A Case of Persuasion

As a professional, how do you prove you can really solve your client’s biggest challenges?

If you’re a doctor, the answer is simple. You buy a practice on Harley Street and use that as a brand. If you’re a lawyer you can join a “Magic Circle “ law firm and rely on that. People will assume you didn’t get there without being good.

But for most other types of organizations, you have to tell stories of success. You have to relate a handful of case histories, ones where your talents as a consultant or collectively as a problem solving organization, added incomparable value to a client.

This requires two types of related skill. First being able to write well – concisely and engagingly.

The second, and perhaps less obvious skill is being able to remember what those stories are.

Organizations have an amazing habit of forgetting some of the best stuff they’ve done. A kind of corporate Alzheimer’s. They sometimes make up nonsense and bluster to cover up, and more often than not, the result is just dull.

The Copycourse is about training organizations to do the writing and the remembering and cut through the noise.

So we train them to write well by understanding the value of structure. We also train them to sniff out the brilliant bits about what their organization has actually done.

What the participants usually discover is just how much untapped knowledge and potential is lying waiting to be put to work. Obviously this is great for sales and new business.

But equally importantly it’s part of transmitting knowledge through the organization. And celebrating the people and teams who helped create it.

Just like curing Alzheimer’s in your elderly relative, the best gift you could ever give them, is remembering their achievements plus the ability to communicate.

How does the course work?

The central premise of the course is that in any good case history an act of brilliance has been committed. Rather like a game of Cluedo, where a specific act was committed with a specific motivation and at a particular place.

This course trains people in interviewing to discover all the elements of the act of brilliance. Once this is done, writing the case history is easy. At the end of the session participants will know what a good case history sounds like and how to interview for it.

The course helps people to:

• Probe both the need and the want, which triggered the original client engagement.
• Identify the act of brilliance and the background.
• Find the inspiring elements of the story and ask what caused these.
• Find what really motivates the interviewee and the organisation they represent.
• Write all of this as a clear and engaging story.