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- »One on One with KPMG's Koecher & Rodriguez
KPMG’s Restructuring Services group just got a lot stronger. On July 16, KPMG acquired Grant Thornton’s supply chain advisory practice, effectively doubling the size of its core restructuring team and broadened its service offerings.
- »One on One with Ed Hess
Grow or Die. It’s probably the most common business axiom, and the least accurate, according to the new book “Smart Growth: Building an Enduring Business by Managing the Risks of Growth” (Columbia Business School Publishing). To better understand the book’s implications for firms, Consulting’s One-on-One sat down with the book’s author, Ed Hess, a former Arthur Andersen strategy consultant and current professor at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business.
- »One on One with Summit's David Litherland
When prospective employees interview for a job, they obsess over making a good, lasting impression. Firms should do the same. To learn how firms can avoid typical pitfalls, Consulting’s One on One sat down with David Litherland, managing partner of Summit Search Group, an executive search firm specializing in placing professionals within professional service firms.
- »One on One with PwC's Tom Craren
Senior executives are becoming immune to traditional marketing. Marketing consultants tell us that to pierce through the white noise of corporate communication, firms should consider “content marketing”. Instead of more traditional marketing, providing valuable insight and perspective in a blog or electronic newsletter can serve as a more effective door opener. One of the best examples is PricewaterhouseCoopers’ “10-Minute” series. For almost three years, PwC has boiled down complex thought leadership into small electronic pieces an executive can read in about ten minutes. To learn more about PwC’s marketing efforts, Consulting’s One-on-One sat down with Tom Craren, the firm’s brand strategy and thought leadership leader. His team of 20 writers produces between two to three 10-minute pieces each month, along with more detailed white papers.
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»Consultants on Consulting
Consultants on Consulting gives management consultants the chance to share their views, expertise
and insights into topics they feel passionate about. Each consultant's piece outlines ideas and
strategies for change, and further enhances the author's role as a thought leader in the profession.
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2010
»Creating Killer White Papers
By Robert Buday, Tim Parker and Rob Leavitt
 White papers have long been a staple of the consulting marketing mix. The Web sites of consultancies large and small are filled with them. At their best, white papers provide an entrée at senior levels, producing meetings that prospects would not have otherwise taken. But in reality, few white papers are given the time of day. The vast majority are deemed unfit by clients to take up space on their desks or hard drives.
Yet a few consulting firms produce white papers that strike a nerve with clients and prompt them to ask for a meeting. The subsequent discussions are typically far more favorable to the consultant than a meeting generated by a cold call. The consultant doesn’t have to work so hard to establish his expertise, and conversations move more quickly to potential opportunities.
How do these consulting firms create such white papers? First, they view them not as a writing exercise but rather as an initiative to develop a compelling point of view (POV). This may seem like semantics but it is not. Such points of view draw on frameworks and practical case studies to illuminate a business problem, offer a new way to solve it, and prove the business value. No matter how talented the writer, the writing process alone will not turn an undeveloped argument into a lead-generator.
Second, these consulting firms use their point of view in a multitude of marketing activities, not just for one publication. They know prospects must absorb an idea multiple times before it makes a deep impression—in conference presentations, the op-ed pages of their favorite publications, and increasingly blogs, professional networking sites and other social media.
The white paper experiences of three firms—a small strategy and executive coaching firm (Quantum Performance), a large IT services firm, and a mid-sized management consultancy (Kurt Salmon Associates)—are instructive. They demonstrate how any size firm can produce white papers that generate leads and business.
Is It Just a Writing Problem?
Many consulting firms treat white papers as writing projects: find a ghostwriter, gather the background material, arrange a discussion or two with the experts, then draft the paper. But all too often, neither consultant nor ghostwriter is happy with the product. The argument is usually underdeveloped: shallow, fuzzy, and lacking evidence. The result is a white paper with little impact, or if the deadline is not set in stone, a months’ long cycle of draft after draft that all too often doesn’t see the light of day.
The problem with the writing-centered process is that the bulk of the energy is on writing, reviewing drafts, and editing—i.e., how to phrase the argument, not how to build it. But clients value novel, proven and practical insights that help them solve complex business issues far more than they value clever turns of phrase.
Producing white papers that are good door openers requires a much different approach, one that focuses on developing a substantive argument, not on writing elegant prose. This approach (which we refer to as the point of view-driven white paper process) begins with a set of hypotheses to test and develop—statements about the client issue at hand, why prevailing approaches to solving it are falling short, why a different approach is better, and the benefits of doing it the proposed way.
The hypotheses must then be substantiated with solid evidence, most notably detailed examples of how companies have solved the issue in the manner prescribed. They must also be supported by frameworks—constructs that clarify the core problem and how to solve it. Without them, there is no generally applicable advice for readers to take away. Good ones are never easy to develop, but they are essential for your white paper to be useful.
