Aaron Schoenherr

October 10, 2024 by Aaron Schoenherr

Every organization wants an engaged, aligned, and high-performing workforce propelling their business. But many don’t realize the role internal communications plays in creating employees of this caliber.

When done well and intentionally, strategic internal communications positively impact employee engagement, which, in turn, impacts business performance. Conversely, the cost of not making internal comms a priority is staggering. Gallup reports that employees classified as “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” were responsible for $1.9 trillion in lost productivity nationally in 2023.

A new report just published by the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism in partnership with Staffbase found that nearly two-thirds of employees (61%) who are considering a job change cited poor internal communication as a key factor in their decision-making. More than half (54%) of respondents said they feel unfamiliar with their organization’s goals and vision; and 65% said they are unsatisfied with the amount of information they get that is necessary to do their jobs.

For professional services firms — where human capital is the primary asset — the impact is especially profound. Engaged employees are more productive, provide better client service, and are more likely to stay with the firm, reducing costly turnover.

Helping professional services firms establish effective internal communications strategies and strengthen employee engagement is a priority for Greentarget and a professional passion of mine. And it’s an area in which many firms are hungry for guidance. So when a friend recently introduced me to Matt Goebel, a communications expert who has helped lead sweeping change initiatives at Fortune 500 companies, I asked him to sit down with me for a conversation.

The lessons Matt has learned and the impact he’s made offer valuable lessons for firms that want to communicate with internal stakeholders more effectively. Here’s what he had to say.

How did your career path lead to internal communications and what has kept you invested in the role?

I’ve always loved to write and communicate, leading me to study English in college and in journalism in grad school. But to my surprise, I soon discovered I didn’t truly want to be a journalist.

Instead, I put my writing and communication skills to work for a large global public relations agency and learned the ins and outs of external communication and media relations. During that time, I was handpicked to be part of a group launching a new service focused on helping clients with internal communications.

And that’s where I discovered my niche: The unique ability to get into the heads of executive leaders and translate what they’re trying to say into messages employees can understand and internalize.

After transitioning to a smaller, boutique agency, I eventually took an in-house position at Abbott and later Novartis, where I discovered that internal comms is a big tent with so many facets and challenges. From strategic communications and crisis management to organizational culture, there’s so much to do, which keeps me energized and motivated.

It all comes back to being a translator — helping senior leaders communicate effectively with employees at all levels of the organization to foster engagement and buy-in.

How have internal communications changed since those early days piloting a new service? And what kinds of lessons have you learned about how to do it well?

When I first got started, internal comms were rote, even mechanical. Much of the messaging centered around disseminating basic facts such as the date of an event or the deadline for benefits enrollment. While these elements remain important, modern internal communications have evolved into a strategic function that touches every aspect of an organization.

When prioritized and executed effectively, internal comms can help employees understand the firm’s strategy and their role in it, facilitate change management and organizational transformation, and even support talent recruitment and retention. Internal comms enable leaders to listen better, collaborate more fully, tell engaging stories that highlight successes, rally employees to make needed improvements, paint a compelling picture of the future, and put their team on a concrete path to get there.

What I’ve learned over the course of my career is that you can’t throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Nor can you keep important strategic matters and organizational decisions close to the vest. There needs to be a middle ground — one that’s thoughtfully sussed out. It really does take intentionality and commitment (and oftentimes an expert partner) to find the right balance.

Of all the internal communications programs you’ve managed over the years, which had the most impact?

One of the greatest adventures I’ve been part of was at Abbott when they decided to carve out their pharmaceutical business and create a new company, AbbVie. As part of a smaller team that helped separate AbbVie from Abbott and take it public, we were faced with a significant challenge: How do we pull 35,000 people across 70 countries out of an existing company and help them feel part of this new organization?

It felt very much like the world’s largest start-up, and it took about a year and a half to create AbbVie out of Abbott, culminating in a bell ringing ceremony at the New York Stock Exchange. During that time, I worked closely with our new senior leadership team — the new CEO and C-suite that had been pulled out of Abbott — to help communicate with their “new” employees.

Our internal comms strategies centered around helping Abbott-turned-AbbVie employees understand the rationale behind the strategic decision and break down the complex separation process so everyone understood what would happen and when. This was far from easy, especially since various countries around the world underwent this separation at different times.

