Mona: Hi Listeners! Welcome to a new episode of ConFuZed with your co-hosts, Mona and Julian. So today, we are discussing a new topic and have tried to come up with strange term for this topic.
The name that we calling it is permanent state of change. Now Julian, let's start with you. Let’s have a discussion around what can professional firms do in this permanent state of change to survive ?
Julian: Okay. So what we're looking at is we have this background of a huge amount of change that is happening right now on the planet.
Nobody will have missed it and some of the things that have altered have been the way fundamentally changing now is the way that we work, the spaces that we use, the way that we interact with our clients, with our customers. The whole thing is up in the air due to the COVID virus, right?
So what has been discovered?
A hell of a lot of businesses have discovered actually, hey, we work, we function perfectly well under this new paradigm. So they're looking at changing the way their staff come to work. If they need to come to work, how they interact with their staff. Everything, almost is up in the air and you know historically you can look at this as being you know this is one of those historic moments of change, like the two World Wars and the flu epidemic and the 1920s and the Great Crash.
We will emerge from this on the other side completely different from where we were. 2021 is going to be a different place to 2019. So what businesses have to do is to just look at this and go, Well. What are we doing? How are we doing it ? And that comes on to the second point Mona, which is why ? what they do or they need to do as a result of this change?
Mona: Recognise it is one thing. Yeah, it's different. That's what it is. So the next part is why ? It's really analysing that. Yep. And so from that it comes to asking those right questions or set of questions around their business and the professional services that they provide.
Then they come onto, not only understand the context a little bit and they do know they
have to now adapt to the change. So the question that really comes up from the ‘why’ point of view is, firms need to really get better at educating their clients. They really need to now shape their services or the way, they communicate or the way, they market their services in such a way that their clients are now able to make sense of it, in this new environment.
So what that really boils down to is, moving away from the functional side of their services and the benefits that the services provided. Just not from a functional point of view, looking above and beyond the functional point of view and looking at what the ‘value’ of the services that they provide are and how is it helping their clients in this new age to adapt to the current scenarios.
That's where the analysis has to come into use.
Julian: Yes, and that analysis is actually vital.
I mean every single industry that you look across the board. I mean if you're looking at property, they are going to have to look at, how can we now advise our clients on the changes that are happening in the office environment?
Just as one sector. There's going to be changes in retail. A hell of a lot of number of retailers are going to be closing and won't be reopening and retailers that are moving more and more online, more and more of their business is going online, the way that offices are going to be used is shifting.
Banks in the UK, for example, are now saying oh! well, actually, our business works, with people working from home. And they're talking and you know, this seems common sense of actually opening up the branch offices where they've had empty space above the the bank and using that space for their staff to work in. They don't have to go to the big head office.
Mona: That is realigning.
Julian: Yeah, absolutely and that has a knock-on on the legal sector because all of a sudden you've got lawyers who are now advising their clients about they have contracts, they have agreements, they have leases. They have all this stuff that they were no longer want to be in. They have to and their clients may be looking to get out of. The same with finance, is you are going to have accountants looking at their clients and going yes, this is how we can get you help. This is the financial support everything that everyone is doing is changing.
This is one of those moments.
And the analysis of what your market sector is looking for, is so critical. Because then you have to go back, you have to ask the right questions.
Are we doing the right thing for the client?
Are we now delivering the service that the client needs in 2021?
How do we then, as you've said, “educate” our clients that actually ‘we get you’, ‘we get what's changing’ This is what you need to think about.
Mona: And then that results in the third part, which is they have to adapt their own business. We all have to adapt to what is now required and do it. And part of that adoption, also comes the action. Because now once they have made that analysis and reframed their services in a way that it works in this new changed environment, they then need to communicate that message in a compelling way, out there in the market. So that professional firms and services and businesses that are actually looking to for this solution are able to understand it.
Not only understand it and then apply and utilise it in their business.So as part of adaption, a large part of adaption, is actually “doing”, taking that action and doing it right now. Also because there are firms, there are clients out there who need a solution, who need to start thinking about what happens next month, what happens in the next three months and how do we keep going?
So, doing and executing that compelling communication pieces or marketing pieces is really important.
Julian: Yes, and I think the emphasis is on communication.Communication internally, externally and it has to be that, as you and I have talked on incessantly. It has to be that core, real discussion. You know, it's not you know, it just putting a label on a box or a service. You've actually got to go back to that point of explaining to your client what you're doing, why is it valuable to them, what they should, you know, what you should be thinking about, engage us to do it. That the core of it. The content is key. It has to be valuable. It has to be useful. It has to be sensible and then put that forward in a comprehensible manner not using jargon, not using, you know specialist lingo but actually saying, here it is. This is what's happening. This is why we can help.
Mona: Yeah, absolutely. So we come to another we come to the end of another episode.
So now I think, we will part with the thoughts or the question that these professional firms need to think about is, ‘how do they grow their business’ or ‘create new markets in this current environment’ or if I can rephrase that, ’how do they look at the current market in a new way’ ?
And those are some of the thoughts and questions. So adapt. So we start off with, asking the right set of questions, we analyse, we adapt and we do.
That's the way of looking at it, either looking at the ‘current market in a new way’ or ‘creating new markets’ from the current environment. So thank you listeners. Thank you Julian for your time. Thank you listeners, do tune in to the next episode of ConFuzed, where we talk everything marketing, growth and change.
Thanks a lot.
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