Management Consulting News

Consultants' Forum: Imprinting Your Brand on Your Client's Mind, by Karin Schaff

With all our emphasis on building long-term client relationships, it seems natural to ask whether or not the effort really pays off. I'm a loyal customer of my dry cleaner, grocery store and bank, mostly because it's too painful to switch to someone else.

To find out, we asked Andrew Sobel and Harry Beckwith, two thought leaders on client relationships, for their two cents. Both authors have published new books on the subject that all consultants should add to their libraries.

In their classic marketing book, Positioning, Al Ries and Jack Trout tell us, "Today's marketplace is no longer responsive to the strategies that worked in the past. There are just too many products, too many companies and too much marketing noise."

Marketing strategist, Karin Schaff, suggests a way to break through the marketing noise in her article on building brand continuity.

Whether you are a new or a continuing subscriber, you should visit the web site and look at our library of books, past MasterMind interviews and articles. The library has grown so much that we had to add a new wing! As always, if you have comments, send them along to me.

"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt." -Henry J. Kaiser, American Industrialist

He has been featured in a variety of national media, including USA Today, Investors Business Daily and Consultants News, and he has appeared on a number of national radio and TV programs, such as ABC's World News this Morning and CNN-fn's For Entrepreneurs Only.

Sobel was a senior vice president and managing director for one of the world's largest management consulting firms. He has spent twenty-two years advising senior executives in thirty countries.

MCNews: In today's market, some people say that client loyalty is a myth. Do you agree?

Sobel: I don't think client loyalty is a myth, even in this tough market. The reality is that many clients are working with consultants to whom they are extremely loyal. In fact, I believe there is a client loyalty formula, which my new book describes in detail.

To understand what drives client loyalty, you have to look at why some clients, even in a very competitive market, continue to be loyal to their best consultants. In my research, I interviewed corporate executives and CEO's to find out what characterizes the consultants they stick with through thick and thin, and why.

What I learned is that client loyalty boils down to three basic factors: first of all clients in this market are loyal to people who continue to add tangible value; second, they are loyal to the people with whom they have built trust; and, finally, they are loyal to the consultants who go the extra mile for them, who really care about them as clients.

Sobel: In terms of adding value, you have to go beyond the core value of the contract, beyond what the client contracts with you, the consultant, to deliver. That core value could be cost reduction, a new marketing strategy or re-engineering the supply chain, for example.

But, there is something more that I call surprise value. Client loyalty increases when you add value in ways that clients don't expect, when you make them aware of problems and issues that perhaps they didn't even know they had. So maybe you are hired to do a cost reduction project, but you end up making some insightful recommendations about organizational structure. You see the big picture and keep your eyes and ears open. You bring clients surprise value and they say, wow, that was really helpful.

Sobel: Some consultants don't deliver much surprise value because they are content to do what Tom Peters calls a thoroughly professional job, but no more. To me that shows a lack of creativity--the client has hired us to do X, and we are going to do it. I also think that a lot of consultants don't provide surprise value because they are, in my terminology, the classic expert for hire, rather than a client advisor; they hew too narrowly to their specialist expertise.

Clearly, you've got to stick to what the client hired you to do. You don't go in there and say well I am here to do everything. But there's a value mindset: I am hired to help my client reorganize and I am going to do a great job at that, but my overall outlook is, how can I help this client in whatever way possible?

Sobel: Yes. Consultants should add personal value. Every client who works with a consultant has a personal agenda. I don't mean that in a Machiavellian sense, but clients have hopes, goals and fears, and we need to understand their agenda.

For example, a client may want to learn some specific methodology from your firm, or have you come in for a day and showcase some best practices. Another client may have a relative who is interested in going to your alma mater, so you agree to lunch and do some college counseling.

Some clients like to feel important. When they call your office, they want to be recognized by your support staff. This might seem trivial to you, but it might be important to a client. I think we always have to look at the personal goals, ambitions and hopes of our individual clients because we may be able to provide them with that personal value.

The total package of value goes way beyond whatever contract you sign with clients. When clients look back at consultants they have worked with, they won't necessarily be able to articulate it terms of added surprise value. But they might say, not only did you do a great job at cost reduction you also really helped us think though implementation.

