Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

What compels you?

Since January of 2006, I have been involved on a volunteer basis with a loosely formed group of individuals from four different faith communities in my town to help bring relief to the victims of the Katrina Gulf Coast hurricane.  We concentrated our efforts on Biloxi Mississippi.  From January through October, our group, self named Bridge to Biloxi, has facilitated work teams of more than 150 youth and adults to work with the victims of the hurricane:  removing debris, demolding houses, serving the hungry, and facilitating recovery wherever we can.

In October, our group committed to work directly with our Biloxi partner, Hands On Network Gulf Coast, to rebuild the home of one single family. The response has been overwhelming for everyone involved in our Bridge to Biloxi effort, as well as those individuals with whom we've worked in Biloxi. In short order, this disparate group of people has been able to communicate the compelling message about this family's need for a home, and we have received volunteers from across the country.  It has been a breeze to raise the funds necessary to rebuild this modest home.  Now, with a very successful effort nearly behind us, we are beginning to contemplate our next iteration.  It looks like we have the makings of a brand-new nonprofit, one whose genesis spans religious faith, ages, and any other demographic category you can choose.  The progress is palpable. The rewards are tremendous. The new relationships are deep and strong.

I have watched myself carve out time that I don't have to work on this rewarding project.  I have watched others dig into their pockets to get themselves down to Biloxi, and return wide-eyed with stories of spiritual nourishment and new friendship. 

And yet, in my dealings with my clients and business associates, I am struck by this refrain: mundane accomplishments, enacted routinely, with little or no sense of positive purpose.  No, no, I'm not saying that our marketing jobs are worthless or meaningless or terrible.  But in some of my posts to come in the next few days, you will hear about the lack of professional passion with which many of us go about accomplishing our marketing duties.

I would wager that many of those internal clients with whom we work -- the accountants, lawyers, architects, consultants, etc. -- probably feel a similar sense of the mundane.  With such a lack of motivation, and a lack of a compelling purpose to pursue, no wonder it's a challenge for marketers and their key stakeholders to achieve significant marketplace gains.

Is there something we can do about this?  As professional service marketers, I think we are in a unique position to help our colleagues remember what gets them up in the morning; to help them imagine new and more compelling ways to use their expertise to bring about positive changes. 

Maybe I'm naïve, but there must be some way we can tie our work back to meaningful pursuits and accomplishments that stimulate our professional passion and bring a palpable sense of reward as we collect a paycheck or build equity in firms.  And I can only imagine being the clients who might be the recipients of such professional passion!

Project Runway and professional services marketing

I admit it: I'm hooked on Project Runway.  Each Wednesday night, I'm glued to the TV at 10:00 PM eastern time to find out about the latest challenges, and to see who will be Auf'd next . 

At first I was a little embarrassed by my curiosity about the success or demise of these individual designers.  What, me liking a reality show?  Perish the thought! 

Now, I have begun to see two distinct themes playing out: 1) real-time guidance to professional service practitioners about the importance of listening to clients in their eventual success, coupled with:  2) the judge's requirement that each designer must incorporate into each outfit his or her own distinctiveness in a forward-thinking way. 

Both of these guidelines are entirely appropriate for professional service practitioners, whether they are engineers and architects, actuaries or risk management consultants, lawyers, accountants, you name it. 

In this week's final scene, two designers are left standing.  The judges remarked that one did not listen to his client carefully enough, thus leaving her disappointed in the final outcome.  He was allowed to stay until the next round, and hopefully he'll have learned his lesson about meeting -- if not exceeding -- the client's expectations.  The eventual loser, a designer named Robert Best, had been warned in previous episodes to increase the distinctiveness of his designs -- a reminder of the importance of differentiation if I ever heard one. 

There are elements of the program that I don't like, especially the sniping between designers, and Heidi Klum's voice drives me up a wall.  But, little by little, you can see each designer growing professionally, and becoming a better client servant who offers uniquely valuable creations.  What a great lesson for professional service practitioners! 

Do I hear a call for "Project Runway: the MBA's"?  Or how about "Project Runway:  IT Services Consulting Challenge!"  Hmm . . . . might not be such a bad idea. . . .

Network your way to success? Puh-LEEZ!

