“Cross selling: more than selling from Point A to Point B”

The June newsletter issue of The Marketplace Master™ featured a look at how individual professional service firm leaders can creatively encourage colleagues to “do things differently” in building their firm’s book of business with clients.  I’m grateful to Ford Harding, president and founder of Harding & Co., for helping me touch base with a number of professional firm leaders who are making good progress in increasing their firm’s revenues with strategically appropriate clients.

In gratitude for his help, and for his newest contribution to professional service firms’ thinking about selling and cross-selling (the reissue of Harding’s influential book, Creating Rainmakers), here’s a transcript of my 4-part Q&A with Ford Harding.

Lowe: In our 2006 research study, “Increasing Marketing Effectiveness at Professional Firms,” respondents ranked “increasing the firm’s revenues with strategically important clients” LAST among their five most highly ranked strategic marketing goals.  Is this true just for our respondent base last year, or are you seeing this too?   

Harding: I think that is highly variable.  I can think of one of the big four accounting firms, and they are very actively working to increase their share with specific clients.  In fact, I’d say they are over-resourcing this process.  Frankly, the big accounting firms have been more effective at cross-selling services than a lot of other service firms.  Too successful, if you agree with Mssrs. Sarbanes and Oxley.  The head of strategy at one of the big HR firms told me that they are already working with the majority of the accounts they most want to work with, so growth must come from expanding those relationships.

Lowe: Professional service firms are typically structured into service lines or practice areas, which are often matrixed with geographical, functional and industry groups.  No wonder cross-selling is perceived to be so challenging!  Is there a better way?

Harding: The traditional thought is that you sell Service A, and as you finish A , then you sell Service B, then C – that is very hard to do for a variety of reasons.  Instead, the skilled Rainmakers sell a small portal service that gets them in the door.  This is usually some form of diagnostic.  That gets them working with the client management team, where they can build momentum for a larger sale.  So, during this diagnostic they sell a vision of a total solution complete with a business case.  This solution envisioned requires several of their services and maybe other firms’ services, too.

Lowe: Doesn’t that then require some fairly strategic thinking about the service portfolio that that firm has to offer?

Harding: Yes, and how to use several of the firm’s services in a building block method that allows them to construct solutions to different client needs.

Lowe: Are the good firms thinking about cross-selling from this service portfolio perspective, and the others are not?

Harding: The good rainmakers are; I don’t know that many firms are.

Next time:  How professional service firms can think strategically about selling