Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

Book-title Envy

I stumbled across the best book title I've seen lately:  Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Random House, 2005), by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.   

The clever title is also supported by some incredibly smart chapter headers and subtitles.  Examples: "If You're So Rich, Why Aren't You Smart?", "Nobody Has to be Competent", and "It is Easier to Buy and Sell Than Fry an Egg".

This is especially intimidating, since I'm contemplating my own next book (there, I said it publicly; now I'll have to go through with it). 

My "One Piece of Advice" for RainToday readers

I took it as a special challenge to respond to RainToday's request that I submit a piece for its latest complimentary e-book, The One Piece of Advice You Can't Generate Leads Without.  You know, for a consultant who loves stretching my intellectual capital, it's hard to simply give "one piece of advice."   

I've already gotten some positive feedback on my contribution.  One reader said:

I (found) the different perspectives each of the authors took quite interesting.  While many of the authors focused on similar topics having to do with lead nurturing, lead definitions, and messaging – your piece took a different perspective that I think is extremely important – measurement. Thank you for the refreshing piece and the great tips you give on getting specific in measuring. It is a very important point that, as you note and my experience confirms, most professional service providers overlook.

I've just read my copy of this new book, and I found it relevant, candid, and helpful. (Let's not forget that I need continuing advice on how to generate leads, too!)

Take a look. 

What should be expected of "marketing experts"? Part VIII

Earlier this spring, I blogged about the relationship of expertise to marketing leadership (here, and here, for example).  With little effort, I was able to outline at least seven areas in which a senior marketer must demonstrate deep competence in order to be considered a true professional services marketing "expert."

Today, I heard about another competency.  This one is about the ability to assign resources, sometimes independent of each other, to work more effectively together than they might have separately in the past. 

Any seasoned professional service marketer knows the pitfalls of hiring outside assistance, knowing their limitations.  Marketers are judged on the performance of these outside sources, and rightfully so.  But what does one do when the outside resources themselves have limited competence, scope of services, or the special cutting-edge talents that a professional firm requires? 

In this case, a savvy chief marketing officer must cobble together an outside team that itself hasn't been able to provide the most needed services.  Take the example of two critical public relations functions: first, a seasoned and well-connected PR resource, who can tap a deep network to ensure that outside media features a client firm in extraordinarily valuable ways.  Second, an astute and time- oriented PR pro, who thinks it's a thrill to comb the daily media outlets for breaking news, in order to present the client firm's experts as quotable sources.   

This is a classic case of two separate resources who have created powerful niche orientations in the public relations service set.  But what if an outside resource doesn't feature them both?   Enter the seasoned Marketing Expert, whose job it is to bring these resources together, even if they don't know each other, and even if they may be working for separate public relations companies.

In this case, the whole is indeed more valuable than the parts.  It takes a seasoned "marketing expert" to creatively solve the problem. 

Increasingly, professional services executives will expect their marketing leaders to possess this skill.

   

Lonely on LinkedIn

Has any professional service practitioner gained value from participation in the social networking website LinkedIn?  I admit I've gone hot and cold on this site since I became a LinkedIn participant more than two years ago.  At first, I was invited to link by business associates and professionals that I knew.  It's easy to click the "Accept" button, and kind of interesting to see the contact information and descriptions of people's expertise.  I have found contact information for people with whom I had lost contact (and wondered where they landed), and I've been surprised by the "six degrees of separation" connections between members of my network.   That's the good part.

But beyond this somewhat nosy aspect of my interest in being LinkedIn, I'm wondering how it can be helpful to me, professionally.  For example, yesterday I received another in a number of occasional invitations to link to someone. 

This time, it was from someone I had never heard of.  Perhaps I've met this individual, when I've made a speech at a conference somewhere.  When I clicked on his profile, his background appeared to have some relevance to my business interests.  But he gave me no information in his invitation text about where or how we have met.  I sent him a reply e-mail, asking him to let me know where he'd heard of me.  No reply from him yet.  He replied with a plausible reason for wanting to connect with me.

In talking to some of my other business colleagues, I find they have similar puzzled responses about LinkedIn.  It sounds like a great concept, but nothing truly valuable has come of it yet.  And, candidly, I want  my "connections" with people to be worth something.  As it is now, I feel like simply a name on someone's list. 

Why couldn't the LinkedIn folks help us understand the basis for our linkages, before we commit?   Isn't there some way it could be made more personal?  As it is now, I feel lonely on LinkedIn.