Collecting the data, analyzing it and creating the frameworks will take the majority of the time in developing a point of view. Sometimes, most of the required data and insights already exist in-house, derived in large part from client work. But if the data and insights are insufficient, they must be supplemented with additional case studies, surveys and secondary research.
The next step is to create a detailed outline of the point of view, refining and supplementing the original hypotheses with the insights from the analysis. It won’t be right the first time, and if it’s written out as a draft white paper the white paper will bog down in the familiar debate about wording and editing.
The POV outline should include all the specific data and proof points, along with any frameworks, sidebars and other supporting material. But it must be written in outline form so that it can be easily debated and modified until the argument is clear, novel and substantiated. This can take several weeks. But once the outline is set, a good first draft can be written quickly.
This was the case at a small strategy consulting firm specializing in organizational alignment and engagement, Quantum Performance Inc., in 2005. Despite many client successes, Quantum had difficulty generating leads beyond word-of-mouth references. Prospects didn’t fully understand its consulting process, one which helps an executive team create a strategy that is embraced by their organization. In developing a white paper to help market their services, Quantum’s two principals (Gershon Mader and Josh Leibner) began by developing the core hypotheses around the business issue they addressed and how they addressed it.
They built a diagnostic framework that explained why executive leaders who focused on the “content” of their strategy (devising the plan and how to explain it) rather than its “context” (understanding how those leaders were viewed by managers and workers who were asked to execute the plan) had a hard time getting strategies adopted. They also developed a prescriptive one that explained the four steps to addressing content and context issues.
Gathering their case studies and creating the core frameworks took several months. But it enabled Quantum’s leaders to convert their initial hypotheses to a strong, detailed outline, one that guided the writing of a 24-page white paper. After having it designed and published (including a PDF version), they distributed the paper to prospects before sales meetings and mailed it to past clients, kindly asking them to pass it along to others who might enjoy reading it. A year later, the impact was substantial—business boomed.
When More Evidence is Necessary
In some cases, consulting firms lack sufficient evidence to support a novel point of view. They may have done one or two client projects in the area. But if other consultancies have more extensive client experience and expertise on the topic, a white paper based on a small number of engagements is likely to fall short.
For one of its outsourcing practices (tech support), an IT services firm had a number of contracts under its belt. Still, those contracts paled in comparison to the number that much-larger competitors could point to. Yet every vendor delivered its service essentially the same way. The IT services firm believed that if it could collect data showing that there was a better way to run tech support, it would get an audience. The firm launched an extensive survey and case study research on how large companies managed tech support. The research conclusively showed that the best organizations run it in a much different way, and benefit by doing so. The POV was the core content of a larger marketing program that opened the door to tens of millions of dollars in new outsourcing opportunities.
Marketing the Content in Multiple Forms
No matter how good the content, producing and distributing a single white paper on a topic is not likely to generate substantial client interest. If a white paper is the only element of a consulting firm’s marketing campaign on that issue, don’t expect the phone to ring off the hook or the in-box to be flooded with meeting requests.
On the other hand, if a POV is properly developed, it will support the development of multiple versions and distribution via numerous marketing channels. Consulting firms like Bain & Company view the marketing of a compelling point of view as a campaign, not as a one-off white paper. They create the book version of it, publish it in leading management journals such as Harvard Business Review, place firm-bylined op-eds in leading newspapers, and produce numerous self-published articles and other marketing materials.
The large IT services company we mentioned earlier used the content of its white paper to publish five op-eds in leading IT and business publications, including a prestigious management journal. That, and an account-based marketing program, opened doors to numerous outsourcing opportunities. Quantum used its white paper content to publish five shorter opinion articles in key business and HR publications. In fact, Quantum’s founders further developed the white paper’s core constructs into a book, which they published in May 2009 (“The Power of Strategic Commitment”).
Since publishing a major white paper on vertical retailing at the beginning of 2009, the management consultancy Kurt Salmon Associates has brought its content to market in numerous ways: KSA-bylined opinion articles in the editorial sections of the Web sites of three target publications (Forbes, BusinessWeek and Chain Store Age), a Webinar presentation for retailers, client briefings, a conference presentation, and five self-published articles. (They can be found at www.kurtsalmon.com/pubs_av_list.php)
Ultimately, the power of a point of view, not the power of the pen, is what opens client doors. Consulting firms that take the time to develop a novel and well-supported point of view for their white papers are much more likely to gain client attention and build a reputation for their expertise.
Robert Buday, Tim Parker and Rob Leavitt are affiliated with Bloom Group, an advisory firm that helps consultancies increase demand for their services through thought leadership.
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