We glibly talk about value added and exceeding expectations, but to drive client loyalty, you need to break down and understand the specific value that clients derive from working with you.

Sobel: In interviews I did for the book, I noticed a shift in tone compared to three or four years earlier when I was working on Clients for Life. Many corporate executives I interviewed said trust is paramount, and that they felt let down, disappointed by the false promises and claims about products and services in the late 1990's.

People feel uneasy about all the corporate scandals, which involved not just corporations but service providers, accounting and consulting firms. They are concerned that professionals may not be representing themselves properly.

Executives have been telling me they only want to deal with outside professionals, including management consultants, who adhere to the highest ethical standards, who have the highest level of integrity.

So clients want to work with professionals who represent their capabilities honestly. They also want you to care about their work and their organizations. Trust has always been incredibly important, but I think it's even more important in the current climate of uncertainty.

MCNews: One thing that can increase clients' trust is to reduce their risk in working with you. Any advice for how consultants can reduce a client's risk without sacrificing profitability?

Sobel: Think creatively about reducing a client's uncertainty about working with you. One simple thing is over-investing upfront in face time with a client. Instead of the usual--they call you and ask for a proposal, you go to a meeting, write the proposal and send it to them--invest in more meetings and more face time, because familiarity breeds trust.

Secondly, use flexibility in structuring projects and pricing. I don't recommend discounting as a strategy, but be flexible. For example, take a large project and break it down into pieces with checkpoints for each piece.

Another way of reducing a client's risk is through references and testimonials. Sophisticated clients often do a good job of checking references, but the more references and testimonials you can give a client the better.

I frequently ask clients for testimonial letters, just a couple of sentences talking about the work I did with them, whether it was a workshop, a speech or a consulting assignment. I'll ask if they mind if I share these with a perspective client, and they say sure. Sometimes I'll get an inquiry from a company and maybe they're not sure about taking the next step. I'll email them scanned copies of a couple of letters and say here are some testimonials from clients in your industry that I worked with in the last year.

MCNews: You said that client loyalty improves when the consultant goes the extra mile. Can you give some examples?

Sobel: For one client, going the extra mile could be the fact that you returned from your vacation a day early to attend a critical meeting; or the client might know that you and your team worked all weekend to get something out for a board meeting; it could mean that they know you put in some extra work and you didn't come back to them with the usual change order. The extra mile is the client's perception that when the chips are down, when I really need these people, they will be there for me.

We can teach people how to add value and about the mechanics of building trust, but no one can teach us to really care about clients, to be willing to go the extra mile for them. That's a mindset, almost an emotion, and it's really important to clients. Going back again to the late 1990's, there was so much demand for professional services that people were turning down clients left and right. I know consulting firms, PR firms and law firms that were starting to treat clients very offhandedly. That attitude is coming back to haunt us. We aren't sitting at the fax machine waiting for the orders to come in these days.

MCNews: Changing to another subject, do you think consulting relationships pass through stages?

Sobel: Yes, I think they do. In the book, I talk about four stages for consultants to assess where they are with clients. I call stage one breaking through with a client: The client has a problem and views you as an expert who can fix it; you have anywhere from three weeks to six months to prove yourself. You have to ask yourself what you need to accomplish in that proving period for clients to pull you into their trusted inner circle of advisors. Obviously, the core of breaking through is that you've got to do great quality work on the specific task they have asked you to address. But, to me, that just gets you in the game.

Sobel: Sure. A classic way is to reframe their issues. The client says I've got an organizational problem and, after analyzing the situation, you say no, you've got a strategy problem, or the way you have defined the issue isn't the most productive way to think about it.

Speed is another way you can break through, speed and responsiveness. Move faster, get it done faster than the client had imagined was possible.

Creating an emotional bond with the client is also important to break through. Instead of having that arms-length-expert-for-hire relationship, really connect with the client using your powers of empathy. I have had consultants tell me that a relationship with a client didn't really start until they had their first big argument. You've got to make an emotional connection with the client. Otherwise, you are just a vendor.

