Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

A curriculum for a services marketing leadership development pilot

In my last post, I talked about the uniqueness of the Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI) pilot as it has been conceived by me and my collaborators, the Center for Excellence in Service and the Office of Executive Programs of the RH Smith School of Business.

Here are the services marketing leadership development modules that we are finalizing for the fall 2013 pilot: Market Intelligence Gathering, Business Models, Global Branding Strategy, Integrated Marketing Communications, Working with Agencies, Internet Marketing, Marketing Analytics,  Finance for the Non-Financial Professional, Introducing New Services, Designing Channels, Collaborating with Sales, Client Relationship Management, Pricing a Service, and Communication Skills.

In my next post, I’ll outline to whom this PSLI pilot program is targeted.

The PSLI's uniqueness: cross-sector and non-competitive learning

In my last post, I summarized the mission of the new Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI) pilot program that I will help launch this fall with the Center for Excellence in Service and Executive Education at the RH Smith School of Business. The thrust of this new pilot is to help services marketers increase their functional productivity, effectiveness, and successful performance.

I am particularly excited about the PSLI and this pilot because it is an extension of a cross-sector knowledge exchange that I’ve facilitated for business and professional service CMOs for a dozen years. I have seen first-hand how much an individual marketer in one profession – say, architecture – has learned from a peer in another profession – say, management consulting. Executive search marketers learn from legal marketers. Real estate services marketers learn from financial services marketers. And so on.

This PSLI pilot builds on the individual learning exchange model, too, but this time on a company-by-company basis. We’ll bring a group of five mid-level marketers from up to five companies together to participate in an educational program. They will all learn from the same program, then work together on an action learning project in smaller groups on an actual service marketing challenge.

These knowledge exchanges work especially well when the represented companies are not direct competitors. There are fewer barriers to real learning when the participating companies can share fully.

In my next post, I’ll outline the curriculum of the PSLI pilot program.

This fall: a cross-sector professional services marketing leadership development pilot

In my last post I shared the news that I am partnering with the Center for Excellence in Service to create the first US-based cross-sector Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI).

Through this PSLI, this fall we will launch a services marketing leadership development pilot for four (and maybe five) global professional services firms.

The PSLI’s mission is to help professional and business service firms succeed in their increasingly competitive markets. The PSLI pilot seeks to educate mid-level marketers on the best cross-sector practices of professional services marketing. The pilot will especially emphasize building skills that will help them: 

• Address the unique challenges and opportunities of the professional services business environment,
• Collaborate with internal colleagues to deliver optimal marketing results,
• Understand their company’s business imperatives as it seeks to increase global market share with targeted clients, and
• Improve their capabilities in problem solving, collaboration, execution, and leadership.

This very exciting pilot represents the next step in the knowledge exchange that I believe will benefit the leaders of all professional service firms.

In my next post, I’ll outline the uniqueness of the PSLI and our 2013 pilot program. 

It's time to grow cross-sector skills for professional services marketers

The title of this HBR blog post caught my eye. "We wait too long to train our leaders." Author Jack Zenger says companies allow the establishment of "bad habits" when they expect their supervisors to lead without adequate training. He says, "Practicing anything mildly important, like say skiing or golf, without training is inadvisable. The fact that so many of your managers are practicing leadership without training should alarm you."

This is a cogent point for professional- and business service firms, whose marketers typically have to cobble together their knowledge of services marketing. Most have had no exposure, either, to the best practices of managing and growing a services business. 

I have been working on this issue for a year now. Take a look at my posts about it here and here, and my article on the issue of C-suite skills-growth here.

Professional services companies know they must grow their people's skills in order to compete more effectively. Many have begun focusing on training their leading client-facing practitioners, although in a silo'ed, "single-sector" way. Zenger says they must start earlier in the leadership pipeline, and I agree.

But PSFs and B2B service firms must also develop their marketing team members too. The costs of insularity (not exposing these future leaders to the wealth of knowledge that's available in other professions) and allowing people to become ingrained in "bad habits" are simply too high.

That's why I'm partnering with the Center for Excellence in Service at the R.H. Smith School of Business to build the first-ever cross-sector Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI).

In my next several posts, I'll outline more details, and I'll write more about why I think cross-sector skills growth is such an important issue.

