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Know Thy Purpose

When Writing a Company Profile
 

If you are using a company profile as a way of introducing your business to busy executives and clients, it suggests that you understand the benefits of brevity.  (See previous article.) The Ten Minute Business Profiler writer’s tool is designed to help you create brief company profiles.  Clearly you also want to be .  Most experts agree that to be brief and persuasive, the first commandment is:  Know thy purpose.

The Elevator Pitch

The MIT Center for Entrepreneurship asks this question: What would you do if you found yourself on the elevator with a key decision-maker whom you have been trying to meet? Would you be prepared to make your pitch between the first and the 41^st floors?  Would you be able to tell the decision-maker exactly what he needs to know about your company in order to for you to capture his interest?  Furthermore, as a follow up to your chance meeting, can you produce a profile of your business that is as persuasive as your “elevator pitch?”

Wizard Tip:

·         Use the Business Profiler to tailor your company profile to your audience.

·         The wizard recommends subject categories and a preferred order based on the purpose you select for your profile.  

Purpose is a Two-Way Street

 “The presentation should be tailored to your purpose. That may sound simplistic, bur you’d be surprised how many people don’t do that,” Lori Breslow, a senior lecturer at the MIT’s Sloan School of Management tells students at her entrepreneurship seminar.

And how do you define your purpose? “You think about it and you write it down in one sentence. Unless you can say in one sentence what you’re trying to achieve with this particular presentation, then I worry that the presentation would be what I call schizophrenic.  It has lots of different purposes and lots of different identities,” Breslow says. 

What the Reader Needs to Know

Most entrepreneurs have had the experience of making a presentation full of wonderful words and flowery descriptions to a potential investor or prospective strategic partner, only to have him say “But what do you want from me?”  The Ten Minute Business Profiler Wizard will prompt you to be selective about the information you choose to include in your company profile.  It may not be enough to state your purpose up front or in your conclusion.  Your company profile should reflect, paragraph by paragraph, the evidence that supports what you are trying to achieve.

Are you seeking financing?  Then offer information that lenders and investors are looking for -- your financial history, ROI and “use of proceeds”.  Do you want to increase your customer base?  Then you should describe what is special about your products or services -- the dynamic corporate culture of your consulting business or that special chef you employ at your restaurant.  Are you looking for a contract?  Then you will want to emphasize those points that are important to a corporate or government contractor -- whether price matters, or “just-in-time delivery” is so important it’s worth the additional cost to the manufacturer.

One Person’s Needs . . . .
 “I want to know a company’s core competency -- what it is you do better than your competitors,” says Harvey Butler, a director of procurement at Chase Manhattan Bank, whose department purchased goods and services worth $3.5 billion in 1997.  “If the entrepreneur’s service is commonly provided then I’m going to weed out suppliers who do not meet the Bank’s minimum revenue and experience requirements.  But if the service is something that will generate revenue or enhance the Bank’s core services in some special way, then we might open a dialogue based on an entrepreneur’s unique selling proposition.”

Ten Minute Business Profiler

Resource Center

Additional business  essentials, links, information and tips

·         using the wizard

·         procurement

·         finance

·         public relations

·         market research

. . . . Is Another Person’s Trivia

On the other hand, consumers don’t care that it took you less time than your competitors to sew their designer jeans.  A potential strategic partner may be more concerned with your plan for positioning their products in your market niche than with your warehousing capabilities.  An investment banker wants to see projections of the impact on the bottom line of hiring additional employees not the specs of your new software application. 

Let Your Public Relations Side Emerge

A company profile should strike a balance between not straying too far from what your audience wants to hear, and conveying a sense of excitement for your firm’s special mission, corporate culture, market niche and opportunity for success. Public relations professionals often encourage clients to write their own speeches and presentations as a way of better understanding their objectives.

“Writing takes time because thinking carefully is time-consuming,” writes David Finn on the web site of his New York based, multinational public relations firm Ruder Finn. “Organizing ideas form paragraph to paragraph and page to page helps one discover the complexity that lies behind simple – or simplistic – concepts.” 

Be sure to take advantage of several examples of company web sites, like that of Finn, to see how the pros present their businesses.  As you become more adept at writing company profiles you will find multiple uses for them as well as new ways of expressing your business descriptive.