"Writing Sexy Biographical Sketches For IT Companies And IT Professionals"
In providing premium-calibre transformational solutions, trust and respect become much more important than in commodity-calibre transactional solutions.
One major cornerstone of trust is transparency, and a large part of this transparency comes from the character of the company and its people.
And this is where sexy, kick-arse biographical sketches both on the company and its people enter the picture.
Now look at most IT companies' websites.
On 95% of them you don't even find human beings. There is not a single human face on the website... apart from a stock photo here and there.
And what of the other 5%? On most of them you see grossly outdated pictures of presidents and the other top executives. You know, when they were 30 lbs lighter with more hair, fewer wrinkles and without glasses.
Then you find is very short anal retentive descriptions of companies, bloated with platitudes like, "leading edge", "robust", "state-of-the-art", "innovative", "award-winning" "industry leader" or similar bullshit, that is to a good and descriptive bio what plane food is to fine dining.
You have no earthly idea what kind of people hide behind the corporate facade.
Are they convicted rapists, serial killers, terrorists or just plain, pedestrian, garden-variety con artists? You never know.
As Peter Steiner's cartoon, first published in The New Yorker on 5 July 5 1993, says...
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
Sadly, without proper biographical sketches, most IT companies come across as some old, mangy, flea-infested, three-legged, one-eyed dogs. So even when buyers do business with these "dog-grade" companies, they try to pay them so little that they can barely buy more than a few bones.
Contrary to the caption, buyers know whether a company is a collection of knowledgeable experts or dogs.
Oh, and what is the result?
Good companies are flooded with sales leads, repeat- and referral business, while dog companies bark their platitudes from the top of their lungs and chase after bidding opportunities and spend most their waking hours sending out proposals to RFPs.
Sadly, most IT companies put together their people's bios in the last moment in hard-core panic mode, usually for the appendix section of RFP-based proposals. And most of those bios look like ill-contrived resumes and as bland as beige curtains. Most of them bore readers to tears or even hysterical crying fits.
Why Are Business Biographies Important?
For buyers, your bio is very first introduction to you. Your business bio makes the first fairly detailed impression of you. Based on your bio, your buyers judge whether you - are likely to - rock or suck.
If you're a speaker too, then a kick-arse business bio is even more important.
The idea is to make your business biography compelling to your target market. And not only to your target market in general, but your perfect clients within your target market. Hopefully you have a Perfect Client Profile, and you can match your bio to attract those people and screen out the other 95-97% of the market.
Why so much?
Because only about 0.5-2% of any market is what we can call perfect clients. The cream of the crop. The bee's knees. The wasp's nipples. Then there is about 70% of the mediocre middle range and the bottom 23% of the hapless, helpless, hopeless toothless perpetual losers and bottom feeders.
They are the proverbial sewage of the marketplace. This is not a judgement call, just reality. Let's wish them best of luck but let's do our best to avoid them like the plague.
And if they show up in your dreams, quickly wake up and gulp down a bucket of strong coffee to make sure you don't fall asleep in the next 24 hours in case they show up again.