The submission.

Every document is a sales document but it all comes to a sharp point when it’s time to lodge a submission. There are rights and wrongs about EOIs and tenders, quite apart from price. These are some of my takes having been on the producing, reviewing and receiving end.

So you’ve done your marketing well and created the atmosphere that positions your business within your target market as one of the ‘go to’ candidates. You’ve expanded your footprint, identified target companies – and the people within them – and seen to it that they have a reasonable understanding of what you do, and your point of difference. By the time you’re making a submission for some ‘real’ paying work, all the precedent steps should have been ticked off. So now the rubber hits the road. Don’t fall at this hurdle. I’ve been on the receiving end of very many submissions and also the production end, writing, project managing or reviewing them. These are not golden rules, because every submission is different. But they might be helpful for you to think about in terms of your submission efforts.

Focus.

Too often, submissions aren’t written with what the client wants to know first and foremost in mind. Even when clients go to lengths to specify the criteria they want you to address, I’ve often seen this overlooked in favour of some long narratives that describe company history, charitable endeavours or any number of other irrelevant areas of content. Instead, you need to think carefully about what the client has asked for; or rely on your market intelligence to know intuitively what they’re looking for, and how they go about assessment. Don’t stray from this. Stay sharply focussed on thinking like your client and imagining yourself being judged on their criteria. You aren’t writing your brochure here, you’re answering their questions, explicit or implied. There’s a huge difference. 

The copy/paste trap.

A nasty trap, more common when you find yourself pumping out a volume of proposals or submissions in a short space of time. You may be able to fill a page count quickly copying material from prior submissions and pasting it into this one, but it is no guarantee of being 100% “on message.” The worst example is when a submission goes out with some other company’s name still embedded in some copied narrative that’s been overlooked (mea culpa on occasion). Talk about a bad look. The copy/paste function is sometimes a necessary evil but use with extreme caution.

Less is more.

There’s no contest I know of which says the more pages you supply, the better. Some organisations specify page limits because they’re no doubt tired of reading through every piece of quasi-relevant collateral someone could think to include. If they include a page limit, stick to it. And no shrinking font sizes to get over the line either. Where limits aren’t imposed, do them the decency of getting to the point and staying on point. Any of you who have been on the receiving end of dozens of lengthy submissions will know that the long ones get looked at last, and grudgingly. This is not the best frame of mine for your assessors to be in when looking at your proposal.

The executive summary

The two operative words here are ‘executive’ and ‘summary.’ This does not mean a general introduction to you and your business. The reason you’re making this submission should be because your marketing and communication strategy has already done the backgrounding job for you, well before any formal submissions are called for. Ideally, if you’ve done this well, your target client should want you to succeed. So this is where you get to the point. This is your ‘prove it’ opportunity: the exec summary should summarise all the salient points of your submission; it should endorse your value adding proposition and be focussed entirely on what they want to know, not what you want to say. Get it all into a few dot points, on no more than two pages (one is best if you can). Imagine the executive who will only read the summary and form their opinion on this alone – that’s who you’re writing this for. 

The price.

Many submissions are price contingent. So why force them to hunt through your entire submission to find the price on the last page? I must admit I took a bit of convincing on this myself from a senior construction executive but he was right: put the price in the first line of your exec summary and get over it. If you’re only being assessed on price, at least you’ve saved them digging around for it. If your price is higher than others, your exec summary and the balance of your submission will convince them you’re worth it, and all the marketing you’ve done beforehand will mean they’re predisposed to think that anyway. But if not, you’ve lost it either way – whether it’s on page one or buried at the back. 

Your people

In reality, professional service firms are offering their professionals and their experience and little more. Be sure to profile the actual team you have in mind for this project. There’s little point listing all the senior people if all they’ll do is hand over to underlings – your clients know this (and fear it) already. They will want to see who you’re proposing and their value adding ability for their particular job. Once again, the copy/paste approach to CVs and profiles is a trap when it comes to personnel that’s best avoided. Why subject one of your strongest selling points to copy/paste?

