RainToday.com Note: This is the first article in a two-part series. In Part One, Cucka explains the importance of tangibilizing your services and maintaining a specific point of view for your firm. In Part Two, Cucka will discuss how to build a mental model of your firm for your clients, and will offer advice on making the internal decision of how best to brand your firm.

Evidence—it's all you have when you're marketing and selling a consulting service. You don't have the benefit of a store shelf, a fancy box, or a tangible product that clients can see and touch. But like a product, evidence has to be packaged. It has to be made tangible. It must be made to linger.

All consultancies use evidence of one sort or another—white papers, case studies, testimonials, bios, and other statements of qualification. These are mustered to support the proposition that the firm offers the greatest insight, the smartest people, the most proven processes to develop answers to strategic and tactical questions. But unless your firm is among the few that have been able to establish equity in “smart,” it is difficult to differentiate one kind of smart from another.

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