommend clients and consultants establish proper decision-making approval processes so you can move quickly, and choose to respond or not to respond to things, without sacrificing your alignment on strategic goals?
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
I think each company and each campaign calls for different custom or personalized methods for communication and decision making. What has worked for us is having a weekly sync. Cassie and our team, along with so many of our organizers and other consultants, all come together as one group every week to discuss all parts of our campaign.
Sometimes it might not be super relevant for Cassie, but having access and awareness to all the other campaigns that are going on really helps her stay in the loop. Sometimes we initially think we aren’t going to involve Speak4, but later down the road we change our minds or the situation evolves, and we need to incorporate Speak4 or their features into an ongoing campaign super last minute. Cassie having awareness on the front end and throughout all of our working campaigns, and knowing who to work with, including different partners and people internally at our company, gives her a head start.
Staying on the same page is so important for us because we have so many campaigns going on simultaneously. They also face all three different sides of the business, which means more audience members, and each campaign needs to be tailored to that particular audience with different workflows, recruitment processes, tone, voice, and approaches. So, I would highly recommend any organization or agency with multiple campaigns going on at the same time to have that weekly sync.
We have a few other consultants who get trained by Cassie to be able to self-serve a lot of the features, and then have it go through QA. We then incorporate all of those approval decision-making processes into a written email process, so there are references from the past and we know exactly what we agreed on. That paper trail helps us remember where we left off, and it all supports what we should be doing and what we could be doing better with our decision-making process at DoorDash.
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
To piggyback off that paper trail piece, I think the best time to figure out an approval process is before something becomes urgent. One thing Rachel mentioned is that weekly strategy sync, where we’re reading out potential campaigns that could come up. Why don’t we start creating those? If they don’t go live this week, great, but let’s make sure they’re ready to go, so when they do go live, it’s not as urgent.
Then we have the urgent approval process. If I see a subject line that says “urgent QA needed,” I know that’s got to happen in the next 10 minutes, and I know to look for that. As opposed to “Hey, can you QA this campaign?” That could get lost, at least in the initial 15 minutes before a campaign goes live.
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
I’m guilty of doing that for sure. I’ve definitely put URGENT in all caps, in brackets, in the subject line.
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
But here’s the thing: I know that’s urgent, and I need to get to it and drop everything, as opposed to thinking, “Maybe that’s not urgent. I can wait half an hour.” No, our approval process is if I see all caps and I see urgent, let’s drop everything. We’ve got to roll.
How the Weekly Sync Works
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
And these weekly meetings – how long are they, and how many people are usually involved?
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
It ranges each week depending on availability and how many campaigns we have going on. Sometimes it’s just the two of us. Sometimes it’s a group of 10, and it could be anywhere from a 15-minute to a 30- or 40-minute call. But I would say the weekly calls are the bare minimum for us. Sometimes Cassie and other members of our team need to hop on a different call together for an extra 10 or 15 minutes to troubleshoot something, QA a campaign that’s already live or make edits that need some heavy technical lift.
Some weeks, when we don’t have a lot of campaigns, we might cancel the weekly call. And depending on the season, we might shift it to biweekly instead of weekly, and vice versa. So having that flexibility with Cassie’s team has been great. If that’s something the vendor you’re building a partnership with offers, I think that’s ideal, because we don’t have the same number of campaigns all the time. They come and go in waves, and staying on top of all of them and being flexible together is something I think benefits both sides.
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
I think being flexible is huge. Rachel, you’re right. There might be one week where we don’t meet at all because there’s no reason to. Other times we’re meeting pretty much every day because there’s a new campaign happening in this city, and then in this one, and then this one. It keeps expanding, and we’ve got to make sure everything’s done correctly, because we only get one shot at this to make sure it goes through and your goal’s accomplished.
How to Approach Urgent Campaigns Together
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
So you have a baseline level where you can meet up, kind of like maintenance, and from there you can gauge how much you need to be talking or meeting more frequently after that.
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
Yeah, that’s at least the starting point for the week. You know, is it that 20-minute to 30-minute call? Did we get everything we needed to discuss done? Great. If not, well, let’s schedule another one. Or there’s really not much happening – although that’s famous last words in advocacy. The minute you say there’s no real need to talk this week, we don’t have any upcoming campaigns…
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
It goes back to the volume question. Bragging about Rachel and Cassie a little bit, we’ve done 120 digital campaigns this year. That’s an average of three a week. It’s slow for us now, but there are weeks where we’ll have five in a week. On Monday we may think we only have two and then we add three.
