Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

Filter Out the Fluff

Consultants sell the intangible.  It's our expertise, our past experience, our training that makes us valuable.  And how do we communicate all of that value to our clients?

Not very well, usually!  The problem is the words we choose. Often, consultants describe their services with dull, worn-out clichés—“leading edge,” “state of the art,” “innovative,” even that bloated loser “synergistic.” Yuck! This kind of language--which I call "marketing fluff"--produces messages that are vague and not the least bit persuasive. 

However, it’s never too late to improve. And the potential payback is huge. Research indicates that sending your prospects clear, concise, and persuasive e-mails, letters, and proposals can shorten your sales cycles by more than a third. 

Here’s an example of “marketing fluff”—grandiose claims that don’t actually say anything: 

Our firm is uniquely qualified to deliver world-class results. We offer best-of-breed approaches and customer-focused service to produce seamless solutions. Our commitment to partnering with our customers produces innovative yet user-friendly applications.  

Sound impressive? No, not really. In fact, this paragraph is likely to start the client’s built-in B.S. detector clanging like a fire alarm. 

Why doesn’t it work? What makes this writing sound weak and phony?

The problem comes from making big claims unsupported by even a sliver of proof. World-class results? Says who? Best-of-breed products? By what standards? Seamless? So what does that mean, anyway?

The answer is to substantiate your claims with details. Suppose the sentences were written as follows:

Our firm has successfully installed advanced imaging systems in more than 500 financial institutions in North America, more than any other firm in the industry. We offer the latest technology, including digital scanning, and back our systems with a one-year, unconditional guarantee and a service department that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As a result, by choosing us you achieve three important outcomes: First, you are in full compliance with all Federal and state regulations. Second, you eliminate more than 70% of the paper routinely generated in the course of business.  And third, your total cost of operations goes down due to reduced information storage costs. On average, our customers saved more than $275,000 annually over the past three years. 

Now you’d be a bit more impressed, right? It’s all in the details. 

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Tom Sant

is the author of Persuasive Business Proposals and the forthcoming Learning to Sell: The Four Ideas that Revolutionized Selling, both published by AMACOM. Contact him at tsant@hydeparkpartnerscal.com or visit his Web site at www.hydeparkpartnerscal.com.

Size Matters

Like many of you, I watched the Academy Awards last night. About halfway through I saw something that had me shaking my head in disbelief -- a TV ad from Bank of America claiming to know what it's like to run a small business!

Don't get me wrong -- I've got nothing against BOA and I'm sure the people working there are smart, nice and hardworking. But I'm also willing to bet that the vast majority of the bank's employees have never run a small business. To have the third largest bank in the country – a multi-billion dollar corporation – claim that it understands small business simply because it has us as clients makes about as much sense of my claiming to know what it's like to be a professional actor simply because I've been to a lot of movies.

In any case, the implication was clear for me and my fellow small business owners: Instead of working so hard to look like the big guys in the hope that it makes us appear more professional and more legitimate, realize that the big guys are spending millions of dollars trying to look like us in the hope that it makes them appear more human.

Let's use our natural advantage to its advantage, by showing the real people inside our companies. Sign your name to customer communications, show photos of real staff on your web site and speak in an authentic, human voice in everything you do. It's easy for us and something the big guys can only hope to copy.

Learn more about Michael Katz.

Stamp Out Deliverables

I recently read an RFP that began with a short description of the desired outcomes, and ended with an elaborate list of 53 "deliverables." The list included things like detailed project plans, communication strategies, and new organization charts. The RFP stipulated that firms failing to respond to each deliverable would be penalized.

The list was exhaustive (and exhausting). But when viewed as a whole, the deliverables themselves didn't move the client one inch toward the desired changes. It just generated a lot of…well…deliverables.

It's time for consultants to help clients focus on results rather than deliverables. I suspect consultants taught clients the word to begin with, but is that what they really need? Let's shift the client dialogue to benefits, outcomes, results--anything but deliverables.