Providing unique information is another way of breaking through. That could be information about the market that the client hasn't seen before, or it could be information from your proprietary database. You might know some key players in the industry and are able to provide intelligence to your client.

So in the early stages of a relationship, you demonstrate that you will do more than just perform on the deliverables and add the core value.

Sobel: You want to move from being a steady supplier--doing one project at a time--to become part of the inner circle. Just because clients give you projects doesn't mean they actually care that much about you or that you are privy to their innermost thoughts and issues. You can go along for years in a steady supplier relationship. The margins might be good and it keeps people employed, but there isn't a lot of soul to it because you're not really connecting at a high level with clients.

To grow a relationship from being just a steady supplier to something more, you need to get smart about networking with buyers in the organization, as opposed to just investing time on the project itself. Once you are working with a client, you have a great opportunity to get to know those other buyers.

You have to look for ways to help your clients with additional, broader issues. So the goal is to grow relationships, as opposed to being complacent and just being fed projects, which many consultants seem happy to do.

MCNews: Once you've established strong client connections, what's the next challenge?

Sobel: The next challenge is to keep relationships alive over multiple years. There is a complex stage of a relationship that I call sustaining, and it applies equally to past and current clients.

A famous Jesuit priest in the 1600's named Baltasar Gracian used the phrase brand-new mediocrities, which fits the situation some consultants face. Gracian said that it's human nature to crave variety. Sometimes when people get to know you too well, they get tired of you and become open to brand-new mediocrities--others who aren't as good as you, but seem newer.

I have a simple rule to head off the problem of brand-new mediocrities: you have to treat every old client like a brand new client; you must go to even the 100th meeting with a client with the same enthusiasm, the same freshness and creativity that you had for the first meeting. When you were wooing the client, you were at your best. If the client senses 100 meetings later that you are getting complacent, that you're not coming up with many new ideas, that client may be more open to replacing you with someone else.

MCNews: Many consultants struggle to keep up with former clients because they're so busy serving current ones. How can consultants stay on their former clients' radar screens?

Sobel: Consultants tell me that staying on the radar is one of the hardest things for them to do because the day-to-day pressure of delivering on current work is so high now that to make time for the letters, calls and visits is very difficult.

McKinsey & Company consultants understood this issue decades ago. They were among the first consultants to really focus on sustaining relationships, getting out there every three to six months, having dinner with past clients and staying on the radar screen.

A client might have worked with you five years ago and really liked what you did. But when a new problem arises, if he hasn't talked to you in five years, it's human nature for him to pick up the phone and call the guy he had lunch with three months ago.

I recommend that you make a core list of the relationships you want to sustain over time. The number will be different for each consultant, but maybe it's ten, twenty or fifty core people that you talk to, visit or send articles and books to once or twice a year.

Then you have your non-core group, which might be 100 or even 1000 people, and maybe you send a Christmas card or your newsletter to those people. All that is part of sustaining relationships.

Sobel: The fourth, or final, phase is what I call multiplying, which is about how you get your best clients to help you grow your business and to expand your ideas and influence. Multiplying involves some simple things like asking for referrals and introductions, being proactive. A lot of us are very shy about doing that.

I think we are afraid that we are going to ask a client and they are going to look at us and say what are you crazy? As an example, I worked with one consulting firm that decided to initiate my suggestion to call past clients. I said if all fifty of you each call five past clients that's 250 phone calls, and who knows what might come of it. They said, yeah, that's a good idea. When I checked back six weeks later, nobody had made one call!

So we had another workshop and I said let's pour our hearts out--why hasn't anyone made a call? We wrote up all the reasons on a flip chart: I don't know what to say; people are going to hang up me; people will think I'm trying to sell them something; it's going to be awkward; why would they want to talk to me?

After some role-playing, people realized it wasn't so bad and they starting making those calls. And, they brought in a bunch of new business. You may get a brush-off from ninety-nine people you call, but all you need is one person who says yeah we could use your help for the effort to pay off.

