Is your company story building business—or boring? A company history or backgrounder is pretty much a requirement these days, whether for your website, a tradeshow piece, a prospect leave-behind, to accompany a press kit, or all of the above. Whether you’re writing it for your own company or another’s, remember that telling the company background is merely the overt purpose of the backgrounder. Its real raison d’être is to build credibility and support business development. Keeping this in mind will keep you out of the rabbit-hole of self-indulgence and cloying detail. Let’s dive into some best-practice pointers, then, shall we? Consider the audience. If you’ve been reading these posts for a while, you’ll recognize this refrain, and either groan or smile. But it’s the underpinning of all communications. Before you begin your backgrounder, think: Who will read this? Who might they pass it on to? How many ways will it be distributed? In what context? On your site? In a press kit? At trade shows? What will accompany it? Consider the versions. Given your answers to the questions above, you may need more than one. Which is fine. It’s like fine-tuning a resume for different audiences. You might have different “consumer” and “trade” backgrounders, tailored to each audience. Do the hardest one first. Then use it as the basis for the others. Dig. Before you begin, scour your sources and find all previous versions. Unless you’re the sole founder of the company, you may be surprised by what you unearth. Build. Depending upon what you find, you may need to create a “knowledge bank” to keep your facts straight/ferret out redundancies/catch discrepancies between versions/facts, etc. Update. Find everything that’s out of date in the material you’ve found. Get help from knowledgeable sources to do this. Organize. Once you have your knowledge base created (especially helpful for complex histories), you can organize it into “digestible chunks,” simply for your own reference, such as “Humble beginnings,” “Early growth,” “The big merger,” etc. Use a Word doc, an Excel sheet, Evernote, a bar napkin… whatever works for you. Consider the length. This gets back to the audience: How much do they want or need to know? You can probably write volumes about any company (especially your own), but you must keep in mind the audience’s attention span, and what they want to accomplish by reading this. Will a reporter need to write a quick one- or two-sentence overview? Will a prospect want to be convinced of your company’s staying power during trying times? This will help you cull the “keeper” points from your list. Structure. Generally, inverted pyramid works well, i.e., if someone only reads or uses the first paragraph (or stops at any point in your backgrounder), they’ll still be well-informed. In other words, don’t save big information for the end, since it might get skipped. There are some subtle exceptions to this rule: High-end brands, for example, will often take a more philosophical/teasing/tone-setting opening to “set the stage.” Break it up. Longer backgrounders/histories can benefit from subheads, which make them less intimidating and scan easier. Don’t make the subheads obvious or redundant (e.g., “First warehouse opens”); rather, make them teasers that invite the reader to discover what’s next (e.g., “A surprising success”). End with a call to action. Don’t ever think you don’t need one. If someone has read the whole thing, invite them to contact you. Give them a reason to. Never pass up this platinum opportunity. Consider getting help. Very few people sit around writing corporate backgrounders all day. Since you may not get much practice at it, it could prove harder, or more time-consuming, than it should or could be. You can save time, and rededicate yourself to core activities, by enlisting professional help. The results will be the best you can get, and the investment will pay strong dividends. Contact us and let’s get a quote in your hands.
