Could stone age people teach us a thing or two?

Business communication in the age of Twitter is increasingly an art form driven by the need to get your message across as quickly as possible, with minimal complication or distraction. That means fewer words, more carefully crafted. It also means images should do a lot more heavy lifting in your communication mix: something stone age people knew all along. 

We’re all trained to varying degrees at writing. It’s one of the first things we are taught. First the alphabet, then words, then sentences and on it goes. In business, professional writing skills are essential – whether for general communication or preparing proposals or submissions. We’re familiar with our language, so we tend to use a lot of it in describing proposals or ideas or how our business operates and what it can offer.

What we’re generally not taught from an early age is the art of drawing. We start in kindergarten with some rudimentary stick-figures of our family, but few of us ever develop our drawing skills anywhere near the extent we develop our language skills, nor are we encouraged to through our schooling or career. Most adults go through life with the drawing skills of a kindergarten child.

This balance of skills is becoming more and more ill-suited to modern communication practice. In a time-poor, highly competitive environment, we have less time to get our point across or to demonstrate understanding of a topic. Mark Twain once said words to the effect “I went to write you a short letter but didn’t have time, so I wrote you a long one instead.” It’s a trap we all fall into: without a lot of time, we write large volumes or words of a rambling narrative, using arcane trade terms or acronyms known to ourselves but not shared by our audience.

Rarely do we devote a lot of time preparing visual illustrations as part of what we’re trying to communicate. But why not? There are now so many illustrative software packages that – even if the best we can actually draw by hand is a stick figure – there are many other ways to improve the performance of your communication effort:

• Statistics and figures are always best explained by charts. Add a small explanation and you’ve achieved what 1000 words couldn’t.
• Flow charts are good for explaining processes – but don’t get too carried away with the confusing array of shapes and their meaning. 
• Bullet points – numbered or otherwise – are a good way to focus your mind (and that of your reader) on the key salient points you’re trying to make. There’s every chance they’ll look at the bullet points before reading a long narrative. 
• Past successes are best explained with a picture if possible, accompanied by a caption. If your past success is difficult to imagine visually, think of using an image of the company logo of the business you helped, or some other visual clue.
• Testimonials are wonderful things, and even better with a photo of the person who’s prepared to support you. 
• Explore all the options for turning sections of narrative into images, be it in brochures, websites, submissions or proposals. Keep a file of things you’ve seen in business magazines or elsewhere to fire your imagination. 

I’m not suggesting you ditch language altogether, but it’s getting more important to keep the words to a minimum and to use images to support getting your message across quickly. Think of our stone age person. Their description of a cow pretty much said it all. How many words would you need to do the same thing?

(By way of example, I tried to apply these principles to my own website. See what you think).

Networkers

Some people are instinctively good networkers, others learn how to improve while some are just plain hopeless. 

There’s no substitute for peer to peer networking when it comes to building relationships with potential clients. Remember that companies cannot have relationships – only people can, which makes networking an important aspect of any business development strategy. 

But this doesn’t just mean attending every event that’s going: if you go about it the wrong way, you’re wasting your money and your time.

I’ve run more events than I care to remember and attended even more again. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of very good networkers at work. They seem to be everywhere and always at various functions, industry events, conferences or meetings. Some I know of will even attend two or three events in a single day. And there are even some who will attend two or three events on a single evening – popping in, working the room, then moving onto the next event. God bless them, they have more energy than I do.

What makes a good networker however isn’t simply attending the opening of every envelope. They’re focussed on the new relationships they want to create, and existing relationships they want to strengthen. They’re also excellent listeners, and ask a lot of questions.  They’re helpful if they can be, and genuinely interested in other people and their business.

Most of us however aren’t naturally this way inclined. So here are a few “do’s” and “don’ts” as we enter the hectic pre-Christmas networking season:

• Don’t just hang out with your mates. It’s the first refuge for the shy person in all of us. Hanging out with colleagues at an industry networking event is little different to being a wallflower at the school dance. This isn’t networking, it’s attending. 

• Don’t let yourself be monopolised. It can be too easy to get caught with one person or group for an entire event. Try excuse yourself after an appropriate time and move on.

