There's been talk recently about the new way that people are buying services: in small chunks.
- When I attended an audio conference call on Wednesday, presented by the Consultants News editor Jess Scheer, he cited research by ITSMA that IT projects are getting smaller, taking longer to sell, and involving more people to sell them. The "getting smaller" part caught my attention.
- A new book, The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson (editor in chief of Wired magazine), although not targeted solely toward professional service firms, says that "the future of business is selling less of more." Anderson's research finds that business sellers are increasingly having to focus on smaller and smaller niche markets, satisfying all of them but for smaller-sized and "unbundled" sales.
Are others seeing this phenomena? Are professional service firms destined to "get small" in order to maintain or grow their revenues?
If so, what will this mean for marketing and business development? More moving parts? Mini-marketing plans? Chopped up business development programs? Micro-practices?
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