0 Comments
Is your session pre-work tantalizing—or is it yawn-inducing? You’ve got an important client engagement coming up, with a room full of attendees. You want to maximize your face time with them so they derive the optimum results. This means you want them to arrive prepared and, well, psyched. The age-old tool for this challenge is the session pre-read/pre-work assignment (call it what you like). It’s a written piece that gets distributed to participants in advance, so they needn’t spend time, in session, on basics. That’s the ostensible purpose of a pre-read. In actuality, it’s more multifaceted and nuanced. It can make or break an assignment. It can and will set client expectations of you and the upcoming session. It will be shown to senior stakeholders for sign-off before it’s distributed. It will determine how prepared (or unprepared) your participants are—and thus how much time you will (or won’t) need to spend (or waste) covering basic tenets in your session. In short, there’s a heck of a lot riding on it. Before you sit down to craft your next pre-read/pre-work assignment, consider these best-practice pointers: Sell the value. Succinctly describe what the upcoming session is about, and what participants will gain from it. Play to their wants and desires (also the reason you were engaged in the first place), e.g., to increase productivity, to maximize customer engagement, to discover new market segments, whatever. Remember, you’re selling the value directly to the end-reader/participant, and indirectly to your sponsor/senior stakeholder. This is the No-Fluff Zone. What will participants be able to do when they finish your session that they couldn’t accomplish before? How will this impact their job, their team, their department, their function? Hit these answers, hard, and you’re well on your way. Sell yourself. Briefly sell your credibility. Sum up your selling points in just a few sentences that highlight the most impressive points, e.g., years you’ve been doing this, prior experience, big-name brands you’ve consulted to, big-ticket initiatives you’ve worked on, impressive degrees, awards, etc. Assume that not everyone receiving this pre-read will know about you. Were you invited in by senior leadership? Were you invited back due to a previous success? Were you referred by another client/connection? Make that clear, so no one will question your authority. Keep it brief. We can’t stress this point enough. Think of your audience. It’s safe to assume that they’re pretty darned busy already. So how much time, realistically, will they give to your pre-read? For most assignments, figure “15 minutes.” If you make your assignment too long, it simply won’t get completed—or, worse, just a few will complete it, and they’ll resent the others who didn’t when the session starts, or feel duped for having completed a laborious assignment which, in hindsight, will appear superfluous if you need to start at Square One for most of the other participants. You can add optional reading/exercises for “highly motivated learners.” That’s fine. But make clear what’s optional vs. what’s required. Keep it brief-looking. Even a short pre-read, set in dense, small type and devoid of graphics, will look longer than it is. So use white space to your advantage. Add photos and graphics. The page-count isn’t as important as how intimidating the piece looks at first glance. Don’t be afraid to have a page with just one or two sentences and a big image. Make it fun to read. Make the reader feel rewarded for having covered so much ground so quickly (it’s fine for them to think, “Wow, I’m already on Page Nine!”, when, in actuality, they’ve only read four pages of text.). Lay down some basic precepts. If there are some key concepts upon which you’ll be building your upcoming session, define them here. Keep them simple and accessible (“The five things to remember”/”The three key concepts defined”/”Your four-point checklist,” etc.). You can build upon these basics, in detail, when you actually present. Again, bear in mind that you want to reward the reader. Give them good reason to feel empowered and proud of themselves as they read (“Wow, I already understand the four-point checklist!”). Set an example. Use a relevant story that sets the stage for your upcoming session. You can pull it from prior client work (disguised/redacted as appropriate), or even a story in the news that’s relevant. Big-drama stories—tales of envy-inducing success or gut-wrenching failure—are reliable grabbers. But make sure your take on these stories, especially if they’re drawn from the news, are your own. Everyone knows that Apple is successful and that social media is huge. If you don’t have a unique take on a well-known story, you don’t have anything to add, so don’t go there. The point is to draw parallels between your parable and the client organization. If you’ve thought it out well, and can highlight some eerily-similar opportunities or challenges (based on your prior research of the client organization), you’ll really get your participants thinking, productively, in advance. Tell a story. Don’t lecture. Make the pre-read a page-turner, even if it’s relatively light on details. It should be fun to read. Sometimes you just want your participants to think about old problems in a new way. Infuse the story with your unique personality/storytelling perspective. You can be sardonic, humorous, ironic… whatever defines “you.” The net take-away is that your audience should be dying to see you in person when they finish reading. In that regard, think of the pre-read as your “warm-up act,” your emcee intro… your Oscar clip. Make them think. If you do your job well, they’ll do theirs well, too. Remember, the pre-read is for your benefit as well as theirs. The better prepared they are, the better your session will go. Simple as that. Tease, tease, tease. Don’t give away the farm. Assure them, via sexy tidbits, that amazing material awaits them at your upcoming session in person. These people are busy and are setting aside time, and tasks, to see you. Make them realize that it’ll be more than worth their while. Invest in the future. Done properly, a good session pre-read/pre-work assignment not only makes your session go better, but it facilitates follow-on business, too. (How many people in that session may be working at another company next year, and remember you and how great you were? How many will keep that cool pre-read, and show it to their future bosses to help hire you?) So there’s a lot on the line for you and your business. Consider using a cost-effective outside resource. Following the above best-practice guidelines will maximize your odds of success. But if the prospect seems daunting, consider feeding your thought-leading ideas to an expert writing source, and freeing up more of your time for core activities. Fortunately for you, we have the unique combination of consulting, marketing, and creative skills which have let us help independent consultants and boutique agencies to boost their billing for more than 15 years. Best of all, we’re fast, efficient, and surprisingly affordable, given the value we provide. Contact us right now and let’s talk about growing your business as quickly and productively as possible. |
Latest tipsCheck out the latest tips and best-practice advice. Archives
June 2024
Categories
All
|