Content is king

Content comes first. Beautifully presented submissions are worth nothing if the content is ill-thought. (I once received a beautifully presented award submission which arrived within a lovely small timber box, sufficiently large to contain the A4 binder within. I kept the box for some workshop bits and pieces at home so it was a complete waste of time as anything but a glamorous addition to the shed). The content doesn’t only need to focus on what the client wants, but it should also come from the best minds in your business. Spending time to get your thoughts on paper is the best investment you can make: you cannot outsource content nor compensate for the lack of it through frilly design or fancy packaging. 

These are only thought starters. Every submission and every client is different but hopefully some simple observations like this will help you assess your approach to this most important of sales documents.

Content versus design

Professional service businesses can invest more time and effort in the look of their corporate material than thinking about its content. Is this wise?

I have a confession. I was once a style guide nazi. It was a long time ago, when standard word processing (anyone remember Wordperfect 4.2?) gave way to desktop design packages (anyone remember Aldus Pagemaker?).  This liberated document design from the tyranny of pre-printed letterhead and put it in the hands of multiple personnel, each enthusiastic but also each following their own design whims. It meant that one organisation could be pumping out multiple sets of documents or collateral, none of them bearing much resemblance to the other except perhaps the random and irregular placement of a logo, somewhere. Or in some cases, everywhere.

Style guides were a way of instilling a set of disciplines into this rabble. They sought to create a consistent corporate ‘look’ that supported the organisation’s brand. (By brand, I do not mean logo. A logo is the visual symbol for an organisation. The brand is what that logo stands for. There’s a difference).

Style guides are now accepted common practice. Tacked onto style guides has been an increasing emphasis on turning every single piece of communication into a minor art form. Submissions, proposals, basic electronic communication – many organisations now invest heavily (both time and money) in creating a highly polished ‘look’ which only a graphic artist can deliver. Images can’t just be decent, they need a professional photographer. No piece of communication can leave without being subject to an increasingly high hurdle test of visual quality which is increasingly expensive and time consuming to achieve. As a result, we are less responsive, less inventive, less creative and less innovative. It’s reached the point that communication is once again subject to a tyranny of constraint which is the obsession with design appearance - at the expense of content.

My thinking has moved on because I think that the typical recipients of corporate communication have also moved on. The highly polished corporate ‘look’ has become so de rigueur that it’s rarely a distinguishing feature any more. When that happens, what distinguishes one business from another? My strong feeling is that it’s content.

Professional service firms are, by definition, in the business of selling their professionals. That means the people, their ideas, their insights, their expertise. This is what I look for when it comes to content.

Businesses that focus on highlighting this sort of content as a form of elevating awareness seem to me to enjoy a big advantage over firms who have opted for ‘vanilla’ flavoured corporate-speak delivered in highly polished formats. I would suspect many of you would opt for genuine quality content in the form of professional insights, case studies or evidence-based professional opinion – even ‘out there’ and provocative scenario thinking – over bland content however appealing its presentation. In short, you’d rather look at something interesting written on a paper napkin than something uninspiring but presented as a work of art.

Where’s this leading? I think it means that too often businesses are being sucked into a false comfort zone where design quality is some sort of substitute for content. It isn’t, and it never was.

Does this mean design no longer matters? No, there are minimum standards. But I’m increasingly of the view that people generally care less about how something looks and care more about what it says. And who is saying it. And why.

What do you think?

Rainmakers

The term rainmakers refers to the people in business most responsible for bringing in the work flow. Trying to replicate what they do isn’t easy but every business needs to think about its future, and finding the right rainmaker can require some long term planning.

Many businesses I know feature one, or a small group of business leaders, who have been largely responsible for making the business today what it is. They are intuitive networkers and know how to identify future opportunities, clients or strategic growth pathways. They’ve often been in the business for a long time and the marketplace sees the business closely associated with their drive and personality.

