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.
Copyright Control ? 2012 Oseme Group
Source: http://osemecreate.blogspot.com/2012/07/understanding-branding-in-business.html
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