Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants

Keep out of Reach of Children

Standing on tiptoes, I barely reached the bottle of spot remover on the top shelf. I nudged the bottle forward and it fell into my hands, with its warning label displayed prominently, "Keep out of Reach of Children." Our own messages should be so unambiguous.

Maybe businesses, and consultants, could learn a thing or two from warning label writers. Instead of gumming up our writing with meaningless generalities, we should aim to be as clear as they are.

Naturally, most business communications can’t be boiled down to six words on a warning label. But we can avoid language like this: "We help clients identify, design, implement, and evaluate the business structure and processes needed to optimize internal efficiencies and leverage external opportunities."

You might as well just go with, "We help clients do stuff better," which says about as little.

Hopefully, your writing doesn’t reach this level of banality, but isn’t there an opportunity to clarify, even just a little bit, almost everything we write?

Would You Say This to a Client?

I've written before about how easy it is for consultants to let meaningless words and phrases slip into their marketing communications. Here's an example that belongs in the marketing hall of shame:

“Our expertise in On Demand Business can help you cope with an ultradynamic marketplace by developing an innovation-driven strategy which increases agility as it blunts commoditization. We can even help you better execute your strategy in play.”

That's a direct quote from a consulting firm's recent ad in the Wall Street Journal. Sorry, but I have no idea what the sentences in that ad really means.

I ran the passage through the jargon-busting tool, The Bullfighter (www.fightthebull.com), which had this to say to the ad writer: you “shower readers with gratuitous, interminable and often weighty if not impossibly labyrinthine prose."

In a face-to-face meeting with a client, would you say anything like the nonsense in that ad? I doubt it. Then why write that way?

Your marketing communications should say something meaningful about who you are and what you can do to help clients. That's what they want to know--not how much mind-numbing jargon you can fit into an ad.

The 189 Percent Solution

As the lights dimmed, the speaker’s first words were, “Some of you won’t be able to read this chart.” No kidding. The culprit: an overwhelmingly dense PowerPoint presentation.

I was squinting so hard that I felt a dull headache coming on. I wouldn’t have been able to see that presentation with binoculars. But the speaker bravely plowed on, slide after slide--brimming with images, animation, and bulleted lists.

My recollection of the presentation’s key points? Next to nothing. I thought it was me, but then I saw a reference to a study that convinced me otherwise. 

Richard E. Meyer, a professor at the University of California, studied the impact of multimedia presentations on human memory. He found that when irrelevant words and pictures were removed from such presentations, people experienced a 189 percent improvement in remembering the information.

Sometimes we pack so much stuff on a set of slides that we’re actually defeating our purpose. Next time you’re preparing a presentation, just repeat to yourself, “189 percent…189 percent.”

Master Consulting Speak--Clip and Save

"Our holistic approach enables vertical connectivity between the field operations team and the quality assurance technicians to optimize consumer impact points."

Ever been in a meeting with one or more consultants and heard phrases like the above? Makes you wonder how consultants have mastered such a low ratio of meaning to word count.

Of course, consultants aren't the only ones who can talk a lot without saying anything. Others in the business world are equally guilty, including me at times. But I am trying to mend my ways.

For those who can't let go, here's a tool just for you: The Consultant's Jargon Generator.

Use it to spice up your meetings with clients and colleagues, your proposals, or final "deliverables." Find just the right words to describe one of your consulting capabilities or your methodology, or to make a client recommendation.

From the table below, choose any word from the left-hand column, then add a word from the middle column plus any word from the final column. Ta da--instant consultant speak.

Give it a shot.

---

The Consultant's Jargon Generator
Deliver	Seamless	Thoughtware
Ramp up	Scalable	Value chain
Empower	Bleeding-edge	Paradigm
Configure	Mission-critical	Synergy
Leverage	Granular	Connectivity
Strategize	Frictionless	Ecosystem
Operationalize	Holistic	Convergence
Reengineer	Value-added	Transformation
Globalize	Cross-platform	Capability transfer
Optimize	Enterprise-wide	Market space

Stop talking About Yourself!

You see it all the time. It’s amazing they continue NOT to get it. As a freelance marketing copywriter, it’s one of the most common mistakes I see made by many companies when presenting themselves in their marketing materials (and I'm guessing many consultants are just as guilty of it): they talk about themselves too much.

They forget (or never learned) a fundamental of sales and marketing: The Features/Benefits Equation. Features are about a company and the products/services it sells. Benefits are about what’s important to the customer. Stop leading with how great your services are, how much experience you have, or how long you’ve been in business.

