"Your Services are Reassuringly Expensive"
When I started my business, eight years ago, the EVP of a Fortune 100 company said this to me. Her business was in trouble, not financially but reputationally. They needed Corporate Affairs counsel that was hefty, that was prepared to tell the CEO he was wrong and advise against the group think. No-one on the internal executive team had that license.
But I literally hated that comment.
I thought it was glib, diminished the value of what I was offering, and carried with it the subtext that only in times of deep crisis would we be desperate enough to pay this much for these services.
I was wrong.
What she was actually saying was "In times like these the true value of Corporate Affairs counsel provided at the highest level finally becomes obvious to everyone in the boardroom."
And something else became apparent. They weren't just paying for the advice, they were paying for how it was delivered. They were paying for the experience, the comfort of knowing that this was someone who had conducted a US nationwide recall of infant formula, a New Zealand wide recall of an oral contraceptive, negotiated with the Chinese government on product tampering and led a global practice on crisis management and corporate reputation. They wanted to be in the trenches with someone who had done it before and assured them through, conduct, preparation, advice and action that this could be managed.
Quality Corporate Affairs and #Communications isn't just about the advice, its how you give it, how you hold yourself, your tone, your timbre.
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You bring calm and confidence in a crisis not just by what you do, but your actions and your demeanor. You don't become an expert by why you know, you become an expert by how confident others become in what you know.
It doesn't matter how old you are or your length of experience, if you can develop that partnership between knowledge and delivery then that equates to the type of #leadership people will follow in any field.
Now, I have different rates for different services and the size of the problem we confronted that day (month) did warrant a significant investment, but an investment is what it was.
Never forget that your value is determined not only by what you bring but by how you bring it.
And that's reassuringly expensive.