Along the way, we weighed questions like: Who are we going to be as a new company? What are we bringing over and leveraging from Abbott in terms of strategy, culture, ways of working, vision, mission, and values? Where are there opportunities for differentiation? And how can we help all employees understand where we’re going rather than hold on to where we’ve been?

Of course, it was critically important not to answer those questions in a vacuum. We engaged employees through focus groups and surveys to get their input and sentiments. Then, as we made decisions, we cascaded the information to employees and asked for ongoing feedback to foster two-way communication.

It was an incredibly complicated and challenging time — but it was a truly phenomenal experience.

Some professional services firms don’t have a mature internal communications function — or even a dedicated role. If you were pitching the idea of building the function to a leader of one of these firms, what would you say?

That’s an easy one. I’d say: Imagine dividing your employees into two groups. Employees in each group are equally equipped to succeed in terms of education, experience, skillset, and drive.

But members of the first group know the ins and outs of your organization. They understand your firm’s values, business goals, and strategic direction. And they’re fully informed about their role in the organization and what they’re expected to contribute to help the firm thrive. Members of the second group don’t have that deep well of knowledge.

Which employees would you rather entrust with a key client account?

Since the answer to that is obvious, the next thing I’d do is offer some encouragement. For many professional services firms, especially smaller ones, building a dedicated internal communications function is daunting. The good news is leaders don’t have to boil the ocean, nor should they. Perfection is not the goal. I’d tell them to simply make internal comms an organizational priority and then get started.

Many professional services firms utilize partnership structures, where leadership is made up of an owner or owners who are leading other owners of the business. How might this dynamic complicate internal communications — and where might it open up new opportunities?

Alignment and consensus are crucial any time an organization is introducing a new priority — but it’s even more important when leaders share power and authority. You can’t have one leader saying one thing and another leader saying the opposite if you want messaging to stick.

One way to achieve that alignment is to involve select partners in the process of developing the firm’s key messages and strategy. I realize this can be a “be careful what you wish for” situation that can create an overwhelming amount of feedback that paralyzes the process. But I also think there’s a way to foster a sense of ownership without inviting everyone to become an editor.

An area of opportunity to consider is assigning different partners as the “face” or point person for different types of communications, playing to their strengths and areas of expertise. This can help get key messages across more broadly while fostering widespread buy-in.

What advice would you give to an executive who is stepping into a leadership role for the first time? What steps can they take to make internal communications a priority and, in turn, foster support for the organization’s strategic initiatives?

Think about your role from a short-term and a long-term perspective. In the short-term, what is the immediate impact you want to make? What are your top priorities? And what do your internal stakeholders need to hear from you?

But don’t stop there. Take time to envision the legacy you want to leave behind and the indelible impact you want to make. How do you want to be remembered after you’ve moved on? What do you want to leave behind for the next person?

Big picture, let the answers to those questions inform your communications strategy. And then tactically, begin the communications process by putting yourself in your audience’s shoes and identifying one or two primary issues — like your business strategy and organizational values — that you’d like to focus on. Engage employees consistently on those things. Then, once you’re sure employees have internalized what you want them to know, move on to new topics and messaging.

Be sure to include leaders and supervisors at all levels in the process and provide materials and training to help them communicate and disseminate messages effectively.

Return-to-office announcements are still all over the news, and some company decisions have been met with criticism. How should leaders communicate about RTO?

It can be challenging to share difficult news in a way that doesn’t make it worse. The most important thing is to communicate a clear rationale for the decision — one that’s focused on the benefits the company and employees stand to gain. For example, in professional services environments, in-person work is often key to training junior talent, assessing performance, and helping up-and-coming professionals rise through the ranks.

Storytelling can be particularly impactful here. Employees may be unimpressed by statistics or hard facts, but if you can tell stories that tap into their emotions, you’ll be more likely to persuade them and win support. Look for stories of impact that demonstrate the value of in-person work and communicate them broadly in a variety of channels.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share?

Building a robust internal communications function is not an overnight process. It requires consistent effort, ongoing resource allocation, and a commitment to continuous improvement.

It’s a significant investment in a firm’s most valuable asset — its people — but it’s an investment that’s guaranteed to pay dividends for years to come.