Talk about the things that matter most to clients – increased profitability, competitive advantage, enhanced reputation. Or in the case of a consumer product – convenience, freedom, flexibility, a “cooler” image. And then tell your customers how your products and services deliver all those things.

Once they get that YOU get what’s really important to them, they’ll be more willing to listen to the details (features). Begin with benefits, follow with features.

Peter Bowerman is a freelance copywriter in Atlanta (www.writeinc.biz) and the author of the award-winning Book-of-the-Month club selection, The Well-Fed Writer and TWFW: Back For Seconds, both “standards” of commercial freelancing. www.wellfedwriter.com.

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. 

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_______________________________

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.

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?

When Words Get in the Way

"There's something I've been trying to say to you/But the words get in the way" - Gloria Estefan

When a client offered me a peek at a competitor's proposal, I couldn't resist. Anticipating a fine piece of competitive intelligence, I spread the proposal across the desk, adjusted the light and began to plow through it.

I lost track of the proposal's thread on the first page when I read that the project would result in a "5% positive revenue increase." Well, a negative increase would sure defy the odds.

I continued reading.

The proposal went on to describe that the team would work on "two parallel paths." I was confused. Would that be two concurrent activities, or four? Okay, so maybe I was being hypercritical because it was a competitor's work, but two parallel paths?

The rest of the proposal was more of the same--littered with phrases that, while not incorrect, drained the life out of its ideas.

Here are four other clumsy bits:

• Based on our short, five-minute conversation

• The newly created process

• Funds will be specially earmarked

• Your satisfaction is our main priority

Over the next few days, I went back through some of my own writing and was humbled to find similar gems. So, I cracked open and reread my dusty copy of William Zinsser's classic, On Writing Well. In the book, Zinsser calls clutter "the disease of American writing" and says that we are "strangling in unnecessary words."

Redundant words creep into consulting prose like vines in the rainforest. Be vigilant or they will take root. With a fresh eye and Zinsser's book at your side, you could get the words out of the way and realize a 'positive increase' in the impact of what you write.

Words to Avoid in Proposals

Proposals brimming with consultant-speak drive clients to the competition faster than you can say "paradigm shift."

Scrutinize every word in a proposal and strip out empty phrases like "seamless connectivity," "strategic convergence," or "we deliver unparalleled solutions that create leverage for the enterprise." In the war of words, your most potent weapon is your computer's delete key.

Of the three ailments likely to infect a proposal--tired superlatives, buzzwords, and the plague of pronouns--superlatives are the most insidious.

Superlatives are like weeds in a lawn: Unless checked, they tend to take over. Avoid prose such as "Our unsurpassed commitment to client service ensures your needs will be our highest priority." Does that mean the needs of other clients are a lower priority for you?

Consultants hope to get an edge by claiming to be the fastest, best, or most experienced. Clients routinely ignore such claims as unproven hype. Unless you can quantify your claims beyond a doubt, dump superlatives from your proposal.

Tired superlatives to delete or justify in every proposal include: Most, Superior, Best, Maximum, Optimal, Minimum, Fastest, Unsurpassed, Shortest, Unrivaled, Easiest, Highest, Least, Unique.

Nothing is intrinsically wrong with any of the preceding words, and we all use them in spoken and written communication (for example, "This is the fastest way to do that.") But in proposals, they are suspect, and you should use them sparingly, if at all.

Instead of promising an "optimal solution for reducing customer complaints," say, "We will reduce customer complaints by 9% in 90 days." Then amplify in the proposal exactly how you will achieve that reduction.

Since proposals are often used to justify unspoken decisions made earlier in the sales process, include in your proposal facts that validate your supporters' desire to hire you. Give them powerful ammunition to advance your firm's credibility and convince others in the organization that you are the right choice.

PowerPoint Blues

The presentation sounded promising, and I was looking forward to it. The speaker approached the podium, greeted the audience and fiddled with the computer to bring up the first slide. I swear there was a collective groan in the audience.

The first slide was so dense with text even those in the first row had no hope of reading it. The rest of the slides were more of the same. The audience started heading to the exits after less than five minutes.

The misuse of PowerPoint is rampant in the business world. In the wrong hands, this tool can be disastrous. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If we all adhered to eight simple rules, PowerPoint could, once again, be an aid to communication, rather than a barrier.

Eight PowerPoint rules:

Ø Create your slides after you’ve developed your speech

Ø Use slides sparingly, and only if necessary

Ø Audience members must be able to read every word on a slide, no matter where they’re seated

Ø Slides are not speaker notes

Ø Aim for no more than three words or a single image per slide

Ø Every slide must be clear and coordinated with your presentation

Ø Dump the animation

Ø Rehearse with your slides.

Got any additions to the list? Let me know.