Educating for a High-Involvement Sale
by Paul Travis, Interim Management Executive
The challenge kept coming up in internal discussion: Our interim management value proposition is powerful but not self-evident, so how do we communicate the bigger story? Reflecting on my branding study with an anthropology professor at the Harvard Business School, I saw the opportunity to use a book rather than another brochure or white paper.
[What does one think of the contents of the bag one leaves a trade show with? Propaganda. In contrast, what do we think a library is filled with? Information.]
So a few of the principals at OneAccord LLC collaborated on a book aimed at Presidents, COO’s, CEO’s, and outside Directors of emerging and mid-market companies. Our nationwide firm positions itself as a ‘Catalyst for Revenue Growth’ providing interim executive talent in the sales and marketing realm.
Our goals with the book were to:
1.Communicate the OneAccord value proposition and return-on-investment
2.Highlight both successes and failures (more learning happens with the latter)
3.Demonstrate credibility and instill confidence in the reader
4.Be readable on a plane ride, i.e. not 392 pages
5.Drive interest in our services without being a blatant advertisement
6.Serve a bigger universe than just ourselves.While most of these points are straightforward, the latter deserves elaboration. We’re championing a new way of engaging seasoned expertise, rather than promoting ourselves as ‘the answer’. We may learn that other interim management practitioners start promoting L.O.D. as well (if anything, we’ve been too subtle about the book being ‘from OneAccord’).
Note that revenue is not mentioned as a goal. While we wanted to cover ongoing costs of selling the book, operating the corresponding website, etc., we knew that first-time authors rarely made enough to ‘pay’ for the hundreds and hundreds of hours that go into the creative process.
By all predetermined measures, the endeavor has been a success for myself, my co-authors, and OneAccord. In addition to hearing from longtime friends (professionals in their own right) saying ‘I finally understand what it is you do’, I’ve turned prospective clients into paying clients by letting them consume the philosophy themselves.
In the months since Leadership on Demand was published, principals with OneAccord have held multiple speaking engagements with professional associations or complementary firms, where the book has been sold in the back of the room or the wholesale price was included in the event cost. This is a win/win/win, being unique for most associations and attendees (and, of course, reinforcing our uniqueness in the marketplace).
Our referral sources who read the book are far more knowledgeable about recognizing a potential introduction, where one might have ‘slipped away’ beforehand. And because many people define ‘marketing’ very differently, the case studies in Leadership on Demand help referral sources to see how our practice focus differs from, say, a graphic design firm or a market research firm.
It’s working.
After mailing the book to the managing partner of Accenture in a Midwest market recently, one of our partners in the region received an appreciative reply with a meeting request to talk about a specific situation!
Paul Travis is an interim management executive with OneAccord and helps companies create a screaming value proposition and accelerate sales. He can be reached at paul.travis@oneaccordpartners.com. He also blogs at Marketing 2020.
The book, Leadership on Demand is available at http://leadership-on-demand.com/.