May 16, 2024 by Aaron Schoenherr

Recent headlines have laid bare the many challenges facing management consulting firms. From reports of partners infighting over profits and ousting their leadership to clients expressing skepticism about consultants’ value and AI’s potential to replace lucrative consultant-driven analysis. It’s all contributing to a widespread image problem as slowing demand reverses the pandemic-era consulting boom.

What is currently an image problem could easily become a talent problem if reports of financial, cultural and reputational woes drive current or aspiring consultants to conclude that the management consulting industry’s entire value proposition (ironically, a term coined by McKinsey itself) is broken.

Take this piece that ran last month in The Wall Street Journal: “Consultants Are Paid to Fix Businesses. Why Can’t They Fix Their Own?” The story’s provocative title is just the beginning of a sharp, unflinching indictment—one that continues in the more than 400 reader comments that follow.

All this comes as consulting talent is placing more importance on factors like company culture and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—especially those at the start of their careers. Capitalizing on this shift, the up-and-coming management consulting firm Embark recently ran a series of full-page, canary yellow WSJ ads declaring “consulting is dead.”

Embark’s value proposition? “People do their best work when they’re happy. And happy consultants make happy clients.”

It’s a powerful sell at a moment when many consultants appear ready to jump to new opportunities—in fact, a recent survey from recruiting firm The Barton Partnership found that more than one-third of respondents in consulting expect to move companies in the next 12 months.

Why Junior Talent Is Management Consulting’s Most Important Stakeholder Group Right Now

Make no mistake about it. If you’re a leader at a management consulting firm, the public’s negative perception of your industry is a vulnerability — one that emerging competitors like Embark are poised to seize upon.

Your instinct will undoubtedly be to manage clients closely and devote extra attention to assuring them of your value.

But if you “over-rotate” to that, you’ll miss something critical. Existing and future junior talent are the lifeblood of your firm. They drive value and increase profit margins, especially in times of slow economic growth (like now). And the affordable labor they provide is where your leverage and profitability lie.

Do you think your junior talent is happy? Are they appropriately challenged and fulfilled in their current roles? Is this a priority among your partnership?

It should be your only priority right now.

3 Messages Young Management Consulting Professionals Need to Hear

Management consulting has long been an attractive career option for ambitious young professionals willing to pay their dues in exchange for resume-building connections and the promise of high income down the road. But recent and emerging MBA grads are increasingly questioning and rejecting long-held norms in favor of roles that offer work-life balance and purpose-driven work.

Over the next fifteen years, the American workforce will undergo a sea change as Gen Z (those born between 1996 and 2010, currently 14 to 28 years old) come to make up the lion’s share of your talent pool. For Gen Z, flexible hours, a full life outside of work, and high pay are table stakes. They also want to work for organizations that align with their values and ideals.

It’s tempting to ignore these trends and expectations, especially if long hours and intense travel schedules have always been the price of entry at your firm. However, we believe that of all the disruptions currently facing the management consulting industry—overall economic conditions, reduced corporate spending, and efficiencies from AI— the potential for disruption within your talent pipeline should be among the most concerning.

Here are three core messages your junior talent needs to hear and, most importantly, believe.

1. We’re Listening to You

Do you care about the needs and desires of junior talent? Do you provide junior talent with forums through which to share their perspectives? Are you regularly asking for their input on the business, its goals and your culture? And do you understand what they’re looking for in a career? Most importantly, how are you applying all of this information?

To formulate an internal communications strategy that resonates with Gen Z, ask current employees to respond anonymously to questions like:

What are the first three adjectives you would use to describe the firm?
What do you like most—and least—about working here?
What is a work example or experience that made you proud to be part of the firm?
How would you rate your experience as an employee at our firm?
What are the reasons for your score?
Would you recommend this workplace to a friend? Why or why not?
What could we do to improve the employee experience?

If some of these questions sound familiar, it’s because they’re borrowed from the classic “Net Promoter Score” playbook, used to gauge the loyalty and referral potential among existing clients. It’s time to pivot this emphasis toward your aspiring talent.

By gathering candid feedback and looking for opportunities to evolve in response, you’ll give junior talent one of the things they want most in their professional life: a voice.

2. You’ll Be Doing Meaningful Work (Not Sitting Idle)

Junior consultants, often hired straight from prestigious universities, are increasingly finding themselves in a value paradox. Despite their impressive academic credentials, they don’t yet know what it takes to deliver tangible value for clients. And too often, firms leave them sitting idle on the proverbial bench for weeks or months until there’s a client assignment available for them. Then these inexperienced junior consultants are expected to be ready to go, suitcases packed and passports in hand.

