Before
he wrote The Empathic Enterprise: Winning
by Staying Human in a Digital Age, global business performance consultant Mark
Brown was one of many independent advisers helping firms and
individuals improve their business performance via leadership development and
executive training.
Mark wasn’t always as fully intellectually engaged
as he wanted to be, but he liked his work. To expand his advisory/consulting
business, he toyed with the idea of writing a book, but he wasn’t entirely sure
what his core message would be.
He began working with a strategic content advisor/marketing
expert, who
looked
over his original idea and concluded, “You can do better.”
Mark
recalls, “After we looked at the competition, I realized there were thousands
of books out there on the very general topic of how to improve business
performance. I wanted to create my own original material, and with my consultant’s
help, I realized I had the knowledge to write about strategy. This was very
enlightening, and it set me on a different path.”
This new path highlighted Mark’s realization,
garnered through his consulting work, that the casualty in an era of increasing
reliance on technology was the human touch. After careful analysis, Mark concluded
that in several industries, people wanted more human touch, while in other
industries, they wanted less.
This
was a turning point for Mark. He decided to write about the increasing over-reliance
by companies on technology, how the customer experience was suffering as a
result, and the need for balance between “touch and tech.” In addition to
framing a problem many were aware of but no one had defined, he offered a
roadmap for fixing the imbalance.
To
further enhance his book’s marketability, Mark took the advice of his marketing
coach and created an ancillary tool around his book that would get his foot in
the door of prospects, an assessment grid that measured how empathic an
enterprise was in meeting the “tech versus touch” needs of its customers.
As Mark had hoped, The Empathic Enterprise was the catalyst for clients to both engage
and re-engage his consultancy. His book immediately garnered rave reviews from
existing clients as well as prospects who approached him for help assessing and
balancing their “touch versus tech” scales internally and externally.
Mark
comments, “Almost immediately, the book gave me a right to sit at the table, a
right to play, if you will. It moved me into a brand new space, the empathy and
technology conundrum. People wanted to talk to me about this idea; they wanted
me to be a thought partner with them. Basically, the book expanded my portfolio
and gave me more areas where I can serve clients and make money while being
fully intellectually engaged.”
Today,
in the leadership programs he facilitates, Mark gives away two copies of the
book “raffle style” at the end of each program. He already incorporates content
from the book into these courses, and participants are always pleased to
receive a signed copy. He also gives copies to potential clients and refers
editors to the book as well as to his online writing when pursuing
opportunities for freelance articles.
Regarding
book sales, he notes that word of mouth, his personal networks, and
incorporating book content into his client work in leadership and strategy have
been the most effective techniques, while online marketing has been less important.
Looking
ahead, Mark is in the process of developing a new expertise – coaching for
innovation – and is finding interesting synergies between innovation best
practices and some of the key concepts in The
Empathic Enterprise. He comments, “I expect to meld those fields and
resources going forward and to leverage this in my work with clients as well as
in additional book sales.”
