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The Death of Boring White Papers

Guest post by: Mark Satterfield

Article Overview: As the Vice President for Human Resources for a $750 million diversified manufacturer, Jason seemed to be on the hit list for every consultant and headhunter on the eastern seaboard. It wasn’t that he didn’t use their services, in fact he was desperately in need of some specialized assistance, but finding just the right advisor was quickly becoming much harder than he anticipated. One thing was certainly clear-he wasn’t going to find what he needed from his existing network of contacts. That track had been lapped multiple times. Thus, he’d put the word out three weeks ago that he was open to learning about new firms and experts. Since then, the trickle of white papers and reports that came across his desk had turned into a veritable tsunami.

The Death of Boring White Papers

Jason Cornish was a habitually early riser. As a result, the offices of Wakeman Industries were usually dark upon his arrival. Threading his way through the warren of cubicles, softly lit by the morning sun, Jason stopped for a brief moment outside his office.

He’d left early the previous day-the unopened and unread mail still in a pile on the edge of his assistant’s desk. With a sigh Jason picked up the bundle and began to sort through it.

As the Vice President for Human Resources for a $750 million diversified manufacturer, Jason seemed to be on the hit list for every consultant and headhunter on the eastern seaboard. It wasn’t that he didn’t use their services, in fact he was desperately in need of some specialized assistance, but finding just the right advisor was quickly becoming much harder than he anticipated.

One thing was certainly clear-he wasn’t going to find what he needed from his existing network of contacts. That track had been lapped multiple times. Thus, he’d put the word out three weeks ago that he was open to learning about new firms and experts. Since then, the trickle of white papers and reports that came across his desk had turned into a veritable tsunami.

“The problem”, thought Jason, “was the mind-numbing boredom of sorting through all this. Damn, can’t any of these consultants learn to write something that someone might actually want to read?”

He stared blank-eyed at a 37 page, embossed report with the grab-them-by-the-eyeballs title of, “The Integrated Implementation Of Leadership Values-How The World’s Most Successful Companies Achieve Superior Performance Through An Empowered Workforce.”

“Amazing”, reflected Jason, “could they get a title that was both more consulting-speak and yet more boringly generic? There’s got to be a real art to that. I wonder if they teach that at Harvard.”

Jason put down the report with a sigh and glanced at the pile in front of him. Something got his eye. Yes, it was another white paper, but there was something about this that caused him to pause. Perhaps it was the first sentence. It read:

“They all look the same to me” thundered Mike Sullivan to his assistant, “How in the world do they expect me to decide who to hire if they all sound, look and read the same?”

Jason reached over and picked up the report. “Now this is different”, he thought, as he settled back in his chair and began to read.

It’s estimated that less than 10% of business books that are purchased are actually ever read. If business books that someone actually pays money for are so seldom read, how small is the readership of white papers and free reports? And more importantly, how can we increase that percentage?

To find an answer we conducted an admittedly non-scientific study. Two follow up surveys to people who had requested two different free report. Let’s see how many of the reports actually got read and if anyone remembers anything about them. Although the two companies that agreed to participate in our non-scientific study offered different services, they were both in the human resources consulting field.

Off we went to see what we could learn.

In the first study we enlisted the services of a call center and placed calls to 275 people who had requested our client’s free report. We reached 195. The rest didn’t respond to repeated voice mail messages although we stated the purpose of the call. Despite positioning the call as “research”, it’s fair to guess that some percentage of them thought this was just a disguised sales pitch.

Of the 195 we talked with, a meager 23 said that they had actually read the report. Follow up questions made it clear that an additional 60% had started to read the report, but quickly gave up. That turns out to be a very significant statistic.

The subject of the report we were tracking discussed 7 mistakes that executives commonly made concerning a particular business problem. We asked the 23 who said they read the report to name 4 of the mistakes. How about 2? One? To their credit 75% of those we spoke with were able to name one mistake.

Admittedly many of these mistakes were somewhat “blinding grasps of the obvious” so it’s hard to determine whether they knew the answer as a result of reading the report, or whether it was knowledge they already had. Still, given the amount of work that this company had put into writing and producing the report, these results were sobering.

On we went to our second survey.

Our sample was slightly smaller, consisting of 226 people who requested the report. However, 101 people agreed to speak with us. Again the report’s message focused on mistakes executives made around a particular business issue. When we asked a series of similar “recall” questions, an impressive 65% could name 3 or more of them.

Obviously the second report resonated to a far greater extent than the first one. Even more importantly, the message from the second report was remembered and retained.

So what was the difference? I imagine you can guess the answer. In much the same way as our lead character Jason Cornish, introduced in the beginning of this chapter, was drawn to one of the white papers that sat on this desk-so too were our survey participants drawn to one report and not the other.

The simple difference? One conveyed facts. The other told a story.

Certainly something to think about.

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Article Tags: guerilla marketing, marketing services, sales leads, sales presentation, sales prospecting, sales training, white papers



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