Last week, I was chatting with a friend about our firm – what we do and who we serve – when he asked me what I thought was a fairly straight-forward question, “Why do you get hired?”
I responded with a few of those things I thought he would expect to hear: “We have a proven track record”… “We offer services in the market research industry that virtually no one else does.”… “We work only in the MR industry which allows us to hit the ground running.” And so on.
Then he said, “No! Why do you really get hired? What’s the reason behind the reason?” Ahh… now I understood what he was getting at.
My answers changed to things like… “Our clients don’t have the expertise on staff.”… “Our clients really aren’t marketers and don’t know what to do.”… and “Our clients often don’t have the time to do it themselves.”
These kinds of answers are more than what we do and the benefits we provide (though both are vitally important)… it’s about the problems we solve.
So… how about your firm? What are the reasons behind the reasons that you get hired? What problems do you help solve for your clients?
If you can get a handle on this, you’ll have insight into your clients and prospects that many other firms simply don’t have. This insight allows you to create marketing & sales messaging that will resonate with prospects in a way that most standard “marketing speak” does not.
How do you determine the reason behind the reason? The answer is simple… but it’s not easy. Talk to your clients – in person preferably, on the phone at least. No email or surveys for this.
You have to talk person-to-person so you can probe and drill down, responding to their responses. Talk to long-standing clients about why they stay with your firm. Talk to new clients to understand why they hired you. Even talk with past clients about why they’ve moved on to one of your competitors.
Dig deep. Don’t be satisfied with their first answer. The resulting insights will be well worth the effort.