What not to do if you sell consultancy services

I’ve just been doing a competitor analysis for a client and I’ve been struck by just how absolutely rubbish most of his competitors are.  Which is good news for him, but I thought there might be some learning for the rest of us. In a slightly random order, here are some tips on what not to do if you’re marketing the services of your consultancy business

• Don’t make me guess what it is you do.  I want to know as soon as I go to your home page
• Don’t puzzle me with gobbledygook.  If you can’t explain what you do in plain English, I’m not going to stay around to figure it out
• Don’t make me peer at the screen to read the tiny writing.  I’ll either not bother and go somewhere else, or I’ll get fed up really quickly and go somewhere else
• Don’t give me a section called “Thought Leadership” and then put up two white papers.  It makes you look like a bandwagon jumping, self-aggrandising idiot.  Which is probably not the brand values you were looking for.
• Don’t rely on diagrams or videos to get your message across – give me some easily digestible words first, and then back it up with a diagram or video

Any other suggestions for bad practice you’ve seen?

Photo credit – mystery box by spinster cardigan on Flickr with a creative commons licence