By M. Isi Eromosele
As economic conditions shift, so do clients’ perceptions of
value in the business consulting sector. Clients that have put projects on hold
are tentatively reaching out to services firms to re-start these initiatives.
Additionally, clients also feel a fresh openness to weighing
new options against their tried-and-true provider. When it comes to weighing
options, clients see a sector in flux.
Consolidation among large business consulting players has
clients considering whether their business would be better handled by the
biggest and best: global organizations that keep expanding to offer everything
they could possibly outsource.
On the other hand, clients see the emergence of boutique
players who are walking away from large players, taking years of experience
with them and offering great services faster and cheaper.
In Business Consulting, Branding Is Still Poorly Leveraged
And Understood
With business consulting firms competing more than ever for
client attention and loyalty, the expectation would be that professional service
leaders would be hard at work positioning their corporate brands to ensure
differentiation, relevance and credibility.
Incredibly, this is not the case. In business consulting,
the importance of brand often goes unrecognized. When it is acknowledged as a
component of the organization’s presence in the market, it tends to be
considered as a marketing expense, rather than a driver of value for the
company.
As a result, a brand’s ability to provide a competitive
advantage is minimal to non-existent. What’s so sad about this lack of
understanding among services firms is that branding has become a more powerful factor than ever in the
sector.
The perception that other drivers of choice (price,
services, experience and quality) are separate and untouched by branding is
based on outmoded thinking and the desire to keep on conducting business as
usual.
The fact is that effective branding drives value in business
consulting. In some categories of the consulting business, branding drives 30-40 percent of
client choice behavior. Unfortunately, few consulting services players know how much
influence their brand has on their clients’ buying behavior.
Build Powerful Business Consulting Brands Through People
For branding to be a driver of choice, two things need to
change. First, business consulting firms must rethink their
prejudices about branding their firms. In a world where even not-for-profit organizations
are reaping the benefit of innovative brand programs, the time has come for
business consulting firms to re-examine their outdated beliefs.
Second, business consulting firms must take advantage of the
high-touch, human centered nature of their sector. When services firms do
prioritize their brand, they often rely heavily on the application of mass
market branding techniques without sufficient thought to their relevance to
business consulting.
To break through via human relationships, internal brand
engagement will be an essential driver of success and a key component of the
firm’s branding model.
Why Is Branding So Poorly Understood In Business Consulting?
Some business consulting leaders may disagree with the
assertion that branding is not understood in their organizations. Some leaders
would assert that they have consistent visual and verbal expressions and
proudly boast high-quality advertising campaigns.
Yet, this is precisely the problem. Their efforts to make an
impression through a mass-media promise are only one component of a strong
brand strategy and more often than not, may not always have an impact on client
decision making.
Decision making is instead influenced by whether or not the
brand can deliver on their promise and drive business success.
In a sector so concerned about competitive pressures and
commoditization of services, business consulting firms almost universally use the brand
in a way that is opposite of its intent. Branding has become a tool to suggest similarities
rather than point out unique qualities and differences.
An analysis of their external communication and brand
experience reveal shockingly homogenized propositions: visually
undifferentiated, described with dense industry-specific terminology and
industry jargon and positioned with service offerings so similar that the descriptions of one firm could be interchanged for
those of another.
Understanding Requires Model Shift
Business consulting firms must shift their thinking when it
comes to understanding branding of their firms. There are three branding questions that
must be answered to foster understanding and leveraging of their brands:
Understanding Fosters Engagement
Any efforts to build a strong business consulting firm begin
with understanding:
- What brands and branding means?
- What opportunities a strong brand presents?
- Why it is relevant to everyone at an individual level?
By changing perceptions and shifting branding models, a firm
can begin to move from “thinking” to “doing.” That’s where internal brand
engagement comes in.
As branding models shift, employees will be open to seeing
their notions of the branding shift. For business consulting, branding has
often been limited to the promise: acquiring customers through communications
and marketing campaigns.
This narrow application fails to leverage the very best of
the firm, its people as well as its ability to prove the brand’s power to deliver on its
promises.
To Build Brand Value, Promise And Deliver
Engagement means involving employees in delivering a
specific, desired customer experience over and over again, via the touch points that
matter most.
Using internal brand engagement to improve the value of the
brand is a natural fit for business consulting, where high-touch relationships
are critical and the transition from thinking about reputation to thinking
about the larger brand experience can be smooth when done strategically and
comprehensively.
- A
strategic internal brand engagement program utilizes branding as a
strategic tool to achieve specific, long-term goals. It requires
involvement from the leadership to the most junior positions and includes
learning experiences with specific objectives and outcomes.
- A comprehensive internal brand engagement program means that every function in the services firm must play a role in delivering on what the brand promises. This takes branding out of the sales and acquisition role (closely tied to marketing) and puts it in everyone’s hands, including human resources, who have a uniquely crucial role in attracting the talent necessary to make the brand experience second to none.
M. Isi Eromosele is
the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme
Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance
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2012 Oseme Group
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