Where
Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Marketing
Memo, June, 2004)
A recent
Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibit featured Paul Gauguin's colorful
Tahitian paintings. His enigmatic Where Do We Come From? What Are
We? Where Are We Going? (1897-8) poses questions that all businesses
should periodically ask. If you are unfamiliar with your origins and
destination, how will you be able to get to your destination? How will
you be able to communicate to customers and vendors what you are all
about?
You may
use the web and other online sources to identify prospects and vendors.
Using these sources, you often don't know "what business they are in."
Information found in electronic databases and in traditional directories
is often vague and inconsistent with information from web sites, which
themselves may have multiple contributors providing conflicting information.
WHY
BUSINESS DESCRIPTIONS ARE OFTEN INADEQUATE
Changing
Conditions: To keep up with changing business conditions and changing
customer needs and preferences, companies must evolve. Once, IBM "pumped
iron." In the eighties it focused on software. Now, IBM is building
up its consulting and financing services.
Complexity:
High tech products and services are hard to describe and hard to understand,
tempting people to resort to jargon, which baffles people outside the
industry.
Multiple
Offerings: Most companies provide too many products and services
to summarize in the proverbial one-minute elevator speech.
Perspective:
Like the blind men with the elephant, your staff just know about the
parts of your business that touch them. Which products or services are
included in descriptions reflect this phenomenon. Business descriptions
are a reflection of the department that creates them.
CREATING
EFFECTIVE BUSINESS DESCRIPTIONS
Like old
photos, old business descriptions merely capture the past. Therefore,
you should:
- Periodically
apply Gauguin's three questions to your business.
- Develop
an accurate and jargon-free two- or three-line company description.
- Include
the business description in sales and marketing material.
- Embed
the description in a one-page company FAQ sheet. Ask employees to
keep the FAQ sheet and the company description nearby so that even
temps can answer simple questions about the business. Callers will
get a better impression of your company.
- Decide
which description and which SIC or NAIC codes to use, and make one
person responsible for putting company descriptions in databases and
directories. People will not find you if someone put you in the wrong
basket because they were unfamiliar with what your company does.
Winett
Associates provides market research and writing services and helps companies
identify business partners and acquisition targets.
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