There’s a sticky issue that comes up frequently as we work with our clients to develop brand strategy—how to define a national
practice. In theory, a precise definition shouldn’t matter much, but
actually the wrong answer can derail a crisp brand message, lead the
firm to murky brand waters, reduce the effectiveness of the brand and
dramatically increase the costs of achieving brand recognition.
We want to begin with a proposition:
- If
you and your firm are located in Chicago and receive a call from
California for work to be performed in California and you’ve had no
prior business relationship with the prospect, you have a national
practice.
- If you and your firm are located in Chicago
and your Chicago client takes you to California because they trust you
and are happy with your work, congratulations, you have a loyal client.
But you do not have a national practice.
A national practice is national in reputation.
In
other words, just because you travel all over the country at the behest
of your clients does not mean you have a national practice. It means
you have a lot of frequent flyer miles. You can lay claim to a national
practice when your reputation for your expertise and sagacity has
extended beyond the natural boundaries of a region (city, state or
multi-state economic cluster).
David Boies has a national
practice; Skadden has a national (even international) mergers and
acquisitions practice; Wilmer Hale has a national SEC investigations
practice. Obviously the list could go on and on because many
accomplished individuals and many accomplished firms have national
reputations.
Articulating the brand message
A brand in
development should reflect both the reality of a firm’s business and
its aspirations. You may have a thriving local or regional practice,
but staking a claim to a national practice when it doesn’t exist has
attendant risks and costs that you should recognize. They are:
Loss of focus
Effective branding demands that you make decisions not only about what you are and what you wish to be, but also about what you are not!
If you wish to expand the geographical reach of your business, there
are many good reasons to do so. A wider geographic pool of prospects
diversifies risk, increasing opportunity and hedging against local or
regional economic downturns. But if your claim to a national practice
is no more than wishful thinking, then you will have watered down your
message by making the claim. Yes, deep expertise and a broad reputation
often trump local knowledge for a buyer, but local knowledge is a
strong selling point for almost every service business. Even those with
national reputations lose to local players. It’s best to have it all,
but this is challenging. The Internet, video communications and jet
travel may have all but eliminated geography as an impediment to doing
business anywhere, but some buyers still feel more comfortable with a
local touch.
Loss of credibility
If 95% of your
business comes to your firm because of where you have offices, then you
have a local (or regional) firm. A false claim to a national practice
is easily exposed when a prospect asks what local companies you’ve
worked with; how well do you know our market; what experience have you
had with our unique challenges?
While the actual geographical
footprint of a practice is in no way solely determinative of its scope,
buyers can be forgiven if they draw conclusions from it. If you have
six offices in Tennessee and one in Washington, DC, well, then, it’s
reasonable to assume you’re a Tennessee firm with an outpost in the
nation’s capital, no matter what you may claim to be. Should you claim
to be a national firm—or even more modestly, a regional firm, risking your strong state position?
If
you have offices in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia,
Florida and Washington, DC, then buyers will assume you’re a southeast
regional firm. Should you claim to be a national firm, risking your
strong regional position?
If you have offices in Boston, New
York, Chicago and San Francisco, you have enough reach to be considered
a national firm. Buyers will assume you have offices in those locations
to support your local clients nationally. If you also have critical
mass in each office, you’ve bolstered your claim to a true national
practice. In other words, your geographical footprint can lend
credibility to the claim of a national practice even if a practice is
dominantly local. Perception can lead reality in this case.
Increased costs
A
wider geography increases your marketing costs exponentially as you
advertise in different local markets or travel to them to pitch new
business, or to speak at or participate in national conferences. Marketing at the national level only is inadequate to building a national practice; you must also touch down at the local level.
When one or two are gathered together…
For
many, the claim of a national practice is the triumph of hope over
reality. If your ambition is to be national, then we urge you to admit
reality and plan accordingly. (By the way, be careful what you wish
for.)
Many firms that are, in the main, a collection of statewide or regional practices do
have one or two practices that are truly national in stature. Is it
fair to those practices to brand the firm as regional or local when
their sights are set higher? Well, it depends. If the firm wants to
hitch its wagon to those stars, then go for it. (Expect local practices
to bolt, however.) Generally, all things considered—caveat, caveat—we
believe the right thing to do is to separate those practices for
special consideration and targeted marketing.
Doesn’t a strategic plan have anything to do with this?
You
bet. That’s where branding starts. So all that’s been said before must
be conditioned by the goals of a strategic plan. We simply didn’t want
to make everything too complicated right out of the gate.
First
of all, this article is perhaps most relevant to the small or mid-sized
firm of up to, say, 600 professionals, just to pick a number. Firms in
this size range are the ones most likely to be grappling with growth
issues—both of individual practices and geographical footprint. In
order to focus resources and build on strengths, these firms will
likely target strong practices for special attention and existing or
hoped-for offices for growth or expansion. Marketing efforts, then,
perforce must be tiered. Lower tiers get subsistence support. The
highest tiers get focused support and an inordinate share of the
marketing resources. The role of the executive team, particularly the
managing partner, is to lead the charge and manage the politics
adroitly but firmly. And ultimately, we feel, that means recognizing
the reality of national versus local or regional practices and placing
them appropriately within the firm’s marketing plan and the firm’s
brand strategy.
Now. Go forth and conquer.
Greenfield/Belser's Big Idea is published monthly. For more information, visit greenfieldbelser.com.
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