That rapid pace also speaks to how you need to be really locked in to your approval process, because many of our issues are at the state and local level. Those of you who do state and local work know that you find out on Monday there’s a hearing on Wednesday. So what we’re alluding to is that the more you can get done prior to these urgent matters, the better. And hearings are canceled and put back on constantly.
So good dashboards and communication vehicles are critical, because we cannot afford for it to go south and ruin relationships with legislators, or to say the wrong thing because something got solved and we need to pull something back or change the content because on-the-ground negotiations are changing constantly. I think it’s pretty unique. We’re just not in a situation where we can schedule sends.
Where Client-Consultant Relationships Break Down
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
Where do you see client-consultant relationships most commonly break down? What are the warning signs both sides should identify early? Cassie, I’ll pick on you. Do you want to start with where you see that happen with some of your clients?
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
I think the biggest relationship breakdown is communication: when people stop communicating, or they start making assumptions. “Somebody else will look at this email.” Or the partner side goes, “We built a similar campaign previously. What if I just copy it and use the same permissions?” But this time they want to do X, Y and Z, or maybe they want to hold all messages. “Because I built this before, I don’t need somebody to check.” And then it’s “Everything went wrong. How do we fix this?” It becomes a larger fire, as opposed to “Hey, can you just QA this and make sure it’s good?”
The other piece is that we’re all human. We all make mistakes, and the most important thing to say when you make a mistake is “I made a mistake,” or “That didn’t work. Here’s how we’re going to fix it, learn from it and ensure it doesn’t happen again.” Things happen, but you have to be able to say it was a mistake. And hopefully, if and when you make one, you’ve built up that trust with your client, so it’s not great and they’re not happy you made a mistake, but it’s OK because they know you’re going to get stronger and better for it.
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
I think that that’s the best approach in any relationship. Not that this is a therapy session, but I’m actually surprised how some folks these days don’t want to apologize or don’t say I’m sorry. I think that is the quickest way, even if you know it’s not technically your fault. I do believe “I’m sorry” can be a healer of all wounds. If something went wrong, there’s probably enough blame to go around. So to say I’m sorry, I apologize, I’ll fix it, and it won’t happen again, is a very powerful tool in a lot of relationships, including this one.
I will touch on one poor client experience I had with a vendor, and I understand how this can go. My husband is a consultant, so I definitely see both sides. But setting up the monetary contract in a way that gets you the business, but doesn’t sustain the business in a retainer relationship. I think the worst thing you can do is go to a client mid-month and say you’re out of hours, or at the end of a couple months say, “Hey, I can’t do this anymore.” Say it’s 10,000 a month, and a consultant, and this has happened to me, comes back and says, “For the rest of the year, I have to charge you $15,000.” That’s not how budgets work. I can’t change mid-year.
So be very thoughtful about how much it actually costs. Both sides have to be honest. I’ve experienced that several times, or gotten surprise bills, and those folks, to be honest, were let go immediately. I broke the contract. It’s really not fair to either side, but to go to a client and say, “It’s October 15. I’m not working for you anymore,” it’s just not right. It’s not professional.
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
More on the technical side, from my personal experience, a warning sign is when the vendor is so focused on developing so many new features that we don’t really need, and so focused on selling us on that new feature, when the features we’ve asked for haven’t even been completed or built. It tells you about priorities. We understand this new feature is great and fantastic. We just don’t need it. So instead of selling us on that, let’s focus on what we’ve already asked for and what we need, so there’s alignment. On the technical side, it’s about hearing what we actually use and need, and how that can be custom fit for our account versus a general, industry-wide need.
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
I think we actually ran with that on Tuesday’s call. We showed a new feature that actually could work for you, as opposed to saying “This is fancy and it’s cool.” Instead of it being a “That’s not for us,” we showed you a feature that worked for you.
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
And the other way around is knowing what we need, so that when there is a new feature, it’s like, “Hey, Rachel, you need to pay attention to this one. This is the one that’s going to change your life.” That’s also very helpful, because we only have so much visibility into what you’re making or developing. So getting those demos and training sessions is very helpful.
Lessons From DoorDash’s No Tax on Tips Campaign
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
Sharon and Rachel, I wanted to talk about your recent No Tax on Tips advocacy, which combined digital mobilization with constituent voices and direct engagement with policymakers. What lessons from campaigns like that can you share about coordinating with consultants, technology partners and an internal public affairs team, while making sure the campaign still feels authentic to the people working in it and on it?