It shouldn’t be this way. But if temporary bench time is unavoidable, your junior talent needs to know how you do plan to give them work experience and training. Some firms are creating rigorous, MBA-like development tracks specifically geared toward teaching new professionals the ropes with an emphasis on what matters most to clients: industry knowledge and POV. Others are setting KPIs to incentivize senior consultants to mentor junior staff.

Whatever the case, it’s critical to communicate that your firm has developed pathways for meaningful training and engagement. Tell the stories, internally and externally, that emphasize how quickly new hires are brought on to substantive projects that provide a sense of purpose and challenge.

3. You Have Flexible Options for Career Advancement

Junior consultants want to do challenging, interesting work—but they also want to enjoy rich, full personal lives. Many are no longer willing to be away from home to stay on-site with a client Monday through Thursday, week after week.

Does your firm offer opportunities for growth for employees who don’t want to follow the traditional consultant-as-road-warrior trajectory? For example, some firms have recently started offering flexible pathways for growth and advancement for young associates uninterested in pursuing the traditional partner track. Management consulting firms with similarly innovative playbooks should be shouting from the rooftops about their programs offering junior consultants grind-free options for growth and development.

If it’s absolutely essential for junior talent to pay their dues with long hours and demanding travel schedules, focus on the creative ways your firm has built programs to incentivize them. Sabbatical programs, remote work options in between offsite assignments, expedited non-equity partner tracks and travel perks all make the road warrior life more appealing.

Now’s the Time to Communicate a Path Forward for Junior Management Consultants

Management consulting leaders who proactively evolve their cultures to meet the expectations of junior talent will position themselves for long-term success. By contrast, those who cling to antiquated norms may find themselves struggling to secure the talent pipeline they need to drive future growth.

The choice is yours.

Provide junior talent with a consistent communication platform (town halls, online forums, etc.) and listen attentively. Tell current and future hires about the training and meaningful work they can expect from day one. And promote your firm’s flexible pathways for building a rich and fulfilling career.

When you do, you can position your firm to not only overcome the industry’s negative image problem, but to lead in service to the young, bright minds that will determine your organization’s future success.

May 11, 2023 by Aaron Schoenherr

The partners at your professional services firm are essentially owners of their respective business units, which means the cost of your marketing initiatives comes out of their pockets. And given the pressure they’re under to hit their revenue and growth targets, they expect you to support their individual marketing needs as if those partners are your team’s top priority. That can make it tough to advance the overall business objectives for your firm.

Sure, it might be tenable if you’re only managing a handful of competing agendas. But if you answer to dozens — or even hundreds — of partners and myriad other stakeholders, chances are your audience is on the receiving end of too many messages, or diluted messages that don’t speak to their needs.

When you’re bogged down by the tyranny of the urgent — and when your firm’s partners are focused on their messages and their goals — how can you shift gears to create a cohesive and meaningful marketing strategy? Instead of disparate initiatives, you need to create a comprehensive plan organized around a focused objective.

Once that focus is in place, it’s time to switch into campaign mode: building an integrated program to reach your desired audience through paid, earned, social, and owned (PESO) media .

Here’s how to build sophisticated PESO campaigns that elevate your firm’s digital marketing — and win the buy-in and support you’ll need to bring them to life.

Building Blocks of an Integrated PESO Marketing Campaign

Your firm is not the only voice vying for your audience’s attention. To combat this information overload, lean on integrated campaigns that highlight authoritative content with a unique point of view.

What does it mean to adopt a PESO campaign orientation? You’ll leverage:

Paid channels by buying ad space in traditional outlets and/or on Google and LinkedIn
Earned media by reaching out to reporters and earned media outlets with quotes and snippets that demonstrate your firm’s authority
Social channels by sharing your firm’s insights via email and social media
Owned media by publishing articles, eBooks, white papers, and other assets to your website

Furthermore, each campaign should:

Align to a measurable business objective (e.g. increase awareness of your firm; demonstrate your firm’s position of authority; drive revenue growth)
Present a unique point of view on an issue that’s important to your audience (make them think “hmmm, I hadn’t heard that before”)
Drive specific KPIs (like number of organic site visitors, downloads, audience reach, LinkedIn engagement)

Reddit used several elements of the PESO model effectively when the social media platform took out a five-second Superbowl ad that made it look like the company was hacking a car commercial. It simultaneously posted the video with a “What just happened?” caption on Twitter. From there, Reddit drove users to the site with a link to a sampling of its community forums. And in the aftermath, the platform earned positive media coverage from high-profile outlets praising its ingenuity.

