What's Your Firm's Story?

In the last few posts I've been telling a few stories to get you thinking. But now for a question - What story are you telling your clients?

If you had to make up a fairy tale about how you treat your customers from initial fee quote to final billing, what would it be? My guess is many accounting firms (and legal firms, and just about every company as well) would have something like the following:

* We're princes and princesses in some areas. Giving really good service.
* We're ogres in other areas - mean and grumpy.
* In fact, even within each area we have some princes and some ogres!
* I definitely think some of my colleagues have fallen asleep under a magic spell.
* We don't really have a unified story we give the client, but a mish mash of how things have developed over time.

The other thing I'll bet is that you either currently have a 'mission statement' or tried to put one together in the past. My experience is, though, these are often boring and nobody is interested because people had little participation in making them. But what if you asked people to put together the story they wanted to portray, and decide what role they would be in? Telling stories has the ability to create real enthusiasm and set a bench mark for how you act.

Think about what story you and your firm are telling and let me know what you've found. I'd be interested to hear if anyone (beyond Disney) has taken this approach in some way.