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
Our Dash Roots program is two-tiered, like I’m sure many of yours are. We have our Top Advocate program, where Dashers, merchants and consumers meet with legislators through lobby days and participate in earned media if a reporter wants to talk to someone. I’m really proud to work at DoorDash, where we put together a full campaign on virtually every issue, every small-town or federal issue that comes up. We put a campaign team together with a digital component, a policy communications component and a Top Advocate component, depending on the specific needs.
I think No Tax on Tips was really successful because it showed how we were fighting for our workers and our Dashers on an issue that, fortunately, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump had spoken about on the campaign trail. So it was really in the news. Following federal passage, a lot of states are now coming out with No Tax on Tips on state income tax. So we’ve been able to take a one-time campaign, if you will, at the federal level and repurpose it in states like Georgia, Michigan and Arizona, where we’re working on passing those, and I think we’ll probably continue to do that as it spreads to more states.
Every campaign has a digital aspect. We may not activate all three sides of our marketplace. It may only be consumers or Dashers. But because of our business model, many of our issues will affect both Dashers and merchants. A delivery tax would be one. If a delivery tax increases the cost of each delivery, it impacts our consumers. People order less, so it impacts our merchants, who aren’t getting as many orders. And then there are fewer earnings opportunities for our Dashers, because they’re independent contractors.
So I will say, DoorDash, we’re fighters, and it’s not really focused on our company as much as it’s focused on our community of users. We want to make sure we’re giving those folks a voice and, to your point, Alex, making sure it’s an organic voice as well. So we make sure we put those Top Advocate voices out there through personalized testimonies and meetings with legislators, and not just digital.
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
For added context, with this specific campaign we were able to get over tens of thousands of advocates throughout the entire country to take action and send over hundreds of thousands of letters directly to their Congress members and state lawmakers regarding this particular bill. I think that scale and size of action was achievable because we were able to set it up technically within such a short amount of time, and to make the language and the messaging very relevant and clear to those who were reading it.
Sharon explained it perfectly: this was already getting so much media coverage, and people understood what it meant. But the missing piece for us was “How is it affecting you personally as a Dasher, merchant or consumer, and why should you take action?” That’s always the CTA we try to focus on, delivering the message in one sentence: You have to pay attention. It takes three seconds for you to take action because of X, Y and Z. Those messages might differ by company, by topic and by audience, but capturing that message and then delivering and displaying it technically in a way that resonates was a big part of it.
With Speak4’s help, we were able to display a background video or an image and set up certain fields to be merged, so there were fewer buttons each advocate had to click to actually send a letter. Then it came down to custom setting the list of legislators we wanted to reach first versus later, how many letters were being delivered per day or per week, how we wanted to schedule all the banks of letters we had and really seizing the exact moment to take leverage.
Those are all part of the partnership strategy: knowing the tool very well and working very closely with our internal team members, all the way from comms to legal, public affairs and public engagement. Having that alignment throughout, and then moving very quickly with the right messaging, was how we were able to get to that scale for this specific campaign.
How to Tell If a Consultant Is Delivering Value
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
The last question I have before I open it up to the audience, so feel free to start writing your questions in the chat now: How should clients or partners evaluate whether a consultant is really delivering value for their time and fee? How can you tell when someone’s worth their salt, especially when a campaign might run a little longer or ROI isn’t clearly defined?
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
I think you need to have established metrics at the beginning of the year. We do weeklies with Cassie, but also quarterly updates: How are we marching toward those benchmarks? I also think it’s important, in October or November, whenever it is, to basically have a review, like you would have an annual review before you sign the renewal for the following year.
A lot of times clients and vendors get a little lazy, like, “I don’t want to look at other people. It’s a lot.” But I think it’s important to keep everything fresh, keep everybody on task, keep everyone hungry and earning your business every year, every month, every day. You also owe the vendor specific benchmarks they should be hitting. What I really like about DoorDash is that we’re very data-driven and metrics-driven. What are our participation rates, and how can we help drive those? I think you just need to be open, honest and direct, and have set times to check those things.
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
Quarterly and yearly metrics and benchmarks are all great, but I would pair that with constant check-ins. If you have a problem, address it ASAP. If you have feedback or concerns for each other, and it goes both ways, address it instantly instead of waiting another week or a month or until the end of the quarter for reviews. I think communication is the theme of today. Good communication.