Sobel: I'm usually reading about five books at once. One is Aligning the Stars by Jay Lorsch and Tom Tierney. It's about how you motivate people in professional services. Another interesting book I've been reading is a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Visit Andrew Sobel at www.AndrewSobel.com to learn more about his books and check out his free newsletter, Client Loyalty, and other services.

New technologies seem to burst from the lab into the marketplace so quickly these days that it's easier than ever to get caught off guard by innovations that impact your clients and your practice. To stay a step ahead, the best consultants keep one eye on the present and the other on the future.

So, when people at MIT talk about what's on the horizon, my ears perk up. In the February 2003 issue of MIT's Technology Review, editors highlight ten emerging technologies, and the people behind them, that will fundamentally change the world in a few short years. It's no surprise, but there are some exhilarating new possibilities just around the corner.

Meet the MasterMinds: Harry Beckwith and What Clients Love

Harry Beckwith is recognized for his marketing expertise and as a speaker and teacher on marketing and customer relationships. Author of the Business Week bestseller Selling the Invisible and The Invisible Touch, Beckwith is the founder and director of Beckwith Partners, a positioning and branding firm whose clients include Microsoft, Merck and Hewlett Packard.

His latest book is What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Business. MCNews asked Beckwith for some practical advice on how consultants can give clients what they love.

MCNews: Today's clients and prospects are saturated with information and choices for everything, including consultants and other service providers. Any advice on how a consultant can counter the impact of this trend?

Beckwith: Communicate more succinctly. To do that, edit and reedit everything that you write, aiming to reduce the length fifty percent with the first edit and at least twenty-five percent the second. This will force you to distill your message to its essence and eliminate unneeded words that only confuse your message. Succinct copy also holds more energy and force; it sounds more confident, more assured, and more persuasive.

Succinct copy also is clearer, and exhaustive study has shown that the most persuasive evidence of people's expertise is the clarity with which they communicate. In trials, for example, the jury will give far more weight to the expert who communicates most clearly than to the one with the more impressive vitae. Clarity marks the expert.

Second, communicate more vividly. Red-pencil every cliché; clichés signal to a reader that you are writing without thinking, and that your ideas are not thought-out and original. No one trusts or even hears "our firm's commitment to excellence," not least of all because that cliché raises the question: As opposed to your commitment to what? Competence?

The vivid, succinct, and clear communicators are winning more often. Every firm and individual should do something concrete--take classes, read better writing, or ideally both--to enhance communications skills.

MCNews: Client loyalty has become a rallying cry for many consultants. In today's market, is client loyalty a myth? If not, any tips on how a consultant can enhance client loyalty?

Beckwith: Client loyalty is only a myth for those companies who fail to recognize its power or fail to strive to earn and keep it. Lowry Hill, the wealth management division of Wells Fargo, has intensely devoted clients. So do Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons Hotels, the Mark Hotel in New York, and Campiello's restaurant in Minneapolis. They earn it my connecting powerfully and personally with their clients--and by making them feel important.

How to enhance loyalty? Some ways are very simple and tactical: Return phones calls in near real-time; nothing matters more to a client. Law firm clients, for example, when asked, "What most influences your decision to hire a law firm or continue working with your current one?" rank fees sixth, technical competence fifth, and the speed with which they return phone calls second.

Listen with your entire body.

Remember their children's names, ages, and brief histories.

Make occasional sacrifices; go out of your way to demonstrate their importance to you.

Make sure they are greeted warmly every time they call on the phone or enter your office. If they aren't, find a new receptionist fast. I've seen two receptionists cost their firms $13 million. Thirteen million.

MCNews: Consultants debate the value of a being a specialist vs. a generalist. As you look at the market for consulting services, are clients looking for specialists, generalists or some of both?

Beckwith: General rules are always dangerous, of course, because we live life specifically. With that in mind, however, specialists have an overwhelming advantage. It's only offset for those clients who want the convenience and comfort of one-stop shopping with one firm.

A smaller firm should specialize, because smaller firms are not credible as generalists; instead, they look like people who are spread too thin, or who are trying to be all things to all people. But a Jack-of-all-Trades still is seen as a master of none--and clients want to work with masters.

MCNews: In your opinion, what is the best use of the Internet for a consulting practice?