• Ask questions. Use networking as an opportunity to learn more about other people’s businesses, ask their views on the industry, share some insights of your own.

• Make connections. You may have never dealt with the company of the person you’re talking to, but you may have worked with someone who has. It’s six degrees of separation and the business community is a small world.

• Share personal experiences. Being human is what makes us tick. If you’ve got interests in sport or other recreational pursuits, see if someone shares them. It’s a fast ice breaker when you find some common ground outside of business. Anyway, it makes for more interesting conversation.

• Follow up. Make a mental note or better still, write it down. If you promise to find something, do something or help with something, be sure you do.  Even just drop them a short email by way of follow up saying “good to meet you…” 

• Don’t sell. Networking is about building and extending relationships. Using networking opportunities as a selling opportunity is just tacky. 

• Specialise. Don’t spread yourself too thin by attending a wide cross section of industry events, but try focus on the types of events that match networking opportunities that are suited to your business. Better to get yourself reasonably well known in a particular circle than not known across many circles.

• Don’t overdo it. If you attack a room with the express aim of meeting every person there, you’ll look desperate and tacky and insincere. It’s not a good look.

Finally, don’t expect miracles. I’ve heard people question the value of networking with comments like “oh I went to that function once but got nothing out of it.” If you’re entirely uncomfortable with networking yourself, don’t do it – but have someone else from your business do it for you. And don’t expect to measure the results of each event or gathering as an accountant might – it takes time for networks to build.

Working to a plan? Or just working?

Many businesses are content when they’re reasonably busy but it’s the ones working towards a plan that can be better equipped to ensure they’re always busy. So what’s the difference?

When you’re busy, just getting the work done occupies enough of your time. On top of changing client demands and tight deadlines, you’ve still got the routine admin, finance, HR issues and all the rest to deal with. It’s easy to forget about the things you planned to do at the start of the year, because you’re just too busy ‘doing’ what you have to do. It’s a very familiar story.

But some businesses have found the way to make working towards a plan as much a routine discipline as time sheets or end of month accounts. It’s these businesses who seem to enjoy ongoing success, who seem to penetrate new markets when others are still thinking about it, and whose phones keep ringing when others go ominously quiet.

Most businesses start out the year with good intentions when it comes to strategic planning and growth, but how do you institutionalise this and make it part of a disciplined routine? These are just some suggestions to get you thinking...

Market reach. Has your database of clients and potential clients grown in the year? It should have and you should be able to measure by how much it has. If your ability to reach out to your market via direct contacts through your database hasn’t changed in the year, you’ve probably failed to make updates, additions and deletions a disciplined part of your regular BD investment.

List quality. Likewise, to what extent have you expanded your knowledge of target client businesses and the people within them? If you continue to have just one record for a target company – and worse, if that record is simply ‘The Manager’ – then your list quality isn’t what it could be. In every target company you would like to be doing business with there are always multiple decision makers. Finding out who they are is a first step in B2B marketing.

Frequency of outreach. If you’re working towards a BD and marketing plan, you will know because you’ll have a record of the number of times you’ve reached out to your target audience during the year. Whether it’s been part of a quarterly, bi-monthly or monthly routine doesn’t matter as much as having set a target routine and then stuck to it. You ought also to be able to track how that outreach has performed – particularly with digital media – and have a strong feeling for what material is of most interest based on their digital behaviour.

New target sectors. Businesses working to a plan would have started the year having identified a new or growing market sector and then diligently gone about building a profile of companies operating in that sector, and the decision makers within them. If all you did was come up with a wish list of target growth sectors and haven’t applied some discipline to bringing them closer to your reach, you haven’t been working to a plan.

Refreshed collateral. Every year is an opportunity to revisit everything from brochures to specialist collateral to standardised submission templates. Market trends change. If you’re using the same collateral as five years ago, you’re basically trying to compete selling an iPhone3 in an iPhone6 or Android world. Good luck with that. Working to a plan should mean a systematic rethink and rewrite of all your collateral is a routine task. 

Stronger networks. It’s embarrassing to say “Oh, I know so and so” only to have them ask your name when next you meet. Knowing someone in business through active, well informed networks is a huge advantage in business. You should be able to measure the growth of your personal networks not just by the numbers of people you have on Linkedin, but because you genuinely know there are more people who know you and your business well enough to both know your name but also to call you if an opportunity arises. 

