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Mary Ellen Bates
Bates Information Services, Inc.
8494 Boulder Hills Dr.
Niwot, Colorado 80503 USA
Tel: 303.772.7095
Email: mbates@batesinfo.com
Skype: Mary.Ellen.Bates
Twitter: www.twitter.com/mebs
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/maryellenbates
Bates Information Services, Inc.
8494 Boulder Hills Dr.
Niwot, Colorado 80503 USA
Tel: 303.772.7095
Email: mbates@batesinfo.com
Skype: Mary.Ellen.Bates
Twitter: www.twitter.com/mebs
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/maryellenbates
I have been doing a lot of presentations and workshops lately on the topic of
adding value -- making sure that we no long offer our clients "merely" the
most authoritative and accurate information we can find. Rather, we now need to
also provide analysis of
the information; an executive summary that addresses and meets the client's needs;
and charts, graphs, PowerPoint slides or whatever it takes to make the information as "actionable" as possible.
A good analogy is to compare a local grocery store and a personal chef. If you are hungry, either one will ensure that you don't starve. At the grocery store, the store manager has carefully selected products that are of good quality, and has put them out in nice displays. You go through the aisles, gather what you need, take it home, and make dinner. If you hadn't had that grocery store, you would have gone to a restaurant (from fast food to high-end). But the ideal choice would be having a personal chef, who handles all the meal planning and preparation, makes sure you get healthy and delicious food, and knows that you have a weakness for dark chocolate truffles.
Now, let's look at how that translates to our business. Your client is getting ready to make an important decision. She has several choices on what to do. To put it in the food analogy:
So, what do your deliverables look like? Do your clients find your reports to be exactly what they need in order to take action or make a decision? You won't know that unless you remember to ask your client during the initial conversation about the project.
A good analogy is to compare a local grocery store and a personal chef. If you are hungry, either one will ensure that you don't starve. At the grocery store, the store manager has carefully selected products that are of good quality, and has put them out in nice displays. You go through the aisles, gather what you need, take it home, and make dinner. If you hadn't had that grocery store, you would have gone to a restaurant (from fast food to high-end). But the ideal choice would be having a personal chef, who handles all the meal planning and preparation, makes sure you get healthy and delicious food, and knows that you have a weakness for dark chocolate truffles.
Now, let's look at how that translates to our business. Your client is getting ready to make an important decision. She has several choices on what to do. To put it in the food analogy:
- She could use Google to find.... well, something. (That's like subsisting on
the candy you can scrounge from the receptionist's desk.)
- She could call an independent info pro who isn't too expensive, but who
doesn't much more than collect information and arrange it into a nice-looking
document. (That's like going to the supermarket and having all the dinner
ingredients nicely organized into grocery bags for you.)
- She could buy a pre-packaged report from a consulting company that has
in-depth information but does not specifically address her concerns.
(That's like going to a restaurant with "no substitutions" on the menu. Great
food, but really what you had in mind.)
- She could go to you, a value-adding info-entrepreneur who makes a point of learning what is driving her information need, what the deliverable will be used for, and what the most convenient and useful deliverable format is. You know that she likes getting a briefing page in a Q&A format, and you know that you have to include a billing code with each invoice. (This is, of course, the personal chef, who knows that you like pizza on Fridays and that there is nothing better than a ripe heirloom tomato.)
So, what do your deliverables look like? Do your clients find your reports to be exactly what they need in order to take action or make a decision? You won't know that unless you remember to ask your client during the initial conversation about the project.
We always have competition, in the form of everything from Google to "I don't need any more information - I have information overload already!" Our job is to make sure our clients understand that we are more than a high-end supermarket... we are their personal information chef.
February 2010
by Mary Ellen Bates
Bates Information Services
Bates Information Services
Are You a Supermarket or a Personal Chef?
