Welcome to the first PBS blog. My intent in beginning this blog is to share information and to explore ideas. It is not intended to be technical or educational, just a sharing of snippets of information that I have found interesting or lessons I have yet to learn. I hope it will be interesting and thought-provoking, but can make no promises. I suppose that as time goes by, I will get better at this. For now, I beg your patience.

The blog accompanies our new website – an update which was long overdue. More importantly, however, our website content no longer reflected who we are as a company and what we value. And, so the challenge began – how to best communicate who we are?

It is a challenge with which I am very familiar. Industrial psychology as a practice and discipline is far less well known than our more clinical counterpart. When asked what I do for a living, my response often elicits a puzzled look. Although almost everyone has taken a preemployment test at some point in their career, almost no one has given a thought as to where they came from. Even more challenging perhaps is explaining our expertise. Although we specialize in measurement, people are truly our focus.

In the process of writing the new text, I happened upon an article on sales techniques that helped me to rethink (and rewrite) our website. Tips I took away included:

1. Think about what your potential client wants to know. For the most part, our website was written to define our focus, our products, and our services. What I had not considered until now was the clients’ perspective. Who was likely to be accessing our website? What kind of information would they be looking for?
2. Describe not only what you offer but why it is of value. We are enthusiastic about what we do, yet our website was more technical and dry than interesting. I wanted to share the enthusiasm.
3. Learn the art of presentation. Not everyone will want to review the entire website. Not everyone will want all products or services. What were my critical and key points? How could I best ensure that someone who visited our website had at least a general idea of what we do and who we are?
4. Make it personal. One of the best ways to differentiate PBS is to share some of who we are – to share what we value and how we see ourselves. What we say and how we say it should be uniquely ours.

Whether I was successful or not, the process was worthwhile. I typically spend my time thinking about what needs to be done and how to best accomplish it. I enjoyed thinking instead about why we do what we do and why it is indeed of value. My hope is that you, upon visiting the website, feel welcomed and informed. Enjoy!