As a professional services marketer, you can use creativity and drama to reach your audience, too. Your firm’s experts are writing and speaking on a variety of topics. Don’t shy away from promoting their hot takes with catchy copy and your version of a grand reveal.

How To Persuade Your Firm’s Partners To Adopt a Campaign Orientation

Talking about the value of an integrated marketing campaign to marketers is a bit like preaching to the choir. But if your firm’s partners aren’t on board with your plans, all the campaign know-how in the world won’t matter. And when you first launch an integrated campaign, you’ll undoubtedly encounter pushback from leaders who (wrongly) think you should focus on a marketing plan that is all things to all audiences.

You know the most effective marketing campaigns are targeted to a specific persona looking for help with specific questions at a particular moment in time. But how can you get your partners to buy in?

Show Partners What’s in It for Them

Partners may initially balk at investing marketing dollars into campaigns that don’t directly benefit their business unit. That’s why it’s crucial to demonstrate the value a campaign model will offer them both immediately and over time. They need to understand that:

Rising tides lift all boats. Successful campaigns drive increased traffic to useful content on your site. And when these visitors discover relevant content that meets their business needs, they’ll be primed to learn about your firm’s partners, service offerings, and additional areas of expertise.

Every campaign is rooted in your firm’s authority (and that of your partners). Invite partners to participate in your campaign plans by authoring bespoke content that fits in with the broader objective, whether it’s offering a unique POV that fills in “white space” in your industry, or providing insight into how your firm solves tricky client problems. Putting your partners’ expertise in the spotlight is a great way to win their support.

Coordinated campaigns shed light on what your audience is looking for. Tracking the content that resonates with your audience and learning what drives engagement helps business development team and partners better meet your prospects’ needs. Importantly, it also demonstrates the return on investment.

It’s an opportunity to outshine and outperform the competition. Your partners are undoubtedly paying attention to what their peers at other firms are doing. Well-crafted campaigns give your experts something worth sharing and promoting in their spheres of influence.

Start Small, Then Build on Your Campaign Success

Your PESO campaigns don’t have to be perfect to be impactful. Nor do you need to devote all your time and energy to adopting a campaign mindset. Carving out 20% of your work week to create and implement thoughtful campaigns is a great place to start.

The best campaigns tend to be recognized with awards from industry publications. Using the format of an award entry to craft your campaign is another smart way to make the case for its value. Identify the opportunities and challenges to the business, then lay out the strategy, tactical approach and measurable results. In other words, try reviewing the award entry format of an organization you respect and work backwards to structure your campaign idea.

Just remember: Useful, relevant content is what powers your digital marketing engine. If you need help identifying the types of content your audience is looking for — and honing unique points of view that will cut through the digital clutter — don’t hesitate to reach out. We know what it takes to create campaigns that drive audiences to action.

March 16, 2023 by Aaron Schoenherr

For most professional services firms, periods of economic uncertainty bring a renewed focus on shoring up and strengthening existing client relationships while also identifying ways to bring more value to the organizations that have already placed their trust in your firm. In other words, client retention and organic growth take priority over new client acquisition – or at least maintain an equal footing.

As a marketing leader, you can play a key (and maybe even surprising) role in supporting the deepening of the client relationships that are vital to your firm’s long-term well-being. After all, you’re the steward of your organization’s brand promise. And by empowering your internal relationship leaders to deliver that brand promise consistently and effectively, you can directly impact your firm’s bottom line.

To that end, here are three strategies designed to help you serve your internal teams as they work to reinforce their high-value client relationships — and a look “under the hood” at Greentarget’s formalized approach to client service.

1. Codify Client Service Behaviors that Promote Retention

Defining and documenting your organization’s unique approach to client service is a powerful exercise and can serve as a roadmap to navigating economic uncertainty. A good place to start is among your primary relationship leads whose clients tend to be steadfast and have increased their investment in your firm over time.

