Ask a promoter what their company secretary does, and the answer is often a list of filings. Ask the chair of a listed company, and the answer is different: the company secretary keeps the board process honest, the governance record straight and the company on the right side of the regulator. Both answers describe the same profession. Only one of them commands a premium.
For practising company secretaries, the gap between those two views is the central positioning problem. The work has grown in importance. Section 204 of the Companies Act, 2013 made secretarial audit mandatory for listed companies and prescribed classes of companies. SEBI's recent changes mean shareholders of listed entities now approve the appointment of secretarial auditors for fixed terms. Governance, listing obligations, FEMA and insolvency work have all grown. Yet many CS practices still present themselves as a list of forms.
What the other side of the table sees
When we speak to the people who appoint company secretaries, they rarely start with price. They talk about judgment: who will tell the board something it does not want to hear, who understands the business well enough to spot a problem early, and who will still pick up the phone the night before a board meeting. None of that appears on a list of services.
Positioning around judgment
- Lead with situations, not sections. "A listed company preparing for its first secretarial audit under the new appointment rules" says more than "Secretarial audit under Section 204".
- Show your thinking. Short notes on board process, related party transactions or what a new SEBI circular means for audit committees show judgment in a way a service list cannot.
- Make the partners visible. Boards appoint people. Complete, current profiles with areas of work and recent writing matter more than a home page.
- Speak where boards listen. Roundtables for independent directors, sessions at ICSI chapters and industry bodies, and articles in business publications reach the people who make appointments.
What ICSI's guidelines ask of you
ICSI's Guidelines for Advertisement by Company Secretaries, 2020 allow a good deal: a website describing the scope of your work, professional social media, seminars and speeches, write-ups and educational content, and firm branding on stationery and in the office. They also draw clear lines:
- Avoid words such as expert, specialist, best and cheapest.
- No claims of superiority over other professionals, and no comparisons.
- No guaranteed outcomes, and no references to past success that imply future results.
- No false or misleading claims, including testimonials.
- No listings on aggregator platforms such as JustDial or Sulekha.
Read together, those rules point where good positioning does. Do not claim to be an expert. Show expertise, through writing, speaking and the quality of your advice, and let clients draw the conclusion.
Work alongside the other two professions
Many of the best mandates now involve all three professions: a scheme of arrangement, an acquisition, an insolvency resolution. The CS practice that is known and trusted by the advocates and chartered accountants on those deals is the one introduced to the board. Referral relationships across the professions deserve as much attention as any client-facing marketing.
Where to start
- Rewrite your three most important service pages around the situations clients face.
- Publish one short note a month on something boards are actually discussing.
- Update every partner profile.
- Remove every "expert", "specialist" and aggregator listing.
- Ask five directors how they chose their last company secretary.
The profession's standing has risen. The way most practices present themselves has not caught up. That gap is an opportunity for the firms that close it first.