Today more than ever the winners will be the search firms and individual professionals who set themselves apart in the eyes of their clients and stakeholders. By branding and differentiating your services, you can help attract and retain business in these challenging times. Listen to this exclusive teleseminar which is delivered by David Butter, a global expert in branding and marketing and advisor to professional service firms. Learn how to develop your own authentic brand and discover the tips, tools and techniques needed to enhance your reputation and client awareness. Make sure that potential customers do not see your business offering as an identikit solution. Your firm should constantly be asking itself “How am I different?” if it is to stand out from the crowd.

 

Listen to an extract from the teleseminar: Winning Executive Search Business by Branding & Differentiating your Services by David Butter

In this audio extract, David Butter, a global expert in branding and marketing, explains the need to differentiate your business in order to ensure its future. Differentiation is critical when competing in markets with over-capacity. As a firm, you should always be asking yourself “what makes me distinctive?” and “why should the client choose me?”. In an economic downturn, clients turn to brands and most importantly, they turn to people that they can trust.

In the extract, David highlights the fact that often clients value those intangible things that as firms we do not necessarily take on board. The key thing is to identify these intangibles, since clients will often pay a premium for them.

Branding is the process of managing how people see us. As David points out “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”. But you have to be different in a way that is relevant. The difficulty arises in managing that paradox between differentiation and relevance. David argues that two other key factors come into making your business stand out from the rest; esteem (the quality of how you are perceived) and knowledge (how well known are you).

Full agenda of the seminar:

• The challenge of commoditisation. Why best practice isn't good enough and past success is no guarantee of future success.
• Why ‘How am I different?’ is the very first question we need to answer.
• The four core principles of branding and how they apply to professional consultants
• Developing our own personal authentic brand
• Tips, tools and techniques to enhance your reputation and awareness.
• Building value though client experience, interactions and services
• Using energy and momentum as a differentiator

Speaker:

David Butter is a successful international marketing and innovation trainer, consultant, and Certified Professional Facilitator, working primarily with professional services companies.  He spent 30 years in senior positions with Young and Rubicam (part of WPP) advising clients including American Express, Chevron Texaco, Danone, Star Alliance and Xerox on their advertising, marketing and branding, and as director of the International HQ in New York. As Global Marketing Director he also led a number of successful global pitches and managed the firm's own branding and marketing. A UK national, David has held positions France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland, Australia and the US, and works with clients in English, French, German and Spanish.  As an independent professional he shares similar challenges to his clients

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