I'm up to my ears with books about how to become more personally effective in making business connections, building relationships, and networking my way to success.  Why, all of a sudden, are there so many books about relationship-building and "connecting?"  I admit I liked last year's book by Keith Ferrazzi, "Never Eat Alone."  I know Keith, and he has the professional services chops to offer credible tips for accountants, actuaries, engineers, lawyers and other professionals to (gather the courage to) engage people in a personally valuable way. 

So, what pushed my puh-LEEZ button?  It was seeing Jeffrey Gitomer's book "Little Black Book of Connections: 6.5 Assets for Networking your way to RICH relationships" featured on the 800CEOread blog.  This book, among other things is ". . . about how to say the right things to the right people in the right circumstances to make the right impression." 

I admit it: I have never heard of Jeffrey Gitomer ("the country’s #1 sales trainer").  He's probably a fabulous expert.  I could probably learn a lot from him.  But I'm put off by what appears to be glib promises, and packaging that seems a bit over-the-top ("The book is small. The cover is classic black cloth. The four-color text graphics makes it attractive and easy to read ").   

Why am I so peevish about this?  I know that getting professionals to become better "people-people" has never been more important in steering professional service firms to achieve marketplace gains.  Most of the senior marketers I know have, at one point or another, had to offer (even require) training for their experts on building relationships.   (And of course there's the inevitable alternative:  not requiring professionals to network at all ("Our professionals simply need to be the most skilled experts that they can be.  We've created a separate sales team to do relationship building and networking!").  But that's for another post.)

So here's the question:  What's the best book you've ever read about relationship building, networking and the like for your firm's professionals?  Why?  What's the best "take-away?"  

Quality is your best salesperson

One of the most important axioms I ever learn about professional services marketplace leadership was from Carl Bochmann, a former Booz Allen Hamilton partner, who taught me that "quality is your best salesperson."  No matter which professional sector I've advised, be it accounting or executive search, management consulting or architecture, or any other, this lesson applies.  It also applies to my own firm. 

It's especially painful, then, to watch the unfolding events related to Boston's Big Dig.  Last night, twelve tons of cement from one of the Big Dig tunnels collapsed on a vehicle, killing a passenger.  The Massachusetts Attorney General is calling this "a crime scene," and "Reilly's office already has begun issuing subpoenas to those involved in the design, manufacturing, testing, construction and oversight of the panels and tunnel."

You can imagine the unbelievably negative marketplace reputation that will be assigned to the many professional firms that were involved in this huge project.  Your firm -- and mine -- might feel somewhat smug, that at least our work doesn't result in people dying!  But one need only look as far as Enron and Arthur Andersen to be reminded of the massive marketplace shifts that occurred after that scandal -- and those that we are still feeling. 

We could be at the early stages of seeing this happening again in the design, engineering, construction and construction management sectors. 

I don't care what your profession is, or how clever your marketing strategy might be:  quality has got to figure on your company's ground level. 

"At what cost?" Moment-of-Truth Decisions

Last week, with what I thought was reasonable clarity, I made a decision to attend an event.  This week, after having attended the event, I realized that it actually "cost" me more -- not in money, but in the expenditure of personal energy -- to attend than I had originally thought it would.  I regretted my decision.  I vowed to myself that I'll make a better decision next time. 

Wouldn't you know it, I now see several blog posts about the impact of decisions on business success and the exceedingly nuanced question "what will it 'cost' me if I make this decision?"

Clients making decisions:  Just as I fooled myself into thinking I had made a good decision, so too with clients, who may not fully understand the real reasons why they decide to purchase our services or to discontinue them.  It's up to us to understand the basis of their decision-making.  Two blog posts offer interesting perspectives. 

• Michelle Golden urges professional service firms to do a better job of understanding the real reasons why clients decide to switch their loyalties.  Her post debunks the notion that we should accept at face value the reasons we lose or upset clients. 
• David Maister touches on the topic as well, in his post about getting honest feedback, and that people's feelings play a lot more into their decisions than they let on.   

Making decisions for our own firms:  I could spend the next week bemoaning the number of times I've seen professional service firms make horrifyingly bad marketing management decisions.  I'll bet you could offer millions more examples.  Thankfully, some thought leaders are trying to get to the bottom of the decision-making conundrum.  I found two articles, from respected management consultancies Booz Allen Hamilton and Bain & Company, both on decision-making. 