Some relationship managers are truly exceptional at what they do. They anticipate their clients’ needs and always seem to be one step ahead. But do you know what specifically they do differently than their peers? And have the leaders within your organization made it clear that other client-facing members are also expected to live up to the high bar these shining stars set?

Years ago, an advisor to Greentarget talked to us about the concept of “unconscious competence” – the idea that while it may not be explicitly documented, we had developed a “way of doing things” that was understood by most within the firm but not formally expressed. He encouraged us to formalize our approach to client service which evolved into an effort we refer to today as the “Greentarget Way” of client service.

A first step for your organization might be codifying the behaviors your high performing relationship managers regularly and consistently exhibit. Their “unconscious competence,” so to speak. To do so, try asking questions like:

How often do you interact with clients? What does your client work look like on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis?
What’s your philosophy around client service? In what ways do your behaviors align with our organizational values?
How do you maintain empathy for clients while also protecting approved budgets? What’s the right balance between setting and exceeding expectations?
How do you anticipate your clients’ needs? What actions do you take to stay ahead of their business challenges and the industry trends they’re adapting to?
Tell me about your best client relationship. What makes it so?

Based on what you learn, you can leverage these insights and begin to spell out the behaviors that promote trust and establish credibility. The more relationship leads you speak with, the more you’ll be able to spot commonalities and patterns across key client accounts which will allow you to create best practices that scale across your firm. And in the process, you’ll create the opportunity to position the firm’s marketing team as a valuable resource to your internal clients for insights on successful client retention and growth strategies.

2. Underscore Your Firm’s Role as a Trusted Authority and Advisor

It’s common for clients to scrutinize everything when they’re feeling the pressure of a challenging economic environment. After all, uncertainty can cause even the savviest business leaders to panic. And when they feel unsettled, clients may question your firm’s methodologies, attempt to pivot away from overarching priorities and strategies, and expect your relationship leaders to respond immediately to any and every top-of-mind issue they throw your way.

Now is the time for your relationship managers to lean into — and demonstrate — your firm’s authority.

Again, this requires you to codify and champion the behaviors that help your clients see you as the high-value partner you are. When it comes to emphasizing your firm’s ability to serve as an expert advisor, these behaviors may include:

Taking time to deeply understand each client’s vision for 2023 and the strategic objectives they want to reach
Making recommendations and providing advice that aligns with those overarching objectives
Pushing back against projects and requests that might ultimately distract the client from reaching their big-picture goals
Keeping the client focused and centered around business-critical tasks
Invest in a “voice of the client” research initiative to understand the critical challenges and pain points that your firm can help address

Of course, you can also underscore your firm’s expertise by doubling down on your owned media efforts. For example, you might develop and promote a series of case studies that showcases specific ways your team used their unique positions of authority to solve clients’ trickiest business challenges. Or, you could help key leaders write articles, research reports, and other collateral to share a compelling point of view on issues that impact your industry.

Regardless of the approach you pursue, your marketing orientation and instincts can be a tremendous asset for relationship leaders within your firm who are challenged to navigate economic uncertainty and contraction. Now’s the time to move beyond the traditional boundaries of marketing and communications by exploring new ways to serve and support the relationship leaders who drive your firm.

3. Create an Internal Rallying Cry Around Client Retention

As a marketing leader, you are also your firm’s “chief repetition officer.” It’s your responsibility to continually beat the drum about your firm’s priorities and keep your team energized around your common goals.

Setting a client retention goal at the beginning of a new year is a good start. But to achieve the results you’re after, you’ll also need to develop creative ways of reinforcing your firm’s commitment to delivering your brand promise.

This can be as simple as encouraging your practice group leaders to carve out a minute or two in team meetings to share anecdotes and stories about how they’ve provided excellent client service. Or you might infuse every piece of internal communication with updates and reminders about your client retention goals and the specific behaviors that support them.

Whatever the case may be, look for ways to repeatedly communicate that providing excellent client service is a key strategy to thriving during a downturn and provide the examples that illustrate those behaviors.

Draw Inspiration From The Greentarget Way

At Greentarget, we’ve spent more than a decade defining and refining the brand promise we deliver to clients. As a result, “The Greentarget Way” has become an integral part of our team culture. Every employee knows what it takes to live out our ideals when working and collaborating with clients.