A telling characteristic of this sort of business is that it is often named after them. If singular, it suggests a sole rainmaker. If named after a group, it suggests a group – one that may no longer exist but one which first established the business and handed it on to a next gen of leaders.

What I find interesting is that quite often the rainmakers aren’t necessarily the most technically competent in their particular profession. The very best accountants, lawyers, engineers, architects, project managers and so on may have the edge in technical skills, and they may add a lot to the value of the business, but they may not have the skills to bring in new work. Their preference may be to continue to practice the skills they first trained for, and to continue to push the boundaries of technical understanding within their chosen field.

It makes sense if you think about it. Our university or field education focuses on the technical aspects of a particular profession. This is what first attracted us to it in the first place. We didn’t go into marketing or business courses because, quite deliberately, we didn’t think those things suited our skills or interests. Why expect that to change?

In some cases though, the rainmaker reaches a point in their technical and professional life where perhaps they begin to enjoy running and growing the business as much - if not more - than actually doing the work. They thrive on client engagement and leveraging that for further opportunities. They are not satisfied when a project is completed and a client is happy – they are asking for more – more opportunities, what the client has on next, do they know of any similar projects through other potential clients. While happy to supervise and mentor projects that come into the business, their preference starts to drift to winning more and more business, growing staff numbers and workflow.

This can create a problem for rainmaker businesses because clients are sometimes drawn only to the persona of the individual around whose reputation the business is built. They want that particular individual, or group of individuals, to be hands on with their project. They don’t want to be ‘handed down’ a level or two, notwithstanding the supervision, to a more junior (or less well known) group of professionals. Even if that group might be more technically competent than the rainmaker, clients demand that the rainmaker is the one who is hands on with their job. The rainmaker at this point is conflicted: they know that without their concerted efforts to run the business and win new business, the business as a whole will start to flounder. They can’t really devote the time to being the ‘hands on’ professional but clients are not letting them delegate.

There is no easy answer to this but from what I’ve observed here are some ideas worth exploring:

• Think of recruiting talent based on their future rainmaking skills, more so than their technical competence. A straight ‘A’ graduate with an impeccable academic and work record might sound appealing but if you already have plenty of technically competent people, try looking for someone with perhaps broader skills. Someone with the potential to start getting out there and helping you win work and who shows the personality and energy to do so, could be the missing piece you need.
• Shine more light on your next generation staff. One way to relieve the burden of clients only wanting to deal with you is to demonstrate how clever your next gen of professionals really are. This means not taking the credit for what they do, and can mean reducing your profile in favour of profiling them. Some rainmaker business leaders may say this is what they want, but many also find it hard to do.
• Institutionalise the marketing and BD function. By this, I mean make it a discipline all staff need to understand – much like the monthly timesheets or accounts. They may not love it, but they do at least need to appreciate the importance of it. Someone may start to stand out from the pack as a future rainmaker because they actually enjoy the business marketing and BD function as much as their own professional field.
• Formally reward people for their outreach, networking and rainmaking efforts. Attending functions and events and learning about what projects are doing the rounds before they hit the papers is what got you to this point – so you should encourage your staff in the same way. Don’t be too parsimonious with the networking events budget but encourage those who want to lead in this field to spend time doing so. Some simply won’t want to, so don’t force them. But those who do should be encouraged to ‘get out there’ more often.
• At some point, you might even need to look at changing the name of the business. It it’s named after you, or a group of soon-to-retire partners, it’s going to be difficult for a next gen to lead that sort of business. But you don’t want to do this until you’re happy your succession plan for rainmaking is in good hands. 

None of these are easy decisions and however you approach the issue it’s a long term commitment that could easily form part of a routine board or management meeting agenda. One thing’s for certain: leaving these decisions until the last minute is not the answer.

Milestones

Celebrating a milestone for any business is an important moment, whether that’s 10, 25, 50, 75, or even 100 years. But how much does it really matter to your clients?