• The latest issue of Booz Allen's strategy + business features an article "Why Managing by Facts Works." The authors say that executives too often ignore the facts, and make "gut" business decisions based on fads or hunches.  They say that evidence-based management leads to competitive advantage. 
• Bain's latest results brief features an article "Who has the 'D'?" The authors examine the findings of their study that only 15% of surveyed companies practice effective decision-making.  Interestingly, they found that high-performing companies do fairly well in making brand positioning decisions. 

if you're in a marketing leadership role at your professional service firm, I encourage you to dig deeper when participating in critical marketing decisions.  Ask yourselves how honest you are being -- or others are being with you.  Examine more than just the shallow areas of impact -- like money or resource allocations -- of your firm's marketplace decisions.  Ask about the other areas of "cost" to you or your firm if those decisions don't pan out. 

Making it real

I think I'm on an "authenticity" jag. Yesterday, I blogged about the possibilities of using live webcams in the professional services environment, deliberately, as part of an experience-oriented marketing program.  Today, I read Tom Peters' post on the MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog in which he publicly admires Robin Wolaner's book, Naked in the Boardroom ("the best book on strategy and tactics for women aiming to make it big in business" ). Unbelievably, I have never heard of this book; I usually gobble up books about women in business and women entrepreneurs. 

Several of Wolaner's nuggets, as cited by Peters, are fantastic endorsements of my reality-as-marketing-strategy kick:    

• "NAKED TRUTH # 2: Business is personal."
• "NAKED TRUTH # 9: Showing honest emotion usually helps you in the workplace." 

I know professional service firms work hard to find the sweet-spot of their cultures, and then to build awareness about those cultural sweet spots through their marketing programs.  I know PSFs have accepted the importance of manifesting their trustworthiness -- which of course requires authenticity.  Professional service marketers don't need a lecture about my "be-who-you-are" infatuation. 

Nevertheless, I challenge all of us to find a way to harness our firms' authenticity to create a compelling client experience.  Marketers, ask yourselves:  in our firm's focus to manage its brand identity, have we lost something uniquely "real" in the process?  Are we packaging our firm too slickly, too professionally?   What's personal about our company, and how can we let our clients see it?   

New targeting efforts - are PSFs ready?

Adweek this week cited a Forrester Research report that marketers are wary of emerging forms of online marketing, including this sexy-but-murky thing called social networking. 

For professional service marketers, this is not new news, just confirmation of what they already know.  Hey, it's hard enough right now to manage all the marketing programs across our matrixed businesses!   Tap me on the shoulder next year, when the digital landscape has shaken out a bit!

Buried in the Adweek article, though, is a fascinating tidbit:

While marketers expressed reluctance to try the newest forms of social media, they plan to beef up their spending on new targeting options for finding customers. Nearly three quarters said they either use or plan to try behavioral targeting in the next year.

Mark my words: Targeting and Segmentation are the next big PSF marketing strategies.  The firms that improve their effectiveness in this arena will take huge leaps in their competitive landscape. 

Social Networking or Communities of Practice

A client recently asked what I know about an arena that she calls "communities of practice."  She was interested in hearing about how professional service firms are intentionally facilitating peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges amongst clients, prospects, sector influencers and other thought leaders. 

Talk about a unique way to build client loyalty!  Call it what you want:  Communities of practice . . . social networking . . . guided conversations . . . whatever.  No matter if it's undertaken both in person and through electronic means, and if your firm doesn't "fear having all the answers," it can offer substantial benefits ("reciprocal value" as articulated by a leading firm in the field, Tapestry Networks) to everyone involved.  And, happily for marketers, facilitating a social network inevitably positions the group's sponsor (in this case my client's firm!) favorably in front of each of these audiences. 

If your PSF has begun creating its own set of social networks, and you can offer some insights about this type of initiative, please share your comments here.  Specifically,

• Provide a few details about the network.  What's it about, who belongs, what's its format?
• What were your expectations about building a "community of practice" or a "social network?"
• What are your lessons learned, especially those relevant for a professional services firm?