Your story, well told

Your story, well how to…

Eila Madden and Sam Russell reveal how to build a winning corporate narrative that will make you stand out from the crowd.

T

hese are challenging times for professional services firms. Since the 2008 recession, they have witnessed dramatic changes in their sector. Merger activity is on the increase, new entrants are creating greater competition and there’s an oversupply of services. Not only that, firms are grappling with new regulatory changes and, to top it all off, clients are demanding greater value for money. This overwhelming pace of change is set to continue.

How different life is from the prefinancial-crisis world when, for most professional services firms, worked flowed in from all angles. Now, as firms jostle for position in this new, more competitive era, they need to redouble their efforts to persuade existing and potential clients to pick them. Claiming to be the ‘biggest and the best’ will no longer cut it; they must develop a true point of difference. Easier said than done.

Corporate narratives – firms’ stories about what they do, why they matter and what makes them different – may seem like an unnecessary distraction in the pursuit of new business, but nothing could be further from the truth. Telling your firm’s story, and telling it well, is crucial to getting your foot in the pitchroom door – and winning.

The absence of strong corporate narratives in professional services has been noted. In a profile of the business development function in the legal sector, trade title Legal Week pointed out that, “Historically, law firms have been terrible at making themselves stand out, instead churning out indistinguishable messages”.

The magazine quoted one business development professional as saying: “If you covered up the branding on a law firm’s website, you would struggle to see the difference between them, such are the

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similarities between what they promise to offer clients and the way they package their services.”

So how do you construct a corporate narrative that is true to your firm and really says something distinctive about your services? And, once you craft that narrative, how do you ensure that it’s told consistently across everything your firm does?

The task is by no means easy. The biggest challenge will be getting your partners, collectively and individually the voice of the firm, aligned. This means agreeing to the need for a corporate narrative, getting involved in constructing it and, more importantly, delivering it. For your audiences to be persuaded by your story, your partners will need to live it. Their involvement in the following journey – of discovery, definition, expression and deployment – is essential to building an enduring narrative that truly reflects who you are.

1 Discover

Most firms’ narratives are hiding deep within their organisations. The tough bit is uncovering them and learning how to bring them to life.

To discover your story, speak to a wide range of fee-earners and support staff across the firm. The importance of a representative group of interviewees can’t be stressed enough. If you’re going to tell your story successfully, everyone has to believe it and buy into it. Without that cross-firm support, you will sound incoherent and inconsistent to the outside world.

Undoubtedly some colleagues will be inherently cynical about phrases like ‘brand storytelling’ and ‘developing a narrative’. It’s here that working with journalists – the ultimate professional storytellers – can help to tease a coherent story from these sceptics.

More and more journalists are joining in-house marketing teams and communi-

told cations and branding agencies, according to online journal Contently. They have the “authority to be objective” when going into a company, says Forbes, and can use their experience to identify the people they need to interview in order to develop a strong narrative.

Just as important is to speak with clients and other external partners to understand how the outside world views your firm. You might find that they can give you insight that you never would have obtained on the inside.

Ask every interviewee a range of questions focusing on five key areas: your services, your reach, your clients, your approach and your people. These are the ‘who, what, where and how’ questions, the answers to which will form the bedrock of your narrative.

These conversations will give you four things: 1 A clear picture of your firm as it stands today 2 A clear vision of where the firm should go 3 An expression of the firm’s culture 4 Points of agreement and disagreement.

Points of agreement are great; points of disagreement will need work. Do you want to be an international firm with offices in key locations, or become known as a European leader? Do you want to be a niche or full-service provider?

Whatever your areas of disagreement may be, talk through them at this early stage and come to a decision so that you get your story straight before you take it to the outside world.

2 Define, refine and align

The discovery phase will present you with a lot of information. Now you need to mine that information to define your core proposition.

how to…

This article originally appeared in professional marketing magazine. For further details go to www.pmforumglobal.com

Use what you found in the discovery phase to describe your offering in each area. Put another way, describe what you do, where you do it, who you do it for, how you do it and who delivers it.

For each area, focus on answering three questions:

• Promise. What can you promise that nobody else can promise? Dig deep for this. Is it something about your heritage, your approach or even your insight? This is what will differentiate you.

• Proof. What can you deliver that nobody else can deliver? This relates directly to your unique promise and will provide evidence of that promise in action.

• Point of view. What do you believe about each key area that only you believe? This will become your thought leadership.

Your point of view is a crucial element of your narrative. According to a recent article in The Economist, “The only way to prevent your products from being commoditised or your markets from being disrupted is to think further ahead than your competitors”.

How you create your thought leadership needs its own thought, too. The Economist reckons the only way to become a real thought leader is to listen to a few great thinkers. “Peter Drucker remained top dog among management gurus for 50 years not because he attended more conferences,” the magazine says, “but because he marinated his mind in great books: for example, he wrote about business alliances with reference to marriage alliances in Jane Austen.”

But back to the task in hand. The descriptions of your offerings will express how you wish to be perceived and what

Telling your story online

Think beyond your website Too often, a firm builds a website and leaves it at that, missing out on the opportunities that the rest of the internet offers. Could you benefit from a regular blog? What about a LinkedIn group? Inbound-marketing association CMA found that firms that blogged more than 15 times a month saw five times more enquiries than those that didn’t blog at all.

