Make it clear quickly
Get your message through to busy clients. Clearly, quickly, efficiently.
…
Improve your client updates and pitch documents
This website is the home of One Three Four. It’s full of ideas that will help you improve your firm’s research reports, client briefings, newsletters, and pitch documents.
To explore these ideas click a keyword in the tag cloud on the right or a highlighted topic on the left. Or scroll down to see recent posts.
We’ll help you produce the know-how updates that clients want
Professional services firms, law firms, and investment banks produce a lot of know-how updates. These updates may be research reports, e-bulletins, web pages, seminars, or pitch documents, but they almost always fail to focus on what clients want.
Clients want documents that put the most important points first, are easy to read quickly, and arrive in a practical-to-use format. Know-how updates that don’t focus on client needs risk the firm’s reputation and revenue.
We can help you improve content, format, and process
The same thinking applies to all content formats. Particularly pitches. Even telephone and face-to-face conversations. We can help you with:
- Effective-writing training for updates and pitches. Our writing training helps lawyers, research analysts, and business-development people.
- Practical tools. We create clever Word templates that make it easier to: produce sharp updates and pitches; compile and re-use content.
- Ways to make your updates stand out. We make client-focused changes, and use formats that make the most of the law of shiny things.
…
12 April 2009
Bob Quick's top secret briefing was over-exposed, and poorly formatted. We've put together a before-and-after version of the briefing document as helpful guidance for anyone who has to get the facts across quickly to time-pressed readers (like prime ministers, clients, and prospects).
More
6 March 2009
We thought it'd be interesting to compare Mr Obama's use of the tricolon with Mr Brown's. We know it's not fair – one's a world-renowned orator, the other's not – but it offers some useful lessons. For business writers, and maybe for political leaders too.
More
16 February 2009
Tag-clouds give website users an easy way to find content on particular topics – users don't need to know in advance which section of the website that content has been tucked away in. But website-designers don't like them because they rain on the information-architecture parade.
More
14 February 2009
The law of shiny things works like this: magpies can’t tell the difference between a diamond ring and a bit of Kit Kat wrapper. And humans aren’t that different.
A new delivery format or an extra bells-and-whistles feature will attract client attention – even if it’s not a step-change improvement. (Penicillin was a step-change improvement, touch [...]
More
14 February 2009
Improving updates, briefings, and newsletters isn't hard, but it does take focus. We'd like to share our pet mnemonic with you – Running Animals Beat Crawlers. Hopefully it'll help with that focus thing.
More
8 February 2009
Know-how updates need product features, but they're often weak or missing. We've created a parable on the value of product feature (based on the Golf and the Allegro).
More
8 February 2009
Lawyers who use numbers and data will stand out from the crowd
There’s a myth that lawyers don’t ‘do’ numbers. Believers say it’s because lawyers live in a world of words where numbers don’t get a look-in.
We’re less convinced – 0ur view is that business is pretty numbers-focused, and lawyers are part of business. Numeracy may [...]
More
8 February 2009
Text tables show your readers that you’re trying to help.
Text tables give you a flexible way to sum up complexity. They’re a really helpful feature in any update, bulletin, article, newsletter, or seminar handout. Or pitch. Or pretty much any document that you can think of.
Clients value them as they summarise, and allow you to [...]
More
6 February 2009
There's just no way to soften the blow – it may be worse if your clients do read your updates than if they don't. Few law-firms think about updates in terms of the risk that they pose to the firm's reputation – and revenue. But it's time to think again.
More