Everyone likes a party and turning a ‘significant’ milestone is always good reason to have one, whether for yourself or your business. It’s a celebration of endurance and perseverance and hopefully also a celebration of some sound business management skills, good marketing and a business that’s moved with the times.

It’s become an honoured tradition to mark these milestone events with a variety of initiatives from cocktail functions to special publications or revised letterheads. I would be the very last person to find a reason not to run some sort of client engagement exercise, but I would caution against thinking that reaching that significant milestone really means as much to your clients as it does to you.

From what I have heard in many discussions about how professional service firms are selected for shortlists or how they receive ‘preferred partner’ status, the length of time the firm has been operating doesn’t rate.  What does rate highly are the skills of the people they believe they’ll be dealing with. And there’s no point suggesting the people you’re asking clients to deal with today are the same ones responsible for getting your show up and running 50 or 100 years ago. Or at least I hope not.

Some of the downsides of emphasising the age of your business can include:

• An old firm may suggest ‘stodginess’ as opposed to adventurous
• An old firm may suggest ‘traditional’ and conservative, as opposed to contemporary and innovative
• An old firm may suggest laboured systems and governance traditions designed to suit the business more than clients, as opposed to lean, efficient and client friendly

On the positive side, longevity can say a lot, provided it’s presented as a positive sign of a business that knows how to survive, adapt and respond to changing markets. But if longevity alone is promoted as the businesses’ main virtue, it can suggest a sense of ‘entitlement’ culture: that feeling you get when the people you’re paying for a service treat you and your opinions with disdain and give you that ‘father knows best’ paternalism treatment. You definitely want to avoid that.

Some law firms can be especially bad at this. Visualise collateral that emphasises wooden panelled offices, rows of leather bound law volumes, portraits of founders Smitherington or Smythe from 100 years ago or even a feather quill as part of a logo. You get the picture.

Other law firms try aggressively to disown their heritage, with the emphasis on super sleek modern offices, rows of computer screens, and twenty-something lawyers dressed to kill. That, for me, is going a bit too far the other way.

In summary, it’s nice to know you’re dealing with a business that’s got some history, and isn’t a fly-by-night outfit. But beyond that, I think there is a tipping point beyond which it starts to matter less about how long you’ve been around and more about the sort of business you are trying to be today. 

5 classic 'fails' of many businesses this year

A new year awaits and prospects for economic improvement look good. Some businesses will grow, others will tread water, and some will fail. Such is the market. But more and more as I am involved with building business prospects for businesses in a variety of professional fields, it becomes apparent that some businesses “make their own luck”, while others just hope for the best and pray for the phone to ring. If I had to guess at five things many professional businesses will fail to do this year which could help them “make their own luck” here’s my list…

1.    Fail to communicate at all. Incredible as it sounds to me, there are plenty of businesses who will start 2014 without any sort of B2B communication plan. No calendar of activity, no ideas about content, no commitment to frequency and no budget. It’s remarkable how popular clairvoyance in business has become and clearly business development by telepathy has a lot of committed followers. I am not among them.

2.    Fail to freshen contact lists. The database of clients, prospects, suppliers and others is often one of the more neglected pieces of business infrastructure I see. Far more neglected than the accounts. You hopefully wouldn’t find too many dead people on your list of 30 day debtors but too often business client lists are littered with contacts who have ‘moved on’ – in either the earthly sense, or just by switching jobs. Clients have moved address, changed name, or had wholesale changes of senior staff. None of this is recorded in the database of a lot of businesses though, simply because it wasn’t a discipline to ensure that lists were maintained.

3.    Fail to update collateral. If you made the mistake of printing 20 times the number of company brochures as you really needed three years ago, that’s really a problem of your own making. But don’t think this is an excuse to keep relying on the two or three year old brochure to continue representing your business in 2014. And if it’s a website you rely on, the same applies. Spending time on updating material about yourself is a typical ‘fail’ that many businesses don’t pay sufficient attention to.