The Next Competitive Advantage?

A client I know hired a consulting firm to develop a pilot training program and facilitate a series of workshops for one of the client's divisions. The project was completed in about three months, and the client raved about the results.

The educational materials were top-notch, the consultant's facilitation skills were praised by all, and the work was done on time--and on budget. From every angle, the project looked like a winner.

It wasn't.

After the client team huddled in a closed conference room to debrief, they agreed that the project was actually more like a train wreck. They also decided to award the remaining work to another consulting firm. The client was willing to throw away a three-month investment to start over with a new firm

The reason the consultants got the boot is simple: they created a great outcome, but a miserable day-to-day work experience for the client. They lost sight of the reality that the journey is often more important than the destination. The consultants created a toxic working environment for the client, and it cost them the job.

In an interview in MCNews, marketing consultant Suzanne Lowe advised that consultants "should intentionally provide a uniquely favorable emotional experience" for clients. And that doesn't mean just being respectful, punctual, and providing great results. It's also means understanding how the client feels about working with the consultant.

Most consulting assignments have aggressive timelines and sky high expectations. In such a pressure cooker, it's easy for consultants to lose sight of the personal impact they have on clients. Every consultant knows results matter, but don't neglect the importance of the client's experience with you.

Is the client's experience part of your project approach?

It Really Is About the Client

Jim Logan, founder of Accelerate Business Growth, suggests a valuable tweak to a recent post on proposals by Deborah Kluge. He'd change the second point in the post, "Recognize That It’s Also About Them," to "Recognize It's Only About Your Customer."

His post is a good one, so have a look at it.

Jim has a great perspective on how to think about your customers/clients, like this quote from one of his recent posts called Why Companies Fail to Grow Their Revenue:

"When you’re outwardly focused, you tend to speak to your prospective customers about their environment, their needs and opportunities, and the meaningful ways in which your products and services aid their agenda for growth and opportunity. You talk about the benefits your products and services enable. You engage with your customer in their world and set the pace for the sales opportunity."

The entire post is good reading. You'll find it here.

And thanks to Deborah for her guest post.

Make Your Proposal a Winner

Like it or not, most businesspeople have to prepare proposals at one time or another. For some, writing proposals is a routine part of their day-to-day business; for others, it’s something that only needs to be done on occasion. However often it has to be done, we want only one outcome: to win the client’s business.

As a professional proposal writer, I’m often asked to “fix up” proposals that my clients want to submit to their current or prospective clients. Some of them are very good, while others are truly awful. When “fixing” or writing a proposal for a client, I focus on the things that can make your proposal a winner:

• Tailor It. Too many proposals are generated automatically using pre-prepared  text (aka boilerplate) that may or may not be appropriate for a particular client. With a little tweaking, you can transform your boilerplate materials so that they specifically address your client’s needs and environment.


• Recognize That It’s Also About Them. Our proposals are naturally about us-–the products and/or services that we provide and how wonderful we are. But we sometimes forget why we are preparing a proposal (in addition to wanting to win the business). In essence, we are preparing a proposal to help a client meet a need or solve a problem. But clients’ needs and problems often go unmentioned in our zest to tell them what we can do for them. This goes hand-in-hand with the tailoring mentioned above.

• Be Concise. Drop the fluffy stuff and meaningless jargon. Get to the point in the first paragraph of each section. Use short, bulleted lists to highlight important information. Don’t make the client read through pages and pages of boring text to figure out the point you are trying to make. They may never read to the end.

• Be Businesslike. It doesn’t matter if you are a one-person show or a multinational company. In my view, proposals should never be casual; they should be formal business documents that use businesslike language. Proposals must incorporate good grammar and perfect spelling. If you’re not a good writer (and many people aren’t), get someone to review and edit your proposal before you send it. You never know-–the person who receives your proposal might be a grammar freak. Remember those teachers with red pencils?


