Do You Have a Glossy Brochure? Raising the Barr Weekly Memo: Issue 168

This week’s reflection point: Years ago, after submitting a proposal to one of our prospective clients, he notified me that they had elected to go with one of our competitors. I followed up several months later and discovered that they had a dreadful experience, that opened the door for us to engage in conversations again.

He did eventually become a client of ours and in a subsequent conversation I asked him what was the reason he originally selected our competitor. “Please don’t think less of me but it was the glossy brochure your competitor had!”

If a glossy brochure was indeed a selling factor, I immediately put my team on it, designed our new fancy brochure and printed 1,000 of them ready to send out and impress prospective clients. Years later, when we closed our physical office and became 100% virtual, we cleaned out our space and discarded boxes upon boxes of our glossy brochures, 970 of them, to be exact!

Lessons learned:

1. Focus on distinguishing your significant value in the mind of your buyers so their decision is not based on bright shiny objects such as glossy brochures.
2. Avoid the urge to copy your competitors and challenge yourself to Raise The Barr®
3. Stay in touch with your prospective buyers even when they elect to go with your competitors. You’d be pleasantly surprised how often they realize that they’ve made a mistake and they need you!

So what is our latest equivalent of the glossy brochure or the new shiny object? It’s our new digital Innovation Magazine, whose next issue is scheduled to be released shortly.

Stay Tuned!

This week’s tip: What do you provide that is the equivalent of a glossy brochure that conveys value, excellence and thought leadership?