 

Chief Client Experience Officer in a professional services firm?

Hospitals have them. Hotels have them. And, according to this HBR blog post, so do other B2C and B2B companies. I'm talking about a Chief Client (or Customer) Experience Officer. Caution: I'm not talking here about someone who has been designated to "look at our customers' needs and ... make their experience with [our firm] more efficient and pleasurable."

Instead, I'm talking about client experience as a strategic differentiator, in the same way that Southwest Airlines created an entirely distinct passenger experience that was totally unique from any other airline's experience.

But I have yet to find a professional services firm that has decided to:

1. create 3-5 differentiated “client experiences” that ultimately would be distinctly recognizable as their firm, setting them apart from competitors; and
2. help their people to consistently deliver those differentiated client experiences repeatedly.

One of the ways I think professional service firms could tackle this challenge is to exchange knowledge with someone who is a Chief Client Experience Officer in a services company.

Do any of you know of a (professional) services firm that has tasked a person to be a Chief Client (or Customer) Experience Officer? If so, I’d be interested in interviewing that person for a future blog post or speaking engagement with my clients.

I’d appreciate a referral.

Setting up effective professional services alumni relations programs

A CMO of a very well-respected financial services company is considering creating a structured alumni relations program for his firm. I volunteered to reach out to my senior marketing contacts about formal alumni relations programs. If your firm has such a program, we’d be interested in your perspectives on the questions below.

(If I get enough answers to merit another blog post on this subject, I’ll aggregate them and get something out!)

• What are the most successful aspects of your firm’s alumni relations program? The least successful?

• If your firm uses alumni relations for business development, is your approach active (e.g., directly asking for referrals, and/or including the alumnus in your referral outreach) or passive (e.g., saying “we’d appreciate your referrals” but no follow up)?

• What reciprocal benefits do you offer your alumni, e.g., actively promoting them for board positions, or actively helping them develop their own business? 

Professional Services Marketing 3.0

I recommend Bruce Marcus's new book, Professional Services Marketing 3.0. Like Bruce, it's a thoughtful, well-grounded piece of work that is filled with respectful observations and crisp comments on the state of marketing in professional services.I only wish Bruce's work were more widely known outside of law and accounting circles.

One of the points Bruce makes so well, in an excerpt published recently in CPA Trendlines, is about the importance of client-facing practitioners and marketers working better together. We're not talking here about simply being better collaborators (although collaboration is enormously important).

We're talking about the difference between marketers' knowing the firm’s work capabilities and really deeply understanding its practice and how practitioners think. We're talking about developing new skills -- on the part of marketers and their client-facing practitioner colleagues -- toward cross-enterprise expertise and competitive advantage.

To that end, I say "Onward!"

Leaders' retirements mean big changes for professional service firms

Here's another reason why I'm keen to develop a cross-sector educational program to help tomorrow's professional service firm leaders manage and grow their firms effectively: the impending retirements of today's baby-boom generation leaders. How well prepared are the next generation of management consulting leaders to move their firms ahead?

Take a look at my comments about this issue, in the new issue of Consult, Canada's magazine for certified management consultants.

Building skills and credentials to grow a professional firm

How are professional service firms helping their current and future leaders gain skills and credentials to manage their companies?

As yet, there is no United States-based cross-sector educational program that integrates the deep knowledge and best practices of growing a firm so that it can compete effectively. That intelligence lies inside the minds (and silos) of sector-specific associations, professional firms and individual leaders.

I want to change that. My colleagues and I are building a Brain Trust of professional service firm leaders who will serve as advisors about the creation of such a program. 

Here's an article that outlines an emerging vision for this idea. It's published by one of my collaborators, the Association for Accounting Marketing, in its new publication, "Growth Strategies." 

Contact me if you'd like more information on this initiative.

Grief + Gratitude

I am slowly returning to action after my daughter's death a month ago. It's hard, but good, to work with my wonderful clients and colleagues. So, yes -- I am grieving -- but also grateful.

I co-authored this article this summer, with Diane Schmalensee from Schmalensee Partners. It's just out now, in the latest issue of Marketing Management magazine.

The article, "Building C-Suite Skills," reviews the multiple capabilities that marketers need to develop in order to advance toward the C-suite. It offers a special focus on cross-functional, or T-shaped skills.