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Steps to Creating a Strong Professional

Services Brand
By MaryAnn Whiteman, CEO & Consultant, Whiteman Consulting -May 6, 2011

As in any business, a professional services firm or organization must win customers' hearts and
minds by building a brand that will attract customers to the business. By taking a strategic
approach to define who you are and why customers should do business with you, you can create
your brand identityhow you want to be perceived. Once this is in place, the challenge is to align
your brand imagehow you are perceivedwith your brand identity. Many elements work
together to build and reinforce a brand, including marketing communications, customer
relationships, quality, and value.
Because a service is intangible, a brand is even more important in the services business than it is
in a product business. The brand represents everything your services business stands for in the
marketplace. Without tangible products to present to a prospect, a brand helps convince people of
what you can do and how well you can do it. Services are sold on reputation and trust, and a
brand helps establish these qualities in the minds of your prospects. You must manage it and
make it work for your business.
In addition to attracting prospective buyers, a brand helps attract prospective employees. The
more alluring your brand, the easier it is to attract the high-quality consultants whom you need to
deliver outstanding services.
In this article, we will present 8 steps to creating a strong professional services brand. At the end
of this article, we will also look at some of the unique characteristics of branding a professional
services organization in a product company. Lets begin with the steps to building an effective
professional-services brand.
1. Start with a Clear Positioning Statement
Winning brand strategies start with a well-defined positioning statement that articulates your
distinct value to your clients, and how you are different from competitors. A good positioning
statement provides a clear and concise picture of how you want your clients to view your brand.
Your positioning statement should answer:

Who is your target audience(s)?

What key problems do your services solve?
What differentiates your services from competitors?
What unique benefits do your clients derive from your services?
Why will prospects believe you can deliver these benefits?
Do the research necessary to develop sound answers to each of the above questions. If you are a
new firm, talk to potential customers. If you are rebranding your firm, talk to your current clients.
Ask them about their wants and needs. Determine which needs are most important. Make a list of
how your service offerings solve these needs and deliver desired benefits. Compare your solutions
to the competitors. Ask your clients about how they view your competitors, and also check out
your competitors websites and marketing materials.
It is important to invest the time and effort to develop a strong positioning statement. It
communicates how you differentiate yourself from your competitors and what makes your firm
special. It becomes the foundation to build your brand and create a clear and compelling identity

for your firm in the long term. As your business matures, and new competitors enter your
markets, you will need to review the core components of your positioning statement and make
some course corrections. However, in general, your positioning statement should remain fairly
constant, serving as a strategic compass for how your brand is represented.
2. Strive for Total Alignment with Your Positioning
Some people mistakenly think that a brand is about creating a logo and a look and feel for all
marketing materials. Having consistent visuals is important, but a brand is so much more. Your
brand image is the sum of how all your prospects and clients view your firm and your services. Its
how your clients think about you when they call you for a meeting. Its how they expect to be
treated when they hire your firm. Its how they speak about you to their colleagues and partners.
It includes the feelings, attitudes, and perceptions your prospects and clients have about your
services.
To shape your brand to your desired image, strive for consistency. Once the positioning statement
is established, everything else should support it. This includes your firms name, your logo, your
tagline, benefits of your services, your marketing materials, pricing, and more. Most important for
a professional services firm, every interaction with your prospects and clientsby every individual
in your firmshould align with the brand.
3. Develop a Marketing Architecture to Drive Consistency
To help you achieve consistency across all your outbound-marketing communications, develop a
marketing architecture which communicates the key message to each of your primary audiences.
For each marketing message, include proof points to add detail and support your message.
Your website, collateral, press releases, and other forms of communication should leverage your
messaging and communicate your value to your customers. Create a blog and use the power of
other social media such as, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook, to build your brand.
4. Add a Tagline
In addition to your company name and logo, it is also a good idea to have a tagline that succinctly
states how you want to be perceived by your target market. A tagline is part of the brand image
and reminds customers about the essence of the company. Most car fans know The Ultimate
Driving Machine used successfully by BMW for years. Or Federal Express The world on time.
These are catchy, differentiating, and memorable.
Your PS firms tagline should support your positioning, articulate your brands promise, and help
people recognize and remember you. It should be short and believable. To select a tagline, think
about the most significant benefit people achieve when they use your services. Accentures tag line
is High Performance. Delivered. KPMGs tag line is cutting through complexity. Avoid taglines
that are generic. For example, Booz Allens tagline Helping clients succeed could apply to any
consulting firm.
Even if you dont use a tagline, it is a good idea to select a few words you want people to connect
with your firm and use them in all your marketing materials. For example, Volvo is linked with
safety and Jaguar with luxury. In the services world, Boston Consulting Group is associated with
business strategy.
5. Build Your Brand through Thought Leadership
When you demonstrate thought leadership by holding webinars, speaking at conferences and
seminars, writing articles and whitepapers, and providing original research, you help build your
brand. All of these approaches include giving something to your customer (e.g., new ideas,
thoughts, direction). Customers can gain an appreciation of your consultants knowledge and
sample the value that you can provide to their company. It is one way to make the intangible
tangible. The more complex your services, the more important it is to build customers confidence
in the consultants delivering these high-end services.
6. Deliver the Brand Promise