Create content Have you ever visited a firm’s blog or Twitter feed to discover that they last posted over a year ago? Has something gone wrong? Have they fired the marketing intern, or have they just lost interest in how they appear to the outside world? If you are going to take the plunge with blogging or social media, you need to stick with it. After all, if you can’t be bothered to tell your brand story, your audience is unlikely to want to listen. Developing a content calendar – a schedule of articles to be published throughout the year – will allow you to regularly provide readers with new content.

Make things consistent From your firm’s website to your YouTube channel, every aspect of your online presence should have the same look and feel. If you describe yourself on your website as a ‘forward-thinking firm with a passion for innovation’, make sure that that term is also found on your Twitter feed. The same goes for your logo: nothing suggests an unloved brand story more than inconsistent branding.

Bring others on board Whether through lack of time or resources, a firm’s online presence can become the sole responsibility of the marketing team or web manager. Encourage contributions from the rest of the firm to show off the breadth and depth of your expertise. Share regular updates about your online activity with the rest of the firm. pm | Winter 2014

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how to… you want to be known for. This is an expression of your core proposition or, in other words, your corporate narrative.

Test these statements with colleagues who you originally interviewed and refine them as necessary.

Repeat this exercise as if you are talking to each of your audiences: partners, clients, employees, the media and others. This process will produce a series of ‘message banks’ that, while nuanced for each recipient, should share a common thread.

Four steps to building a successful corporate narrative

Discover Search far and wide and speak to colleagues across the firm. By speaking to everyone, from feeearners to support staff, you will establish a corporate narrative that everyone can get behind.

Define, refine and align This information will help you to find your core proposition. Use what you find to describe what you do, where you do it, who you do it for, how you do it and who delivers it. Once you have these answers, test and refine your messages with colleagues to ensure that they really say something about your firm.

Express Now that you have a core narrative, think about how you’re going to express it – and who you’re going to express it to. Think about the most effective channels for your narrative – whether that’s Twitter or an industry conference.

Deploy Get your narrative out there. Ensure that every aspect of your communications is helping to promote this narrative. See how your message is working through through digital tools and perception tracking.

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3 Express

Now that you’ve constructed a corporate narrative, you need to think about how you’re going to express it.

Which audiences do you want to tell your story to, and what are the best ways of reaching them? If potential clients are a target audience, you’re likely to reach them through a range of channels: your Twitter feed, your website and at industry events. How will you express your narrative in each of these channels? Telling your story in 140 characters will be different from chatting to a potential client about what makes your firm different during the coffee break at an industry conference.

Identify the many touchpoints you will have with your target audiences and design a toolkit that contains examples of your story expressed verbally and visually across all possible channels, including tender documents, client newsletters and presentation decks. The toolkit will help your people tell a consistent story to your stakeholders, no matter how they reach them.

4 Deploy

Once you have cross-firm agreement on how to express your corporate narrative and a comprehensive toolkit in place, it’s time to start telling that story to the outside world. It should be the foundation of every piece of content that you create, from your company film to your annual review to the speech that your managing partner gives at the next big industry event.

A planned campaign of deployment will be more effective than a scattergun approach. Think about building your rollout around three phases: raising awareness, building engagement and, ultimately, turning your stakeholders into advocates for your firm.

Turning engaged stakeholders into advocates for your firm is often the toughest transition to make. We’ve all heard countless CEOs describe their people as their greatest assets. It may be a terrible cliché, but your people are your greatest advocates. Tell your story internally first and let your people take it to their own contacts and networks. It will sound more authentic coming from individuals at the coalface rather than a behind-the-scenes marketing team – especially as they will tell it in their own voice and style.

Although behind the scenes, marketing teams have an important role to play in coaching people to tell the story coherently, consistently and in a

compelling way. And there are plenty of channels through which marketing teams can express your story directly: the intranet and website, social media platforms and press briefings, to name a few.

The look and feel of your firm should express your corporate narrative, too. If what makes you different is your long years of experience or your unrivalled expertise in the evolving technology industry, a client should sense those differences from the moment they walk into your foyer. The interior design, your logo, the design of your business cards – everything should reflect your personality, and what sets you apart.

Successful deployment, however, isn’t the end of the journey. You need to make sure that your narrative is helping to win you work. Digital tracking tools will help you to assess how well your audiences are engaging with you. How much time are people spending on your website, for instance; or how many people are downloading your thought leadership white papers?

Perception tracking will give you a more accurate idea of how well your story is resonating with your key audiences.

Regular surveys with those audiences will help you to build a picture of how perceptions of your firm are shifting as you deploy your corporate narrative.

Feedback you receive from perception tracking will help you to constantly refine your story In time, in every interaction your key audiences have with your firm, they should hear your narrative in a way that resonates with them personally, helping you to stand out in an increasingly competitive and crowded professional services market.

Businesses have been quick to realise the value of telling their stories to the outside world. Consumer brands used to tell us how wonderful their products were. Now, they tell us about their heritage, how they came into being and what their founder wore to work. While they might not be Jack Daniels or Mr Kipling, it is time for professional services firms to follow suit.

Eila Madden is Group Editor and Sam Russell is Writer at Bladonmore. Contact: eila.madden@bladonmore.com or visit www.bladonmore.com