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Examine Your Firm's Packaging
Packaging applies to
professional services firms as well as consumer products. Your firm has
a package that includes its letterhead, its name, its logo, its business
cards, its website, its marketing and even the way your telephones are
answered. This package is what the world sees and it goes a long way to
shaping the opinion people have of your organization.
Start with your letterhead.
Take a look at it and compare it with the letterheads of other
businesses received recently. Is it modern, clean and efficient-looking?
Can a recipient clearly see all the contact details so they know how to
reply? Does it show your email address and website, or has it been a
while since your letterhead was designed?
Your firm’s name is important.
The name should say something about what type of firm it is and
what it does. If, for example, it’s simply ‘Smith and Jones’ you might
consider renaming it ‘Smith and Jones Accountants’, or at least add
‘Accountants’ to the letterhead and other printed materials beneath the
firm’s name.
If you have a business logo you might consider whether it needs to be
updated or perhaps given a different color treatment. Logos can date
just as easily as other package attributes like typefaces and layouts.
Printing options these days enable more detail to be shown and a wider
choice of colors.
Business cards are next. They’re little billboards that should
communicate something about the business as well as the individuals on
them. They should be consistent with the other graphic elements in your
package and communicate their contents without causing eyestrain or
searching for things like addresses and phone numbers.
The website is a recent addition to most professional services firms. A
professionally-designed website can highlight your firm’s services,
enable the qualifications of your team to be viewed, and even contain
items like articles and case histories that can impress those looking
for more information about you. But it has to look good and be more than
just simple ‘brochureware’ that tends to look cheap, dull and static.
It’s worth considering taking your firm’s packaging a step further. For
those who don’t know much or anything about you, produce a simple but
informative printed piece that you can use for your marketing or in
submissions for engagements. The professionalism of your firm needs to
be reflected in the professionalism of its design and production.
Take your marketing a step
further and produce a series of case histories that will show how you’ve
successfully handled work for retailers, manufacturers, sole traders,
wholesalers, restaurants or any other business area that’s
represented in your client base. Others in that line of work will be
able to easily identify with your existing clients when they view them.
Let’s consider even more possible elements of your packaging, like
advertising. Most professional services firms do some small-scale
advertising in their local telephone directories so it’s worth
considering the design elements used and upgrading typefaces or colors
if they fit in with your existing graphic elements.
The way your answer your
telephones is another element of your firm’s packaging. Phones should be
answered politely and consistently be everyone there, from the top on
down. Procedures need to be agreed upon for such things as taking
messages and putting callers on hold. And if you have a radio providing
music for people on hold be sure it’s tuned to a station with music that
doesn’t puncture callers’ eardrums.
The last part of the packaging is your firm’s overall appearance. Step
back and look at your building, your office, your furnishings and
everything else that clients and other visitors will see when they come
to your place of business. Even the way your team dresses is important.
Examine your firm’s packaging and get every element to a consistent and
high standard. Monitor it regularly to be sure nothing gets out of step
because it all adds up to the impression you give the world.
(This article was originally published in the August 2004 edition of
ONEderings ezine.)
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