• Be Straightforward. Don’t beat around the bush. Clearly explain what your product or service is, what its features and benefits are, and how it can help clients achieve their objectives or solve their problems.

• Make It Attractive. Attractive doesn’t have to mean fancy. But your proposal should be pleasing to look at. That means having margins that are even, headings or subheadings that stand out from the text, and good use of whitespace throughout your document. Use black and white or color graphics, when appropriate, to break up the text. Put a header at the top of each page that incorporates a small version of your logo. Be consistent in your use of fonts and formatting.

• Don’t Bash Your Competition. A comparison of the features and benefits of your company’s product/service with those of your competitors is fine, but negative language isn’t--it’s tacky and unprofessional.

                              

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Deborah Kluge helps clients prepare business proposals, as well as proposals for government grants and contracts. Visit her Proposal Writing Blog and main site at www.proposalwriter.com for more tips and resources.

How much should you give away?

For some consultants, everything--including the kitchen sink.

Blogger and consultant, Debbie Weil suggests that Tom Peters nailed the strategy of selling his service by freely offering visitors virtually every slide presentation he's used, a 187 page document of his blog posts and a PDF with his re-imagine 'manifesto.' And, there's more.

He's mastered two marketing lessons. First, he knows that getting his ideas into the marketplace does him far more good than having a bunch of powerpoint files sitting on his computer. Second, he figured out years ago that you still need the professor to really pull the value from his notes.

Even if you're not a Peters' fan, have a look at how he uses this strategy.

What business are you in?

Every day, people ask each other, “How are you?” The questioner, not really wanting to know the details of your sore back or other troubles, expects to hear, “I’m fine, and how are you?”

Almost as frequent is the question, “What do you do?” If you work as a police officer, firefighter, nurse, or carpenter, it’s pretty clear what you do. For those of us in the consulting business, it’s harder to give people a true picture of what we do.

I recently introduced a colleague to a friend. Once we established that everyone was fine, the friend asked:

 
“So, what do you do?”

“I’m a consultant”

“Cool, what kind of consultant are you?”

“An IT consultant”

“What type of IT consulting do you do?”

“I mostly manage large IT projects”

“What types of IT projects do you manage?”

“I help clients design and implement new software”

“Do you work in any particular industry?”

“Yes, I work for telecommunications companies, usually.”

“I see.”

Did that friend—who, by the way, might be a potential client—really learn what the consultant does to help clients?

What if my colleague answered the what-do-you-do question by saying, “I manage projects that help clients reduce the time between customer billing and collections, which improves their profitability.”

 When someone says I’m a plumber, the benefit is obvious. When someone asks what do you do, is it equally obvious?

Blogging your way to... free publicity

One of the neat things about starting your own blog is that you're likely to experience some unforeseen consequences. For example:

1. Engaging in conversations with other smart folks you never would have met otherwise.

2. Having your blog appear high in search engine rankings when someone types your name into Google (caveat: this requires blogging consistently and over a period of months).

3. And perhaps most gratifying... getting calls from the mainstream media to quote you on your area of expertise.

I've been "blogging" on the topic of business blogging for going on two years. And have been astounded at the impact it's had. I've never hired a PR firm but I've gotten calls from The Wall Street Journal (for background info; reporter didn't quote me!), The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, USA Today and other publications. And recently was interviewed for a segment on corporate blogging on public TV's Nightly Business Report. Yup, that's me in a video clip above.

Nothing is guaranteed, of course. But why not give it a shot. You'll find that blogging - er, writing - forces you to articulate your thoughts on a topic. And since you can blog a paragraph or two and look intelligent, it's not nearly as much work as writing a long article.

Welcome Our Guest Bloggers

Over the next few months, we will feature some guest bloggers here. Among other topics, our guests will write on marketing, proposal writing, consulting and, of course, blogging.

Debbie Weil, aka the "Mona Lisa of Blogging," will be among our guests. Debbie has graciously offered to let readers download her Beginners Guide to Business Blogging.

Stay tuned for other guests.