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
Obviously I’m the consultant here, but I think it’s this: Is that consultant making the team’s life easier? Are they bringing new ideas to the table? Are they saying, “I don’t know if we can do that, but let me figure out how we can”? You’re not paying them just to attend a meeting, say “That’s a great point” and run the same play every single time. The value is in the results, and also in fewer escalations, better decisions and knowing you’ll have someone who shows up when you need them to. They’ve consistently proven that when things get escalated, they’re there.
Why DoorDash Invests in Advocacy
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
We have a question in the Q&A for Sharon and Rachel: When did you realize advocacy was something DoorDash needed to invest in? Has it always been a priority or part of your strategy?
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
Rachel may be able to answer this better than I can. It was in place before. I’ve been at DoorDash four years, and believe it or not, DoorDash is only about a 13-year-old company. It seems so ubiquitous now, but it’s really still a very young company. I think early on, they were smart enough to build out a public policy team.
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
From what I understand, I believe it was a priority from the get-go, because we had a very solid group of founders and leadership who understood the importance of policy priorities and campaigning to protect Dashers, consumers and merchants, and the business side as well. With that type of leadership, you don’t have to convince them that this is important and potentially quite detrimental to the business long term, and that this is what’s going to set us apart from others in the industry. Having that understanding with leadership, and being able to communicate directly with them, improves everything.
Luckily, they had that understanding from the get-go. So we have a pretty big team, with very detail-oriented roles and different segments of the team divided by function. With that alignment come support, resources, funding and prioritization that help us keep moving toward our goals.
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
I know we really invested in mobilization of the grassroots network when I was hired four years ago. It was being done. It just wasn’t its own function at the time.
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
It also helps when there’s a huge proposition or legislative conflict that you have to fight or figure out how to resolve. For us, I think the start of everything was Prop 22 in California. Our company is based in California and started there, and that was what sparked the idea that we need to address this, and we need a whole team to really carry the weight.
One Piece of Advice From Each Panelist
Q: Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
Before we close out, this has been great and very enlightening to me, and hopefully to the rest of the group. If each of you could give one piece of advice: Cassie, what’s one small thing clients can do differently to get more from their consultants? And Sharon and Rachel, what’s one small thing consultants can do differently to become more valuable strategic partners? We’ve heard a lot about how important communication is to these relationships, and to romantic relationships and friendships too, even though we’re not licensed to give advice on those things here at the Council. But if there’s one small thing this audience can bring back to their teams to make the relationship stronger.
A: Cassie McPhail, Speak4
I’ll start with this. For clients and partners, bring your consultants in early and give them as much context as you can. It’s much easier to be strategic when you hear about an issue while there’s still time to shape a plan, as opposed to “This needs to happen in 10 minutes.”
From the consultant side, listen, learn how the partner operates and show up for them. Don’t complete the task that’s in front of you. Complete the actual ask, stay three steps ahead and figure out if there’s a stronger approach. The best consultants are going to feel like part of the team, just without actually getting invited to the holiday party.
A: Rachel Jung, DoorDash
For me, it’s pretty simple. It’s being clear, and it goes both ways. Being clear is being kind, and assuming positive intent. For us, it’s really not about taking the blame or pointing fingers at each other. It’s about problem-solving. I really couldn’t care less whether you did something wrong or whether it’s your fault or my fault. It’s about admitting it, owning it and moving forward with a new path. So those are my two big tips.
A: Sharon McBride, DoorDash
I think we’ve said it before, but I’d say be direct. And I do love this, Rachel. We say it a lot at DoorDash: clear is kind. I think it’s very true. I believe it’s a Brené Brown quote, if I’m giving credit where credit is due.
I’d also say be flexible. Everyone can be proud of their services, but don’t be so set in your ways that you’re not hearing the client or the customer. Be flexible and agile, because every company has different compliance issues, different audiences and different internal pressures. The more you can conform and be flexible to their needs, the better off you’re going to be.
Alex Donovan, Public Affairs Council
Great. Lots to bring back to your teams and keep in mind when you’re shopping around or working with the partners you already have. Thank you to all three of you. As Sharon mentioned, we’ll be sharing the speakers’ contact information if you’d like to set up meetings or ask them questions offline. Really appreciate your time today, and I hope everyone has a great rest of their day and week.