Market insights. With your head down and bum up, you may be pumping out the work. But it’s also likely you may be falling behind the latest trends in your industry, or failing to keep up with market insights into who’s doing what, who are the up and comers, and other important industry insights. Your clients want to work with people ‘in the know’ who are up with the latest industry insights and trends. Working to a plan should also involve making time to keep yourself up to your date.

Thinking like a start up

We all fall into habits over time. Some good, some bad. Businesses are no different. One way to shed some of those habits - or at least identify them - is to imagine yourself as a start up.

There are many things that define start-ups. You might remember your own business in its very early days or be part of a start-up now. What defines start-ups is very different to what defines long established businesses because the longer you’ve been around, the more likely it is you’ve acquired a lot more overhead, process, staff, routine and documentation along the way.

You may be bigger, but you may also feel slower. Less nimble. You may feel less innovative, less connected to your customers, less involved in winning and delivering business. Your ability to listen to clients seems less effective and your ability to identify and then pounce on new opportunities is somehow more complicated.

Around you, new businesses pop up, with lower overheads and more agile management. They’re starting to ‘steal’ some of your clients. 

This is a common story, called free enterprise. Just because you’ve been around for 100 years means nothing these days: it didn’t mean much to the likes of Kodak, which went broke in 2012 after more than 100 years.  Likewise for RCA Victor, Pan Am, and many others. While some go broke others muddle on, mere shadows of their former selves.

Avoiding the trap of complacency and mediocrity in business is the subject of MBA Doctorates. But it does occur to me that if we could identify the qualities that helped a business succeed as a start-up, and re-apply them periodically, it might be a way to shed light on how some habits could be re-thought.

Imagine your team indulging in a session of ‘what would we do differently if we had to start over?’ I am betting plenty of hands would shoot up with suggestions, some of which might include:

We’d be taking more risks. Start-ups by nature have less to lose, so the whole venture is a high risk exercise. It’s a different way of thinking. How would that translate into an existing business?

We’d be much more hands on. Start-ups are ‘hands on’ by their owner/principals by necessity. There is no one else to consult, you just dive in and do it yourself. Is this quality worth re-visiting?

We’d be more decisive. Start-ups tend to make decisions quickly. Even rashly. Larger businesses can be much slower in the decision making process. Is lack of speed in decision making a handicap and if so, how do you address that?

We’d do things no-one else would. And you’d probably do them just because no one else would. Being bold, brash and cheeky are qualities that start-ups have that tend to infuriate ‘establishment’ brands.

Our values would be transparent. Start-ups are often closely aligned with the values driven by their founders/principals. This can clearly define their market position. Long established businesses sometimes lose this point of difference as the ‘corporate vanilla’ takes over. Large businesses can also have identifiable values: if yours could use some, how do you achieve that?

We’d be in cheaper space. The fancy office is a lovely thing to have, and if designed well, will add to productivity. But it is an overhead that start-ups do without.  Their market position is defined by the effort and sheer sweat of their owners, not by the business address or foyer fit-out. 

We’d get rid of HR. There are some large businesses I know that have never adopted the ‘HR department’ approach to personnel.  Some can’t live without it. But it does impose process and tends to blur lines of accountability. Are you top heavy with HR and is it a handbrake or an enabler?

We’d all be more involved in chasing and winning business. In start-ups, everyone’s arse is on the line, and it’s everyone’s job to be part of the new business effort. Larger organisations hire people like me to help them do what start-ups do themselves. How can you spread that new business load throughout your business so that more people are shouldering the effort rather than waiting to be fed?

None of this is intended as a catalogue of options but simply as a thought-provoker. It’s the sort of thing you can workshop in your own business if you’re starting to feel sluggish and are watching newcomers outmanoeuvre you for opportunities.

If you think it’s silly, that’s fine. But also think about people like Richard Branson, who seems somehow to have very cleverly maintained some of the values of a start up in what has become a very successful and very large global business with multiple interests from consumer finance to space travel. 

Virgin started as a small record label, with plenty of start-up attitude: attitude it’s kept alive for more than 40 years. Think about it?

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.