Beckwith: The best use is as an impressive and very useful, very accessible, and very professional electronic brochure, and secondly, as an alternative means of communicating with the firm or its principals. As an advertising medium, it is effective only if your web site is exceptional and easy to navigate; if it is less than that, your web presence actually will damage a firm long-term.

MCNews: Many consultants struggle to find a balance between marketing their services to existing clients and working to bring in new clients. Do you have any ideas on how to strike the right balance?

Beckwith: The best time to market is when you do not need business; the other best time is when you do. You cannot assume that building a better mousetrap or simply serving clients well will necessarily generate more business--for a variety of reasons, word-of-mouth has declined in volume and effectiveness.

A consultancy needs a brand. Your firm needs to be familiar to its market, and well regarded for something--anything. To do that, you need advertising or public relations or, ideally, both.

Consultants also should find vehicles for demonstrating their mastery, by regularly publishing in credible vehicles that reach their targets. In 1988, I wrote an article on legal marketing in a relatively small regional legal publication that eventually generated over $1 million in revenue. In 1995, I wrote an article on service marketing for a regional business publication, which became Selling the Invisible, and changed everything for me. Now, just seven years later, you can find references to that article's author as "the world's leading expert on services marketing," and articles in Canadian newspapers referring to "Harry Beckwith, the leading international branding expert."

As my friend J would say: "Yikes."

The balance may best be expressed in this way: Spend eighty percent of your effort on serving your clients, and serving them better. Spend the other eighty percent reaching out to the market.

There is no better advice than something I read and have never forgotten: "Half efforts do not produce half-results; they produce no results. Work--hard work, continuous work, passionate work--is the only to way to produce results that last."

MCNews: What do you think is the most common area in consulting practices that needs improvement?

Beckwith: Consultants must first recognize that they are selling a relationship rather than competence and advice. You must win the person to win the business, and you must keep winning the person to keep the business.

MCNews: What's on your reading list these days?

Beckwith: A favorite question. Here goes: Foremost are The New Yorker and The New York Times; they're always my first priorities. On the bed stand: From Dawn To Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, by Jacques Barzun--returns me to my college studies in history, with a strong emphasis on intellectual and cultural history.

DreamBirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food and Fortune--because I read everything that the experts at Powell's Bookstore in the Portland, Oregon airport recommend.

I did recently finish Good to Great, by Jim Collins, and was very gratified to learn that he, using exhaustive research and a horde of assistants, reached almost identical conclusions to mine in What Clients Love.

On my bed stand you'd also notice the DVD for the Fleetwood Mac The Dance concert, which regularly finds its way into the DVD, and two CDs, one Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and the other a compilation disc that I burned, with Springsteen, Marvin Gaye, the Spinners, Young Radicals, Paul Brady, Everything but the Girl and others.

MCNews: Thanks for some great tips.

Find out more about Harry Beckwith, his books and services at www.beckwithpartners.com.

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Test Yourself: Are You a Trusted Leader?

A MCNews subscriber alerted me to an intriguing new book, The Trusted Leader, by Rob Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau. The book zeros in on what leaders can do to build, maintain and repair trust among people across their organizations. If you pick up the February 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review, you'll find the authors' article, "The Enemies of Trust," which is adapted from the book.

The web site for the book includes a clever self-assessment tool you can use to become (or remain) a Trusted Leader. Some of the questions may seem, at first blush, to have a "right" answer, but don't be fooled. Many of the questions are intended to make you reflect, or to encourage you to hear the views of others who can provide an objective response.

The test, which takes only a few minutes to complete, has twenty multiple-choice questions grouped into four sections. Find out more here: http://www.thetrustedleader.com/test.html.

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Consultants' Forum: Imprinting Your Brand on Your Client's Mind
By Karin K. Schaff

Warning: when you're developing marketing, sales, and communications materials, red flags should waive if you hear these statements:

The truth is, you can do all of these things, and some companies do. But following these suggestions won't boost your brand awareness. In fact, they could make it worse! If you want your clients to know you and your firm, the real solution is to build brand continuity and consistency in your materials.