The Greentarget Way lays out a seven-step approach to client service. Each step maps to specific behaviors that members of our team are expected to embrace in their client work. For example:

PROCESS	BEHAVIORS
1. Identify the problem, challenge, or opportunity	• Ask “how can we help?” • Look to peers for lessons learned and best practices • Get uncomfortable – we are creative problem solvers
2. Understand the objectives	• Ask insightful questions • Focus on the details • Bring a “yes…and” attitude
3. Empathize with the audience	• Ask the right questions to learn everything you can about audience needs • Stay on top of industry trends • Be open to pivoting and changing course • Avoid assumptions and be willing to test your theories about audience preferences and behaviors
4. Build the strategy	• Take calculated risks • Deliver fresh thinking • Trust your reservoir of experience • Ask colleagues for help
5. Craft the narrative	• Be authentic and credible • Work to build connections with the desired audience • Execute with vigilance, diligence, and purpose
6. Distribute across channels	• Deliver results • Build personal connections with media, clients, and peers
7. Measure and assess	• Track appropriate KPIs • Recharge and gain a fresh perspective before the next project • Ask insightful questions about how results impacted the client’s business

This is a brief overview of our in-depth and comprehensive approach. But now that you see what’s possible, how might you develop a similar strategy to improve your firm’s client retention rate?

We’d love to help you think through a model that will enable your firm to deepen and prioritize your high-value client relationships in light of your mission and values. So if you have questions, just reach out.

October 11, 2022 by Aaron Schoenherr

As premiums rise and the economy slows, producers with sales responsibilities at commercial insurance companies face an uphill battle to acquire and retain high-value clients. Increasingly, these rainmakers are navigating difficult conversations and answering challenging questions from concerned business leaders whose insurance costs have skyrocketed in recent months.

To overcome these hurdles, producers may need something different from their corporate marketing teams – an approach that goes beyond marketing collateral promoting the latest product. Based on the informal conversations we’ve had with producers across a wide segment of the market, what they really need is help communicating with clients in a clear, transparent, and person-centered way.

This likely requires you as a communications director to move away from business as usual and into uncharted — and admittedly uncomfortable — terrain. In order to meet your internal and external stakeholders where they are, you should consider adapting your marketing and communication strategies in several key ways.

1. Shift the Focus from Your Products to Your Customers

Your prospects and existing clients don’t want to be sold to — especially in economically turbulent times. They want guidance and support from trusted providers, advisors, and authorities. For your company to have a fighting chance at filling this elevated role, you’ll need to get inside your clients’ heads and understand what makes them tick.

Conduct Market Research to Understand Clients’ Insurance Needs

Clients trust people with whom they have a relationship. And the key to building strong relationships often comes down to listening more and talking (or, in this case, marketing) less.

It can be hard to resist the temptation to center your communications strategies around billing cycles, renewal periods, and new product offerings. After all, these are the milestones that can drive topline revenue growth. But this approach results in messaging that is transactional, not relational.

That’s why it’s so important for you to make an intentional shift and help your producers connect with current and prospective clients on a deeper level. Conducting “voice of the client research” is one way to gain insight into your audience’s perspectives and craft communications that speak directly to their needs. This type of research enables you to understand:

The specific pain points clients and prospects are experiencing
Risks and opportunities their businesses face as a result of current economic conditions
Questions customers have about their current policies (e.g. pricing; coverage)

Producers only know the clients and prospects in their own portfolios. But as a marketer, you have a bird’s-eye view of your industry — and access to your company’s clientele as a whole. Use that access to create person-centered communications that drive your business relationships forward.

Tap Into the Emotions that Drive B2B Decision Making

As much as we like to think of ourselves as rational, practical creatures, human beings remain emotionally driven. This is particularly true in B2B settings when the stakes are high and important decisions are made in groups.

The dry, highly technical, and jargon-rich language of insurance policies may belie this fact, but insurance is also an inherently emotional product. Risk aversion, fear, and the desire to protect against the unknown are powerful driving forces. To that end, your company doesn’t just sell policies — it plays a unique role in managing and reducing the concerns that keep your clients up at night. This isn’t about fear-mongering. It’s about acknowledging and validating your clients’ very real needs.

Yes, your company continues to develop innovative and relevant products in D&O, cybersecurity, and other areas — and you want to sell them. But rather than explicitly pushing these products, you need to connect the dots in an empathetic and human-centered way. Doing so enables you to position your company as the solution to your clients’ larger problems.

