Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

The cobbler's children

We've all encountered the cobbler's children syndrome. When I am in a paid consulting relationship, I find it relatively easy to name this situation. After all, isn't that one of the reasons why I've been hired by my clients?

But what if you encounter glaring examples of the cobbler's children syndrome, and you can't say anything about it? Doesn't the cobbler have to actually want help first? In the last few days, I've seen several cobblers -- extremely accomplished professionals who appear unable to apply their expertise to themselves. Being a marketing and management strategy consultant, I wish I could help these experts do a better job of building awareness about their extraordinary capabilities.

Short of playing amateur psychologist -- and probably making a mess of it -- what might I do? (Maybe write a blog post, and hope they read it?)

Suggestions welcome!

Professional service marketing in Asia

It's a sign that a sector is maturing when someone begins to study and write about it -- in this case, professional services.

It's a better sign when someone looks at that sector by geography -- in this case, Asia. 

But it's an even stronger sign of the significance of the sector when someone begins to look at a function within that sector -- in this case, marketing -- through the lens of geography. 

Robert Sawhney's new book, Marketing Professional Services in Asia (LexisNexis: 2009), does just that.  To use a thoroughly American expression, I send "high fives" to Bob. (Alright, how about the more international "kudos" instead?)

Sawhney makes well supported points, right away in his first chapter, that professional service marketing in Asia must be considered differently than one might consider it in the Western world.  As an author myself, I always appreciate it when another writer backs up his or her points with credible evidence beyond his or her own opinion.  Sawhney does that well. I'll wager that many Western PSF marketers could trim hours off their learning curve (and avoid costly mistakes) if they'd read just this chapter alone.  A few chapter 1 points caught my eye (rely on word of mouth, not advertising; be careful when trying to measure client satisfaction).

Sawhney's chapter 11 -- a substantive exploration of targeting, segmentation, differentiation and positioning -- was a bit non-Asia specific. Too bad. I'd have liked to hear Sawhney's views on differentiation in Asian PSF marketing strategies. Maintaining a pre-emptive distinction is a vexing challenge for PSFs that do business in Asia. Does a marketer need to think about differentiation differently when considering an Asian marketing strategy? Robert, tell us more about this! (Full disclosure: Sawhney cites some of my own research in his discussion of differentiation, although I didn't know this when I began my review of his book. And my research was not Asia specific.)

Robert, please write and research more on professional service marketing in Asia!   

Can PSF marketers alone make "Marketing" indispensible? No way!

I was surprised to see a revival of a 2006-07 discussion about how professional service marketers can increase their value. At the time (2006), the issue stoked me so much that I ended up writing an eight-part series (my last post in the series was this one) on what really makes a marketer an "expert."

Here's my comment on the topic. 

Mel, great points here. I mean that.

But you may be setting up marketers to be even more marginalized if you suggest it's all up to them to increase their value. (It's *way more* complex than marketers being "as compelling as possible," "diligent" or working hard to "establish your indispensable value to the company.")

PSF managers must also share accountability for improving the effectiveness of their firms' marketing, selling, and client-service processes, skills and suport functions. 

I think you should write a post about how PSF executive managers could do this. I made several suggestions about it in my book The Integration Imperative. But other minds (yours!) can add to the discussion. 

Do corporate silos serve a purpose? Well, yes they can

Do corporate silos actually offer a company some benefits?

Well, yes, they can.

For the opportunity to talk about this issue, I offer my gratitude to BL Ochman. BL is the only person to ask me that question (the very first one she asked in her just-posted interview with me) regarding the concepts in my new book, The Integration Imperative. 

Corporate silos result from a lack of or a barrier to organizational cooperation, communication and shared accountability between business units, functions and colleagues. They may cause lower go-to-market effectiveness, productivity and results. 

Most business people fall prey to the knee-jerk reaction that silos are always bad, all the time. But in some ways they can, at least in their early stages, pull a company toward greater effectiveness.  Don't we all know an "intrapreneur" who initiated a forward-thinking program that turned out to be a great idea for the whole firm? It's not always a terrible idea for management to encourage professionally passionate people to pilot new programs, right?

But when those special projects or initiatives turn into hardened processes, or can't easily be incorporated into most people's daily jobs, they become problematic. Consider the way Client Relationship Management (CRM) has affected so many professional service firms.  What is actually a good idea -- a system that helps share and manage vital client information internally -- too often becomes a rigid process, under the purview of too few people, and less-than-helpful for too many. I'm sure many of us could name corporate initiatives that feel onerous and that impede the marketplace gains the firm could be making.

Instead, those new pilots or great ideas should be developed, from their inception, with their ultimate goal in mind: integration into everyone's function within the firm. 

Digital versus paper: what's the future for professional services?

In the past several weeks, I've encountered questions about the effectiveness of digital marketing versus paper-driven communications. Today's WSJ piece "Marketers Still Prefer a Paper Trail," asserts that people are motivated to go to a Web site to buy when they see an item in a catalog. 

Some of my marketing communication friends tell me that their professional service clients are producing print newsletters in addition to (and in some cases, instead of) digital newsletters. They say, "my clients' clients are so overwhelmed with emails that they actually appreciate print newsletters!"

It's hard to imagine what will ever knock email off the PSF and B2B marketing radar screen. But PSF and B2B marketers had better imagine it.  What's the marcom frontier hold for professional service clients? 

A return to paper? A blend of paper and digital vehicles? After that, what?

Mass-customized holograms! Opt-in or push videos on your client's mobile phone! GPS-driven localized advertising! How about the changeable ads based on retinal scans in Minority Report?

