![]() A simple fact of the consultant’s life is that most work is performed under the veil of secrecy. You can’t even review input until you sign a nondisclosure agreement or NDA. How, then, can you tell the world about all the great work that you do? In this article, we’ll address the thorny issue of NDAs and anonymization. We’ll also explain the numerous ways you can share and leverage that story, once it’s safe to tell. Defining success Before we get to the issue of scrubbing success stories of sensitive client information, we have a prerequisite to discuss: Success. We’re not going to tell you how to do great work for your clients. That’s your job. For our purposes, we’ll assume that you do it, and do it often. We’ve talked about sharing your stories of success. But what exactly is “success”? It may be very different for Client A than Client B. It depends on the goals they’re pursuing, the constraints under which they’re laboring, the target audience they’re serving, and so on. But that’s not the lens through which to view this. You need to take a more selfish approach. Who do you want to sell to? Who are your sweet-spot prospects? Answer that question—and then revisit the “success” of Client A. If it’s congruent with those of your target audience, you’re set. If not, you need to make some choices. You’ll need to either consider other clients/success stories, or perhaps other angles/challenges/outcomes of the original story. Don’t put the effort into telling the world a story if your world doesn’t care. How to anonymize data for safe storytelling We recently interviewed a subject-matter expert (SME) for a white paper, concerning a client engagement/success story. The SME shared with us tons of sensitive data about this client and the specific challenges they faced. No company wants this kind of information publicized. As you can guess, this was all under strict NDA. But our job, as we’d mentioned, was to transform the story into a white paper for broader consumption. You might think that this was a problem. But in fact it wasn’t. As it turned out, the “embarrassing details” were simply too specific to that customer’s situation to really matter to anyone else. They didn’t pass the “sweet-spot prospect” test. Which is great, because they were so specific that they would’ve been tough to disguise. What did pass the “sweet-spot prospect” test, however, was the context in which they resided. The broader issues which they represented were universal pain-points for prospects in this sector. Knowing that, they were a goldmine for the white paper’s input. You’ll find the same thing as you work. You really don’t have to worry too much about the “identifying data,” simply because it’s too arcane for a broader audience. Conveniently, it’s the exact same stuff you’d have to censor. Sharing the story There are different flavors of white papers. Some, such as those often promulgated by the big-box consultancies, offer to show trends in a given market, function, or vertical. Others are simply thinly-disguised case studies. Those are the kinds we’re interested in here. To transform your raw SME input into a compelling white paper, think about it from your prospective client’s point of view. If the pain-points you’re addressing are universal, then think backward from them: “If I were Prospective Client A, and I had this problem, what terms would I search on to try and find the answer? What topics would make me sit up and take notice? Could I find best-practice case studies of others, in similar situations, who were able to surmount these same challenges?” Answer those questions, and you have the approach for your white paper. Make it readable Some—okay, most—white papers are unreadable. They fall squarely into the MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”) category. Which is tragic, because they may well have great information starting on Paragraph Two, given that 99 percent of readers have tuned out by Paragraph One. So tell a story. Tease. Set up the problems. Make them believable, relatable, and (apparently) insurmountable. Quickly tag your characters (we wrote an entire article about this which you’ll like) so that the story is compelling and that it’s easier for the reader to follow. Then be humble. It’s a given that your company is the one that helped to bring about the great outcomes. But share the glory. Give credit to the hardworking people on the client side and all their great input and ideas. Heck, the white paper will have your logo on it, so it’s instantly apparent that you were the catalyst. So you can afford to be humble in the text. Leverage We’ve been saying “white paper” a lot in this article. But in an age in which content is king, you needn’t limit yourself to one venue or deliverable. Once you’ve crafted the story, there are lots of ways to share it. There are blogs. Press releases. Social media. Presentations. Direct mail. E-blasts. The list goes on and on; it’s just a matter of tailoring the same story to different audiences and media. Need help with that next success-storytelling challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help you—just as we help others like you, all the time.
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