Your biggest competitor just won the account you've been chasing for months. What's frustrating? Neither better technology nor lower pricing sealed the deal. Rather, their executive team presented a clear, unified message about their company's value and key differentiators — while each of your leaders painted a different picture of who you are and what you do best. When prospects hear multiple versions of your company's story, they don't just get confused — they lose confidence in your ability to deliver...and interest in becoming a customer.
Last month, we looked at how inconsistent company messaging hurts your brand. Now let's examine an even bigger risk to business: what happens when your leaders tell different stories that don’t add up to reflect who you are as a company today.
Before potential customers sign on the dotted line, they do their homework, scrutinizing various details about your company, including what leaders say. What company executives say in conversations and on LinkedIn — even what they write their corporate bios — shapes prospect views of your company and their decision to work with you.
Prospects move fluidly between channels, expecting a cohesive brand experience from everyone representing your company. This helps build their trust and confidence in you.
Instead, they often encounter:
Discrepancies leave people wondering: which version of your company is real today? Moreover, if your leaders can't agree on something as fundamental as who you are and what you do, is anything you say trustworthy? Prospects are not interested in assuming that risk. Instead, they'll choose the competitor whose story rings clear and true across every interaction.
No leadership team aims to tell several, conflicting stories about their company. More often, companies – and their services and value – grow and evolve but their people keep pitching whatever narrative they mastered previously. They update their LinkedIn profiles when onboarding and don’t touch them again. They might know about newer company messaging but overlook that the stories they tell, from five or ten years ago, do not align with it. When leaders fall back on old scripts, besides complicating current branding efforts, they confuse employees, prospects and customers. And this hurts business.
What C-suite and senior-level employees communicate about your company sets the tone for the entire organization. When leaders' messaging doesn’t align around a central narrative, different versions of your company’s identity permeate every level of the business, turning small inconsistencies into widespread confusion.
Consider this scenario. During a pitch meeting to a prospect:
Three people. Three different stories. One confused potential customer. While all of these descriptions may have fit your company at some point previously, they send conflicting messages today. Meanwhile, that prospect is moving on to a meeting with a competitor whose leaders tell one consistent story.
Take a close look at how your leaders communicate about your business. Do LinkedIn profiles, corporate bios and sales materials align with the company’s core messaging and focus?
Equip leaders with talking points to promote consistency across all communications. This should include:
The goal isn’t to give your leaders a script to repeat verbatim. It’s to empower them with a clear, shared way to communicate where your business is today and where it’s headed. Only then can they confidently convey it everywhere from email and LinkedIn posts to client meetings and industry events.
Make an annual review of company messaging part of your ongoing processes. Integrate communications training into executive onboarding and provide guidelines for LinkedIn profiles.
When leaders speak with one voice, it:
...all of which leads to increased revenue.
Don't let inconsistent communication cost you another opportunity. For help getting your team on the same page, contact Point Road Group.