Demonstrating empathy and meeting your audience’s emotional needs are powerful ways to build trust and cultivate loyalty. This, in turn, plays a key role in enabling producers to retain clients during difficult economic times.

2. Be Transparent About Premium Hikes and Changes in Coverage

Difficult economic times lead many of us to tighten our belts and eliminate unnecessary expenditures. Your clients are no different. When their profit margins shrink, you can be sure they will scrutinize every possible expense to identify potential areas to cut.

To prove your continued value to clients, you’ll need to consider getting radically transparent about everything from pricing to profits.

This is typically where many marketing leaders start to get uncomfortable. But transparency leads to empathy, and right now you need your clients to feel some empathy for your company. This means proactively helping your producers explain the “why” behind the difficult decisions your organization has to make.

For example, you might:

Outline the reasons why health insurance premiums have risen dramatically as a result of the pandemic. If you had to dip into your claim reserves at an unsustainable rate due to higher-than-normal payouts, be open about that.
Explain the impact of climate change on various insurance needs. If you had to raise premiums or cease coverage altogether for businesses that operate in wildfire-prone states, communicate your rationale.
Show your recent profits and losses compared to previous years. After all, your company can’t keep its promises to clients unless you make wise, fiscally responsible decisions.

Again, this may feel deeply uncomfortable. If it does, it usually means you’re doing it right.

Just remember: being transparent about your challenges and your decision-making process inspires confidence. It shows you’re able to make the hard decisions required to weather the storm.

3. Tailor Collateral to Meet Producers’ Needs By Inviting Their Feedback

Shifting long-held corporate communication tactics can be challenging. And to make sure you hit the right mark, it’s crucial to craft your approach with your producers’ needs firmly in mind.

To that end, even before you begin surveying clients or developing transparent talking points, take time to ask producers how you can best serve them.

Explore questions like:

How have your clients’ priorities shifted in these economic times?
What complaints and concerns have you heard from current customers?
Are you receiving more objections than usual from prospective clients? What is the nature of the objections you’re hearing?
What types of communications would be most helpful to you right now?

Rather than developing a one-size-fits-all strategy, engage producers directly so you can create customized resources and personalized messaging that speak to their clients’ pain points.

Address Insurance Industry Challenges Head-On

As industry pressures intensify, you can’t afford to stay the course and continue to communicate using the same strategies you’ve used in the past. To move your insurance company beyond a vendor orientation and into a trusted advisor role, you need to embrace a new way of doing business.

Focus on your clients, not your products. Embrace the human side of your industry. And be transparent about the pressures your company is facing. Then, arm your producers with the marketing resources that will help them strengthen and maintain the relationships that directly impact your company’s bottom line.

March 24, 2022 by Aaron Schoenherr

In this episode of Authority Figures, Aaron Schoenherr speaks with Chandran Sankaran, founder and CEO of Repustar, a novel fact distribution platform that partners with news organizations. The pair will discuss how technology can play a role in fighting so-called “fake news,” and journalism’s pivotal – but changing — role in that fight.

1:23 – Chandran discusses his path to Repustar, what motivated him to found the company and the problems he hopes to help solve through Repustar’s FactSparrow platform.

5:33 – Aaron and Chandran dig deeper into how the FactSparrow platform works and how it functions as an AI bot.

10:24 – Aaron asks Chandran about the reliability of FactSparrow’s sourcing, which is based on principles of good journalism.

16:01 – Chandran details how FactSparrow acts almost as a focus group, spotting topics that are potential areas of misinformation and disinformation.

18:14 – Aaron asks about Chandran’s monetization plans.

19:59 – Aaron and Chandran discuss how corporations might use the tool and consider the evolving importance of corporate responsibility in the era of fake news.

21:48 – Chandran discusses how social media companies, especially Twitter, are more in the business of checking the integrity of information.

23:24 – Aaron and Chandran discuss Greentarget’s 2021 Fake News report – and Chandran reacts to journalists’ perspectives on who is best positioned to combat misinformation and disinformation.

29:55 – If journalists aren’t a complete solution to combat fake news, what else can help?

33:08 – Chandran discusses why he’s hopeful, despite the challenges brought on by fake news.

36:35 – How news activists fit in, in Chandran’s eyes.

39:26 – Does fact-checking have a diminishing impact?

Click here to download Greentarget’s 2021 Fake News report.