4.    Fail to mention your people. In professional businesses, you employ people called ‘professionals.’ This is where the business value lies. So why is it that so many businesses fail to project their people and what they can offer clients, preferring instead to hide behind the anonymity of a corporate logo and inanimate projects? The worst excuse I’ve heard is “people come and go so we didn’t want to have to update our collateral.” DOH. If you haven’t yet twigged to the importance of dealing with people, just try calling the Telstra complaints line a few times and talk to the computer in between listening to the hold message.

5.   Bore your audience to death. A constant source of interest to me is how, the moment we have a keyboard in front of us, many of us revert to a bland style of ‘corporate speak’ which is long on words but totally devoid of interest. If you tried be as boring as possible, that’s what some businesses do as routine. I don’t think it’s deliberate: instead, I suspect it’s a refuge in the ‘vanilla’ language of corporate speak where the difference between one company and the next is reflected entirely in a logo. Another fail in this area is to confuse things of interest to you, and those of interest to your clients. If you’re still sending clients pictures of staff members’ new babies or weddings or triathlon conquests, please stop. Save that for the in-house news sheet.

There you go. There are plenty more but in the interests of not boring you, I’ll keep this one short and sweet. If you’re starting 2014 and plan to make your own luck, avoiding the sorts of traps above should be high on your list.

Don't wait for the recovery

A lot of professional service businesses have been through a rough period in recent years. Talk of a much needed economic upturn in 2014 is helping to raise spirits. But just relying on an upturn to translate into more work for your business is a bad idea. Here’s why.

The cycles should be familiar to all of us who have lived through them before. In good times, work finds you, staff numbers expand and the phones keep ringing. Then comes the downturn. The phone doesn’t ring as often. Work contracts to a few long term clients and staff numbers are trimmed.

Then the upturn comes again but in every upturn, there are new faces and new businesses which seem to be getting the lion’s share of work. It’s as if they appeared from nowhere, or were once fledgling companies regarded at best as junior rivals, now ‘stealing’ all the best opportunities from under your nose. How does this happen?

In a word, complacency. If you are a business which is hoping to ride a coming wave of economic revitalisation and to resume your pre-downturn glory, you’re guilty of complacency. While you are waiting, others are already busy: building the reputations, forging the relationships, making the overtures. They’ll be talking to ‘your’ clients and actively beavering away on their B2B activities. They’ll be communicating often, networking, and spending time on the phone. They’ll make sure they’re on the radar of every potential client… including yours.

When the upturn comes, it’s these companies who will be the first to benefit. During any downturn, people move around, leadership roles change, and ‘old’ relationships are tested with new blood. Active businesses with an intuitive or disciplined approach to their B2B marketing know this, and are always on top of change, in preparation for what comes next. Complacent businesses are the first to discover that old networks are no longer as reliable, and even that awareness of their business offering has dropped off the radar.

So how do you prevent this?

First, start now and don’t wait for the upturn. You should be investing time and resources into building your contact lists and refreshing old lists. If you haven’t used your client database for some time, you might be shocked at how many people have moved or left old positions. You need to find where they have gone and get in touch with them and re-established the relationship.  At the same time, work out who’s replaced them from where they left and keep that B2B relationship alive.

You ought also to spend some time thinking strategically about which sectors of your market will move first in any upturn. Target them. Identify the companies that will need your services and identify the key influencers within those companies who need to be aware of your existence.

Does your collateral reflect your strategic aim? Is it time to refresh the website and those company brochures? Is it time to run a quick survey to understand how your target market perceives you, your strengths and competitive weaknesses?

You need to be communicating regularly. Once a month is not overkill, it’s minimalist. It doesn’t matter if your outreach is a mix of electronic, print, and personal contact – just make sure you have diarised this as a discipline and have a plan for regular client outreach and communication.

If you’re not a natural networker, find someone in your business who is. Make the commitment to have some sort of presence at various industry events likely to attract the sort of clients you’re interested in keeping, and those you’re interested in winning. There is no point having a box of 200 business cards in your desk drawer. They belong in other peoples’ hands so find a way to make that happen.

