Lack of Clarity, Alignment, and Consistency is killing your business!

I recently had a conversation with an acquaintance (let’s’ call him Alex for the sake of anonymity) who owns an interesting business in the IT SaaS product and services space.

After we caught up on “life,” Alex started to share some of his business’s growth challenges, some of which is due to the pandemic, but certainly not all.

After a few minutes of him describing a variety of things that he felt were getting in the way of their growth objectives, I asked him what they were doing to address the things he mentioned.

His response – which is actually quite common – was, “I’m not really sure. We’ve got so much to do. Business is still good, but I can see things changing. I know we need to do something – probably a lot of things, but we’re not really sure where to start. What do you think?“

My first question was this. “what is it that you guys actually do?“

Alex has been in business for a little more than ten years, and his business’s products and services are admittedly complex. After a minute or more of him laying out several things that they provide and do, I stopped him and said,

“Hold on. I’m on your website right now, and I’m not seeing anything like what you just said. I’m literally looking at your homepage, and I honestly have no idea what you guys do. But, it looks pretty cool – I’ll give you that.“

After a bit of a pause, Alex said, “that stuff is mostly in our Capabilities section.“

So, I went to the Capabilities section of their website, and after scrolling down the page and reading about some of the things they do (which was VERY jargony), I said,

“Alex, you know I already knew a bit about what you guys do, and when you explained it to me a few seconds ago, that lined up with what I thought. But to be honest, I’m reading all of this stuff on this page, and it’s making my head hurt. This is some pretty terse stuff!

And, as I’m scrolling down this page, let’s say I happen to be your target customer; I totally understand all of this and decide that I want to do business with you. Where do I go? How do I let you know I’m interested in hiring you guys or buying one of your SaaS solutions?“

In the silence, I could hear Alex thinking.

“Well, our 877 number is at the top and bottom of every page, and we have the Contact link up in the menu.“

My next question was this, “Do you guys want me to call or just submit my information on the form?“

He said they’d prefer a call because they do (convert) better when someone calls. When they talk with them, they can figure out what they really need.

My next statement/question was so straight forward that it caught Alex off guard.

“OK, so you want me to call. Why aren’t you asking me to call somewhere or anywhere? The number at the top of the page is just a number. It doesn’t even have a phone icon. Why aren’t you at least saying, ‘Give Us a Call‘ or ‘Contact Us‘ or ‘Call Now’ where the phone number is?“

After I bounced around a few more pages on their website, I said,

“So here’s my two-cents worth. I think a big part of your current business growth challenge is lack of Clarity.

When you explained what you guys did, it generally made sense to me, but I wasn’t sure how that would help me, and it was still a little fuzzy. I think what you said is a great starting point, but that needs to be simplified more. That statement has to be crystal clear, and it needs to make me interested in learning more about how you can help me.

Once you get this explanation nailed down, that needs to be the first thing I see when I hit your homepage. This also needs to be all over your website – and especially on your Contact Us page. And you need to have a HUGE button right in my face on your homepage inviting me to call and make my life better immediately or something like that.

An early mentor of mine once told me, ‘If you want a cookie, you need to ask for a cookie. Don’t sit there hoping I’ll give you one.‘

If I’m coming to your website, I’m the dude with the cookies. You need to be asking for them – every chance you can!

And once you’ve landed on this statement, everyone in your organization needs to memorize it. If this is what you guys actually do and it’s who you are, it won’t be hard to memorize. But absolutely EVERYONE, I mean EVERYONE needs to be able to repeat this. You have to create this level of Alignment throughout the business.

Every person in your company has the opportunity to build your business. If someone from finance or accounting is asked by one of their friends or family members what you guys do, you never know when that person might be (or know someone else who might be) your next $100K client.

If their explanation is fuzzy, complicated, and confusing, their friend will likely be polite and say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,‘ and have no interest in hearing any more. You just lost $100K.

If you aren’t consistently communicating a clear message, you’re confusing potential customers and missing out on a ton of business opportunities.

When you create this level of Consistency across your organization, your website, your sales materials, etc., in combination with improved Clarity and Alignment, I think you’ll find that a good number of your current growth challenges will go away.”

A week or so after my call with Alex, I went back out to their website to see if they’d made any changes. I know that many of the things we discussed take time to create and implement, so I wasn’t expecting to see a whole new homepage. But sure enough, his team had already improved their calls to action – making it Clear that they wanted me to call and made it easy for me to do it.

Three questions you need to ask and answer:

If your business isn’t growing the way you want it to, take a step back and ask these three questions:

1) Are we crystal clear about who we are, what we do, and how we help customers?

2) Can everyone throughout the organization answer the above questions the exact same way, and do they actually believe it?

3) Do all of our public / prospect / client facing materials communicate this message the exact same way?

If you answered ‘no’ or ‘not really’ or ‘I’m not sure’ to any of these questions, you can remove many of your current growth-killing obstacles by addressing them. 

By creating Clarity, Alignment, and Consistency, you’ll be putting your organization on a path to achieve your Next Level of profitable growth.

Now it’s our turn to ask for a cookie!

If want to achieve your NEXT LEVEL of profitable growth by creating Clarity, Alignment and Consistency throughout your organization, complete this form and let’s set up a call!