A consistent brand identity is important, but delivering on your brands promise is even more
important. A brand promise sets expectations in the customers minds. It is your consultants who
deliver the services promised and build the companys brand imageor destroy it. The work of
your consultants will enable your brand to communicate quality, reliability, sincerity, integrity, and
trustor not. An excellent branding strategy can reinforce the image created by quality services,
but it cannot fix an organization whose services do not measure up to the intended brand image.
Building an image for a professional services organization is similar to building an image for a
movie star or an athlete. Brand can create awareness, but in order to maintain a sustainable
advantage, the performance of the consultants must be consistent with the expectations set by the
brand identity. Brand preference is built during the delivery of the service. Companies who
promise more than they deliver do more harm than good.
7. Promote Your Successes
Delivering on the promise results in happy customers, and happy customers provide referrals. Be
sure to capture success stories and share them with prospects. They provide a powerful way to
demonstrate your firms capabilities. In your success stories, describe the customers challenges
and your solutions. If possible, include specific qualitative business results (e.g., enhanced service
levels, or improved customer relations) and quantitative business results (e.g., the percent
increase in IT staff productivity or the percent reduction in IT costs) that can be attributed to your
services. It is also valuable to include short success stories and customer quotes in brochures,
service briefs, and press releases. Customer stories are a terrific way to increase credibility and
build your organizations brand.
8. Live your brandevery day
While the company name, logo, tagline, website and other marketing and promotional materials
help to shape any brand, a professional services brand is heavily influenced by the personal
interactions between the individuals in your professional services organization and the customer
organization. Everyone in the firm must live the brand every day. At a minimum, your consultants
need to provide quality services and solutions in your core competencies or areas of expertise.
However, in todays highly competitive environment, perceived value of your services is often not
enough. Customers must perceive the value of the total customer experience. Even if the
customer is not able to measure all aspects of technical work, he does know how he feels about
your teams reliability, honesty, integrity, and dedication. He knows if he feels valued and
respected.
It is up to your sales rep, engagement manager, and other people participating in a service to earn
customer trust. Interpersonal skills play a key role. How well does your sales team listen to
customer needs? Do they convincingly demonstrate expertise in discussions and presentations of
potential solution approaches? How well do your consultants conduct themselves in the
customers presence? How well they listen, their level of empathy and interest in the customers
problem, their ability to persuade, how they handle disagreements, and even how they dress
influence the sale, repeat business, and your brand.
To help the staff live the brand, many professional services organizations develop customer
interaction processes and codes of conduct, and invest in employee training. Every positive
interaction with prospects and clients contributes to winning trust.
Winning a customers trust leads to more business with the same customer and referrals to new
customers. With prosperous organizations, the cycle repeats itself again and again. Satisfied
customers provide referralsand those new satisfied customers provide more referrals. Thats how
a PS organization builds a lasting, solid reputation, and that is the proof of a strong professional
services brand.
Branding Professional Services in a Product Company
If you are a professional services organization in a product company with an established name,
you have an advantage. Your company already has built a brand in the marketplace. But even

though your company is recognized for its products, your professional services organization still
needs to build its image as a provider of services and solutions in its core competencies.
In product companies, marketing managers brand the company and key technology or products,
or product lines. Yet, many professional services organizations in a product company dont even
have a name for themselves. They have a section on the website under services or consulting.
Your organization simply cannot create an identity or brand image without a name to identify it.
No one will believe that your company is serious about professional services if your organization
doesnt even have a name.
Most PS organizations choose a name that leverages their parent company, such as, IBM Global
Services, HP Services, or Oracle Consulting. Large organizations create brands for each of the
major sub-businesses. For example, IBM has brands for IBM Global Business Services and IBM
Global Technology Services. Your company must also decide if there will be individual brands for
consulting, education, and support services; one umbrella brand for all services, or brands at both
levels.
Consider branding your methodology. In addition to branding the organization, some technology
professional services teams brand their methodology. A large consulting organization may brand
more than one methodology in the same way that a large company brands more than one
technology. For example, IBMs methodologies include IBM Method BLUE for the implementation
and management of enterprise applications, the IBM Business Practices Alignment methodology to
help businesses align cultures during reorganizations, and more. Some professional services
groups also trademark their methodologies, such as KPMG Value Explorer Methodology, to
protect the identity, as well as call attention and give stature to the approach.
Extend your companys brand. A brand reflects the soul of the company. In most product-centric
companies, it encapsulates the companys products. If your company wants professional services
to play a strategic role in your corporation, you must extend your companys brand to include
services. Clearly, the IBM brand stands for both products and services. More companies are also
transforming product brands to represent the whole product or the total solutionincluding
hardware, software, consulting, education and support, as appropriate.
The look and feel of professional services marketing materialsbrochures, services briefs,
customer testimonials, white papers, websites, and moremust align with your corporate graphic
standards. All customer deliverables for services must be easily identified with your company.
Is your brand positioned for maximum effectiveness? Do your website and other marketing
materials reflect your brand? Do your employees live your brand? Whether you are a professional
services firm or a professional services organization in a product company, establishing a positive
brand identity, delivering on your brand promise, and shaping your brand image, will significantly
contribute to your business success.