Your brand is the personal, emotional tie between you and your clients. Your brand is more than just a logo--it's the sum of your advertising, customer service, product and service development, and every other aspect of your business that touches the client.

Why is brand design consistency across all of your programs and materials so important? Because your logo is your firm's face to the marketplace; it provides the visual foundation and strategy from which all your materials should be designed. When you constantly tweak or reinvent your brand to make it "match" certain environments, you weaken your logo's familiarity among your clients. When you change the design of your logo each time, you're breaking the visual relationship you've created with that client. You're forcing clients to "re-engage" or be "re-introduced" to your practice each time.

In fact, making even simple changes to your logo design not only confuses your clients, it can also jeopardize your brand's value and long-term equity. All marketing and communication materials need to have synergy to ensure that your firm's message stands out and is noticed. Through consistency strategies, brands like AOL and GE have become household names--and they've created brand loyalty and solid equity.

Think of all the advertising "noise" out there. Consumers and businesses are bombarded with visual, textual, and auditory messages hundreds of times a day. To break through, you have to build a synergistic theme throughout all of your marketing and sales materials and communication channels. This is critical because it will ensure that your audience knows who you are, what you have to offer, and the value you bring to them time and time again. This builds brand awareness, recognition, and ultimately, long-term loyalty and brand preference.

There are many benefits to achieving brand continuity. You'll create new programs and materials more quickly and easily, and they'll result in a higher return on your precious marketing investment. Here are some quick questions to help you assess your brand's continuity:

1. Are your logo's color, size, and font style consistent throughout all company materials? Do you have a brand standards guide to ensure everyone knows the "dos and don'ts" for using your logo in different environments both offline and online?

2. If your logo needs to be manipulated to fit into a specific design, is it clear how the logo can be changed? Does the designer make changes based only on the project's needs--or for the good of your brand?

3. In your print advertising campaign, do you have a consistent design template with the logo and general contact information (phone, fax, Web URL, etc.) in the same location?

4. Do you have a consistent call-to-action throughout your marketing materials? If so, what is it, and is it stated the same way throughout all your materials?

5. If you put all your marketing and sales materials out on your desk, do they all look similar, like they're from the same firm? Or do they look as if several firms were sending them?

6. Are what you do and offer immediately clear by just looking at your logo and tagline?

7. What ties all of your materials together: the font style, colors, layout, messaging (text), logo placement, logo structure, etc.? What is the main synergy thread that ties them together? Is that thread strong enough to support your brand continuity?

8. Do you have your logo on all materials used internally and externally? Showcasing your logo to your internal as well as your external audience is key to maintaining and strengthening 'brand pride' from the inside out.

One trap that some firms fall into is "mini-branding" or "sub-branding"--they create new logos and looks for each new service. It's in your best interest to keep your branding consistent across your products and services, and not create "dueling logos" in your materials. And unless you have an unlimited marketing budget that allows you to promote each sub-brand, you're going to be much further ahead financially to do straightforward promotion that strengthens your existing brand.

Your entire company is your brand, not just a product or specific service. As Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Chinese New Year is celebrated from February 1 until the Lantern Festival on the 15th. In the ancient Chinese calendar, this is the year 4701, designated as the Year of the Ram, seeker of peace and tranquility.

The 127th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is February 10-11 in New York. This Super Bowl of the dog world has 2500 dogs entered. That's a lot of kibble! Check out the details at www.westminsterkennelclub.org.

February 14 is Ferris Wheel Day in honor of George Washington Gale Ferris, who was born on this day in 1859. Ferris was an American engineer, best remembered for inventing the Ferris Wheel, which he developed for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago. It was America's answer to the Eiffel Tower of the Paris International Exposition of 1889. http://www.thezephyr.com/archives/bigwheel.htm

In the March 2003 edition of MCNews, we'll bring you an interview with Ford Harding, author of Rain Making and Creating Rain Makers. Harding's newest book, Cross-Selling Success, has just hit the bookstores, and it's another classic in the making. We will talk to Harding about the strategies and challenges of growing a practice by cross-selling services to your clients.

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." - Winston Churchill

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