You will need to do all these things and more because enough of your competitors will be. They’ll be the ones picking up the work you expected to be ‘rightfully’ yours. Complacency is a common human character trait and we all suffer it. The way to counter it is through building a discipline around your B2B efforts.

Failing to do anything much other than hope to be carried along by a coming economic upturn isn’t as good a plan as getting underway now and making your own luck for the New Year.

Corporate humbug

Christmas comes but once a year, thankfully. It’s a wonderful time for family and friends but when it comes to corporate or business relationship marketing, it can also be a time when the most insincere, plain lazy and low quality stuff happens.

The tradition of a posted Christmas card from one company to its clients is still alive in some places, but not many. The card was either signed by the principals, or passed around the office for everyone to sign their name. It was addressed to the recipient. Often personally. This at least was some indication that the senders had actually thought about who they were sending it to.

Then along came email and with it the ability to send a mass email to all clients with some appropriately cheesy sentiment of the season. It was cheaper and quicker but much less personal than the postcard.

Less personal again was the online e-card, which asked you to follow a link to a site with some even cheesier sentiments, anonymously addressed to pretty much anyone.  It got even worse again, in my view, with the arrival of websites that could animate members of your team into some super cheesy rendition of a Christmas Carol or a nativity scene. Ok, they were funny at first but let’s face it, if anyone can do it, where’s the sentiment or sincerity in that? (Here’s one site http://www.jibjab.com/ which illustrates what you’ve missed out on if this doesn’t make sense to you).

Things took a another turn down when some bright sparks decided to advertise their charitable bona fides by sending out emails to clients promoting that, rather than spend money on Christmas cards, they were making a donation to a charity instead. They never tended to reveal how much was being donated. Often, they didn’t mention the charity. Pardon my cynicism, but if you want to donate to a charity at Christmas time (which is a good Christian thing to do anyway) do you really need to advertise the fact and try promote yourself this way?

So here I am, gripped by a fear of what’s about to come through the email channels in the name of Christmas and goodwill, but in every other respect lacking sincerity or the personal touch. As a piece of client communications, some of these border on the meaningless. There are so many of these that, with luck, yours might be deleted without being read and before your intended recipient can pause to think how little they obviously mean to you.

If you’re about to commit one of the mortal sins described above and might now be having second thoughts, what are your options?

If your clients actually do mean something to you, the option of the personally addressed and signed card, with best wishes for the season, ought in my view to make something of a comeback. If you don’t want to spend the $1 or $2 per client on the cost of the card and its postage, maybe you’re better off doing nothing.

Sending a gift is also a nice idea, probably better reserved for better clients. Bottles of wine have become a bit de rigeur – especially if you’ve wacked your own corporate logo on them – but the recipient with an office full of free bottles of wine probably won’t mind too much.  They also probably won’t remember you too much from the crowd who chose to do the same thing. If you’re going to give a gift, give it some thought and try be imaginative. Don’t just do what you did last year and the year before that – people might be forgiven for thinking you’re not making an effort.

The client Christmas function is another option but remember that everyone’s doing pretty much the same thing at this time of year. ‘Come and along and have some drinks on us and stand around for a couple of hours making chit chat… it’ll be fun’ seems to sum up the approach for many. If you are going to throw a function, try keeping it reasonably intimate and personal so that you’ve at least got the opportunity to meet and interact with your guests. And think hard about some angles to make yours stand out. Once again, use some imagination and dare to be just a little bit different. I’m not suggesting a game of charades but there are some things you can do to help break the ice for your guests (many of whom won’t be well networked) and which will leave them talking about you in a positive way for a while.

Whatever you choose to do, just make sure you do it well. The postcard, the party, the gift – they all require some thought and the personal touch is always best. Otherwise, it might be better to do nothing if the something you had in mind is one of those ghastly, insincere, cheap and nasty e-cards.

And you could always just quietly, and without fanfare, make a donation of time or money to a charitable cause that could do with some help. There’s no shortage of options there.