Market your weaknesses!

All organizations, including business enterprises, have their set of weaknesses. Understandably so, since organizations are congregations of people who have come together to achieve a particular objective (getting rich, being one of the popular ones,) and humans have weaknesses.

Before proceeding, one must distinguish between weaknesses and what a firm chooses not to do. A pure-play strategy consultancy may choose not to do implementation. In such a situation, “strategy implementation” cannot be considered as a weakness of the firm (In fact, it may be a competitive differentiator in a positive sense.) Weaknesses are those gaps in the firm’s repertoire which actively hinder the firm from achieving its objectives, stated or implicit. For example, if the strategy consultancy in question does not have robust financial modeling skills, it may be considered as a legitimate weakness.

Please note that in this post, I will use business organizations and individuals in business interchangeably. Basically, I am going to rely on the truism – Organizations are living
organisms (Is there such a truism?)

When an organization has weaknesses that actively impede its achievement of its objectives, it has two choices – change the objective or plug the gap. While the first choice may score higher on creativity (or desperation,) most firms attempt the second when faced with a similar situation. However, that may not be enough. While battling the weakness is important, it is equally or more important to battle the “perception of weakness” among the firm’s target market. In many businesses, especially service businesses, perceptions are often equally (or more) important than the actual product. If customers continue believing that the firm has a particular weakness, even after it has been plugged, the effort goes in vain. However, if customers perceive that the weakness has been plugged, things are most likely to improve (though it may soon be back to square one if only the perception has changed and not the product.)

In my opinion, an effective way to manage this “perception of weakness” problem is to actively market this weakness among target customers. By “market,” I do not mean sell. I mean, making the weakness an integral part of marketing pitches, conversations and collaterals. I mean actively acknowledging the perception of weakness while engaging clients, and refuting it clearly and logically if it is not true or enumerating the steps being taken to plug the gap if is true. I believe that this strategy works for multiple reasons.

Foremost, it builds trust. As any salesman who sells consistently and in a sustained manner will agree, at the core of sales (or business development, if you so prefer) is trust. In both professional and personal relationships, if the choice is between the most capable and the most trustworthy, most of us will go for the most trustworthy. Trust builds the necessary comfort, bonhomie, openness and even friendship between the client and the service provider which capability alone often fails to achieve. More importantly, a serious buyer would have done his homework and will be aware of such perceptions of weakness anyway. Ignoring such obvious perceptions or trying to brush them under the carpet will make the seller appear opaque and bearing hidden agenda and will lead to distrust. Proactively admitting and discussing such perceptions will convince the prospective client that the seller is willing to go “open book” with him.

Second, it shows that the firm is self-aware, and therefore stable and secure. Like self-aware individuals, self-aware firms actively seek out their own weaknesses and plug them and over time, emerge stronger than before. Like deluded individuals, firms which do not spend time on reflection lose stability and reliability, no matter how correct their intentions may be.

Third (though this may appear crafty), by proactively acknowledging and discussing that one (or a few) weakness, one effectively implies that it is strong in all other relevant domains. Imagine a consulting pitch with five competitors battling it out for an account. Suppose the client has articulated six factors which will drive the final selection. Typically, if it is a serious client, the homework would be solid. The client would have internally evaluated each of the five competitors on the six factors already and developed an opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of each. Harping on strengths will not serve any purpose in such a situation – it will either bore the client (if he knows it’s your strength already) or confuse him (if what you are saying contradicts what he has researched.) However, if you pin down what is popularly known as your weakness, you will immediately have his attention (it will resonate with what he has researched) and his trust (since all he was interested in was how you plan to plug that particular weakness anyway.) I strongly believe that the second approach has a stronger chance of success.

Finally, such an approach usually earns full marks for humour, since it is of the self-deprecating kind. Imagine how refreshing it will be for a client to meet a consultant who can laugh at himself, instead of the stuffy, self-important, pedigree B-school types!

I want to end this post by recounting what led me to form this opinion. I work for a small strategy consulting firm which prides itself on hiring only from IITs and IIMs (with the occasional whiz from Harvard or University of Chicago thrown in.) I went to neither IIT nor IIM (I studied in BITS, Pilani and XLRI, Jamshedpur, both of which regularly feature among the top 5-7 universities, though marginally below the IITs and IIMs.) So when I interviewed with and eventually joined my present firm, I had to face quite a few jibes (all good-natured, of course) about not having “made it” to the IITs and IIMs. Over time, I learnt that the best way to deal with these jibes is to convert it into a self-deprecating joke – “Hey guys, I’m the one who didn’t go either to IIM or IIT! Ha ha!” And it worked! Not only did the jibes die down, people started trusting me more and pushing me towards greater face-time with senior clients!

I also started using this self-deprecating brand of humour to introduce my firm to outsiders – “I work for a firm where each employee has an IIT or IIM against his name, except two – One is me (BITS, Pilani and XLRI) and the other gentleman has Harvard against his name!” Almost invariably, this introduction succeeded in conveying how “great” my company is, and by extension, how “great” I am.

Looking back, I think this tactic worked because of the following reasons:

• At the outset, it showed that I studied in two top institutions
• By inverse logic, it hinted that I must have excelled in some way beyond the ordinary. Why else would such an exception be made? (I honestly don’t know why this exception was made though!)
• It shows I am secure – I am fiercely proud of both my alma mater and I met and studied with some of the best people I have met in my life there (including my wife!)
• It showed that I was aware that I would have to stretch that much extra to match up – and such stretching would often lead me to excel
• Finally, that I have a sense of self-deprecatory humour
  

An important lesson for me, in retrospect.