Educating Business

Kudos to The Economist for launching one of its latest on-line channels, Business Education. In my book The Integration Imperative, I make a big deal about the lagging I see in business schools' adoption of new curricula, especially where it relates to professional service marketing and professional service firm management. Too many still rely on product-based models, when the world's economic engine is heavily service based.

Of course business schools aren't the only way to "educate business." What are the managing partners, executive committee members, and practice leaders doing to increase the business skills of their people, so they understand the changing marketplace in which they will always work?

And so I'm especially pleased to see this respected publication bringing a new focus to the trends and best practices of educating business.  

Gagging on a really bad direct marketing e-mail

Even though I just published a book on the topic of integrating marketing and business development, I had a very negative reaction to this organization's summary for its new e-book.

First, this pitch paints an unnecessarily negative picture of the work most marketers do. Just reading some of the verbiage (like "drudging," "rogue requests"), and the snarky tone of the first paragraph is enough to turn me off completely. Geez, if I were a marketer at firm where these situations exist, I would certainly not be interested in aligning with any of my sales colleagues!

Secondly, I disliked the picture of the two guys hugging. The implication -- that they were yelling and punching each other prior to this picture -- just seems off to me. Come on: just reading this e-book will bring "bliss?" Please.

Third, the entire summary implies that sales, as a function, is better than the marketing function. Take a look at the phrase: ". . . marketing can consistently provide sales with vital insight. . ." Hey, doesn't sales have responsibility to work with marketing, too?

Not to mention the fact that the "answer" to this challenge, according to these folks, is a marketing automation tool. I'm not sure what they mean here, and they just wasted my time teasing me. Next time, guys, quit with the cutesy innuendos and condescending terms, and tell me about the value of your product! 

Sales and Marketing: working as equals!

B2B marketers, take a look at the August 2009 CMO Survey, published by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and The American Marketing Association. I'll bet the results to-date are heavily weighted toward B2C companies. But over time, as the study becomes more well known to B2B companies, and if the study's lead researcher Professor Christine Moorman keeps splitting out B2B from B2C responses, that apparent imbalance may change.

I am especially interested in seeing a break-out of the findings on page 28 of the survey report slides -- the one with the bar chart that says "sales and marketing work on an equal basis in organizations." This is an exciting finding. But again, I wonder, "How many of those respondents are from B2B firms?"  Today, I'd wager "not many."

In my work, I found a lot of evidence that equalizing marketing and sales is what a number of professional service and B2B firms are indeed attempting. But many PSFs and B2Bs don't see how imperative this marketing / business development integration really is. And improving the combined effectiveness of marketing and sales can be an uphill battle if a firm hasn't first identified its structural and cultural impediments to integration!  

So I developed two self-assessments, for firms in professional and business service sectors to diagnose their structural and cultural integration barriers.  Unlike the CMO Survey, this diagnostic provides instant results about how to overcome the barriers specific to each firm, and is totally confidential for each respondent (in other words, I don't collect or analyze the responses). 

Winning the Professional Services Sale: My Thoughts

Mike McLaughlin's new book "Winning the Professional Services Sale" couldn’t come at a better time. As professional service firms slog through a global economic meltdown, the definition of "value" is increasingly in question. In the olden days, clients bought on "trust" and "the relationship." Clients assumed they'd get value, and sellers "held back" some manifestations of value until after the sale. Now, sellers must demonstrate value at every step of the sales process, which itself is longer and more complex than ever. 

McLaughlin clearly outlines how the selling landscape has changed, and his prose sets the stage for the remainder of the book: practical, at times irreverent (thank goodness), and reassuring. I loved his "Seven Realities of Selling Services," which he offers right up front in the book. I like the periodic boxes outlining what he calls a Sanity Check. He also does a great job in his chapter "Shift Happens: Predicting Surprises."

And, even for those of us who believe we are experienced at selling professional services, there's something new. Specifically, his outline of what every sales proposal should include. (I plan to start using this guide right away.) And, it was wonderful to be reminded of one of the axioms I learned long ago: "ask for the business."

But if I had to name one of the biggest points I took away from this book, it would be the one about being curious and fostering the continuous desire to learn. With that as a foundation, “Winning the Professional Services Sale” provides a fantastic springboard.

Great book, Mike!

In-fighting and cliquishness: the genesis of PSF internal silos?

Today's Wall Street Journal contains a book review about Matthew Stewart's new book, "The Management Myth." It's a hard-hitting indictment against the management consulting profession. 

Stewart makes some very critical points about his tenure as a management consultant, one of which hits directly on my observations about internal silos in "The Integration Imperative." In particular, take a look at the following quote from the Wall Street Journal's book review:

"The consultant co-workers he describes are a collection of intelligent nut-jobs devoted to corporate in-fighting . . . he implies that their conduct is symptomatic of the profession."

It's the "corporate in-fighting" comment that caught my eye.

As an alumna of the management consulting profession, and a consultant to a broad spectrum of PSFs, I too observed the tendency toward cliquishness among firms' insiders.  Stewart's book paints the world of management consulting firms quite negatively; I'm not willing to go that far.

But he and I would probably agree that there's too much internal jockeying and political competition with one's peers. And especially in private firms, with their "up or out" cultures, internal competition can create -- or exacerbate -- the internal functional silos that significantly impede the achievement of marketplace gains or value-delivery to the client.  

Whether one agrees or not with Stewart's bigger point -- that the field of "management" needs a course-correction back to higher-minded principles -- it's definitely time for PSF executive managers to look at the structural and cultural silos within their professional service firms, and to reconfigure their processes, skills, and support functions toward the achievement of optimal outcomes for all.