What happens in a one-day strategy workshop

Booking a strategy workshop usually means persuading someone else it’s worth a day of their team’s time. That’s hard when you can’t say what the day involves. It’s also the part people least like paying for. Everyone is happy to pay for the making, because you can see a website or a logo. Nobody wants to pay for the thinking. But the thinking is where the golden nuggets are: who your audience is, what they need to hear and what success looks like. So here’s exactly what the day involves, from the first email to what happens after.

Before the day: what we ask you to send

We do the reading beforehand, so the day is spent deciding rather than catching up.

A couple of weeks before, we ask for what you already have: the website, the sales deck, recent proposals, the last campaign, and whatever sales actually sends out, which is often different from what they’re meant to send. If you have customer feedback, reviews or brand work from a previous agency, send that too.

We also ask you who needs to be there, and what would make the day worth it.

That second question matters more than it sounds. At the start of the day we put one question on the wall: what does success look like, and how will you measure it? Everything after that gets checked against your answer.

Who’s in the room

Four to eight people. Everyone with a stake in the answer, and nobody who’s only there to watch.

That’s usually marketing, sales, someone who delivers the work, someone who talks to customers every week, and whoever makes the final call. Sales is the team most often left out and the one that matters most, because they’ll be the ones using the words.

The CEO’s role needs thinking about before the day. There’s more on that in who should be in a brand strategy session.

It runs in person, at your offices or somewhere neutral. EUS ran theirs at Nuthurst Grange, with everyone together for the day. People commit to things they’ve said out loud in front of each other, and that doesn’t happen in the same way on a video call.

Morning: audiences and what they need

We start with your buyers, not your services.

Most B2B businesses have two to four audiences that matter, and they want different things. For each one we map three things on the wall: what makes them start looking for help, what they’re stuck on, and what you do about it.

That map is often the most useful thing to come out of the day. When we ran it with Bis Henderson, a recruitment business with three divisions, one sticky note in the interim column said “Don’t understand IR35 and need help.” Those five words became a whole section of their new website, answering the objection before anyone has to pick up the phone.

We also look at who buyers compare you with, and what makes you different from them in ways a buyer would care about.

Afternoon: value pillars and messaging

Then we work out why someone should choose you, and how to say it.

We take every reason the team gives for buying from you and cut them down to three or four value pillars, each with proof behind it. If you want to see how that part works, here’s how to build your value pillars.

Then we set the tone. We place your brand on a set of scales, such as formal or casual, reserved or outspoken, serious or light, against a competitor you name. “Our tone of voice” stops being a matter of opinion and becomes something you can point at.

The facilitator’s job all afternoon is to keep the room heading for an answer. Everyone writes before anyone talks, so the quietest person, who often has the best customer insight, gets heard before the loudest one. And because we’re from outside the business, we can ask the obvious question nobody inside wants to ask.

By the end of the day you’ve decided. Not discussed. Decided. It’s my favourite piece of work, because of the look on everyone’s faces at the end, when they realise they had the answers all along. People leave relieved, and excited about what comes next.

What you leave with

The words, written down. Not a to-do list.

After the day we write it all up: the direction, your audiences, your value pillars and your messaging framework, including what to say to each audience. It’s written to be used in proposals, on the website, in campaign briefs and by whoever joins next month.

• One answer, agreed by everyone who matters. It gets decided once, with all of them there, so it doesn’t get reopened by whoever missed the meeting.
• Something to settle arguments with. Agreed audiences and value pillars turn “I don’t like it” into “that’s not what we said”.
• Words ready to use. Your team can brief an agency, write a proposal or update the website the same week.
• An honest next step. We’ll tell you what we think comes next, and whether you need us for it.

What happens next

The website is one possible next step. It isn’t the only one.

Some teams go straight into a rebrand or a new site. Others take the messaging into their sales material, their content or their systems, and keep the site they have. We’ll tell you which makes sense for you, including when the answer is that you don’t need us for the next bit.

Because the decisions are written down, they don’t fade the week after. New work gets checked against them, and so does anything an agency sends back. One thing we won’t do on the day is design anything. Design comes after the thinking, never before it.