Why Great Writing Matters to Professional Services Firms

A professional services firm’s articles, proposals, presentations, studies, brochures, and books are the physical embodiments of its expertise. In effect, for professional services firms, their words are their products, and it’s critical for them to exhibit great writing. However, these firms often don’t pay enough attention to the writing process, producing materials whose messages are unclear, jargon-filled or simply not compelling.  Many of these firms eventually discover that substandard writing can be fatal to sales and marketing efforts because it gives clients and prospects the impression that the firm’s ideas are equally low in quality.

In this article, we discuss why bad writing happens, what constitutes good writing, and how superior prose helps distinguish firms from their competitors.The authors also present five steps that professional services firms can take to ensure that their writing is of the highest quality and can attract and convert prospects to clients.

Imagine taking a new Honda Accord for a test drive and experiencing a rattling interior, a rough-running engine and noisy brakes. Obviously, Honda would never allow such quality glitches. Doing so would waste its huge marketing investments to drive customers to dealer showrooms. Exposing consumers to such low quality in the buying process would be sheer lunacy.

However, in marketing and selling themselves, too many professional services firms unintentionally make this very mistake:  They erode their sizable sales and marketing investments with poor writing. Besides failing to communicate clearly what they do, poor writing makes firms’ products—the expertise of their professionals—appear inferior. Bad writing even plagues professional services firms with the deepest expertise and most effective approaches, making it difficult for prospective clients to see the quality beneath the unattractive packaging.

Why is great writing so critical in professional services?  Quite simply, a firm’s articles, website, proposals, sales presentations, research studies, brochures, books and other publications are the physical embodiment of its expertise. In effect,for professional services firms, their words are their products.  When their published words are unclear, their expertise is guilty by association.

Certainly, writing is important in marketing many products and services. But tangible products like Hondas, Rolex watches and iPods more or less speak for themselves. Their physical presence goes a long way toward explaining their value and purpose. On the other hand, the expertise of a professional services firm requires considerably more explanation. And the longer the explanation gets, the greater clarity it requires. While anyone can understand the value proposition of a Honda in a few seconds, only dedicated, interested parties will expend much effort to decipher a new approach to designing a supply chain, solving the legal  challenges of a merger, or dealing with changes in the tax code. As a result, we argue that great writing matters greatly in the professional services industry and others in which much of the “product” is delivered via the written word (Figure 1).

Great writing makes professional services firms’ ideas and expertise clear, thus reducing the effort required of potential clients to make a purchase decision. It enables executives to truly understand the depth,  relevance and novelty of a professional services firm’s expertise.