Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

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. 

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

I've been ranting in a series of posts lately about what should be expected of marketing experts (and of course what we should expect from ourselves). Fiona Czerniawska's article on thought leadership last week from Mike McLaughlin's fantastic Management Consulting News brought new perspectives. 

Czerniawska reported on her research about the comparative amount of thought leadership activities of several global consulting firms. Her remarks triggered my renewed focus on the differences between a firm's publishing for volume's sake versus (IMO) the more competitively potent thought leadership that uniquely benefits a firm's clients.  Czerniawska agrees: 

In a crowded market it’s important to be a thought leader rather than a thought follower—to find the topics or angles that others haven’t considered—the white space.

This is where the rubber meets the road for marketing experts: to know the difference between a puffed up writing activity ("let's publish a white paper!") and competitively advantaged intellectual capital.  Marketers (and a firm's practitioners) should have the professional bravery to ask themselves: 

"Do I have the the intellectual heft and internal political influence to tell my fee-earning colleagues that they need to develop more cutting-edge intellectual capital than they currently have?"

"Do I have an excellent grasp of three things:  our clients' access to beneficial solutions; the state-of-the-art thinking in their industry; and the thought leadership output of our competitors?" 

There are a few firms who have made thought leadership a central part of their competitive strategy.  Czerniawska's research focuses on the management consulting arena; McKinsey, Booz Allen, and Bain among others.  For those of us who follow the marketplace of management consulting firms, it's a no-brainer to see the cutting-edge thought leadership output of these and a select few others.  Czerniawska's work (thought leadership itself) will provide further clarity on what is and is not thought leadership.

No matter what professional service sector we may consider, though, it takes client- and competitor-savvy marketers to drive their firms toward the embrace of powerful thought leadership (and not just noise). 

For a firm that wants to tap "the thought leadership white space," it will take

• a marketer who is extremely well grounded in that firm's service portfolio, and who knows where those services fit in the panoply of intellectual capital and services that the clients can access. 
• the firm's management to support the marketer's deep interaction with the firm's practitioners, to both mine the knowledge that resides in the practitioner's' heads and to prod and push where it appears that intellectual capital is dated. 
• a firm's management to support that marketer's contact with clients to gain new perspectives about what's really new and simultaneously beneficial.

These marketers are what I would call "experts."   

Where are the clients in Competitive Intelligence?

Last night, I saw a 30-second TV ad called "Business: Inspiration" on Visa's new "Life takes Visa" campaign. Maybe my brain has been cramped these past few days, but I reacted as negatively to this pitch as I did to seeing yesterday the marcom materials for Jeffrey Gitomer's new book.  (And I'm a Visa card holder, too.) 

The spot features several scenes of business people in a meeting; each scene features what appears to be professional services people wondering what another firm would do, supposedly about solving a particular business challenge.  Each spot strongly implies that competitors are being discussed.   

Gag.  My reaction is strongly negative to almost everything about this ad.

• The title of the spot is awful.  There's nothing inspirational about what's going on in these scenes.  Each meeting's attendees look bewildered, and the visual props imply that these business people are only playing catch up.  I've never seen any business professional become inspired by being a copycat. 
• What is Visa's point?  We are supposed to think that "Life takes Visa." After watching the people in the ad ask "What would the other guys do," are we supposed to think that they will rush out and use their Visa cards to beat the other firms at the same game?   It just doesn't make sense. 
• The whole notion of asking "what would the other guys do" implies an orientation toward competitive intelligence.  Yeah, competitive intelligence is a great idea, but certainly not under the circumstances this ad portrays:  last minute, scrambling, clueless.  If I were their competitive intelligence consultant, I'd put a halt to the meeting immediately and try to set them on a more strategic journey about researching competitors.

This whole issue brings me to a larger point about competitive intelligence.  Why, oh why, would any professional service firm undertake competitive intelligence efforts and not include the clients?  So many firms display almost morbid interest in their competitors; it seems they have forgotten where the most valuable intelligence really lies, and that is with clients! "Really," I'd say to anyone interested in undertaking competitive intelligence, "when would any such effort not include client perceptions about the competitors' emerging capabilities and how those competencies match up with the clients' evolving needs?" 

Pay attention to shifts in advertising and PR strategies

Most of the professional service firms I observe are early in their learning curves regarding how to embrace social media -- blogging, podcasts, Internet communities.  Most, except for the largest firms, still shy away from advertising.  (Only 5% of the more than 375 respondents from our recent study "Increasing Marketing Effectiveness of Professional Firms" labeled Advertising as a "best results" initiative over the last three years.)   

For those professional service firms considering ways to harness social media vehicles in their marketing strategies, some wrinkles are under way that should be monitored. 

• The continuing shift of advertising from traditional electronic media -- in this case, television -- to the Internet, including blogs.  Take a look at a recent news clip announcing ACNielsen's plans to track TV viewership of commercials (WSJ registration may be required).  Pundits predict this will drive advertisers' to shift their ad campaigns even more quickly to the Internet.  Blogs increasingly are incorporating advertising, even though my quick review yesterday of most professional service-oriented blogs indicates this has not happened in our arena yet. 
• Big PR holding companies are making moves into providing services related to buzz marketing and social networking (WSJ registration may be required). Recently, WPP Group and Interpublic Group have both made acquisitions or investments in online communities like myspace.com. 

I urge professional service firms to pay attention and consider ways to harness these shifts.  We must commit to making intentional decisions about how to incorporate social media into our firms' marketing strategies.

Let's not get caught marketing with the best buggy whips, when everyone else is driving cars! 

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. 

Clients in control

Recently I've ranted about how professional service firms need to do more to embrace the strategies and tactics of social media, with its underpinning of client participation.  In one blog post, I urged professional companies to start getting comfortable with what I called "reality marketing," to the point that they embrace experience-like web cam views of them at work. 

Of course, I realize many professional service firms wouldn't touch this notion with a 40 ft. pole, even though it's a great idea!  But I can't let go of the idea that professional firms need to shift their marketing programs to embrace the very real possibilities of clients controlling their message. 

There are some excellent -- and painful -- examples of how this is happening already.  For example, a Comcast customer (and blogger, of course) recently videotaped a technician who took a nap on his couch during a service call.  He posted it on his blog, and from there it has spread like wildfire, shooting huge holes in Comcast's "It's Comcastic!" campaign.  Other examples are Ben McConnell's online diss of American Express, and the way mainstream media picked up a disgruntled customer's recorded complaints about trying to cancel his AOL service. 

Professional service firms should be lauded for their strides to capably manage their client relationships.  Marketers should be lauded for their strides to embrace social media.  But there is an intersection somewhere in between these two efforts that I fear may leave some firms vulnerable. 

I believe it will be the marketers who can create a compelling case for preparing for the inevitability of something like this.  If you need a quick source for creating just such a case, take a look at Jackie Huba's fantastic post, "The five steps of how a story spreads." 

Harnessing word of mouth

How serious are professional service firms regarding word-of-mouth about their firms?  I read an interesting post by Jackie Huba, coauthor of the great book Creating Customer Evangelists, and blogger on the Church of the Customer blog. 

Jackie's post features some excerpts from a study about how often buyers verbally discuss various brands and companies.  It's a great reminder that these numbers can be tracked, and of course measured. 

I spend a lot of time encouraging professional service firms to increase their objective measures and longitudinal tracking of their marketplace progress.  Here's some evidence that even the most incidental brand awareness can be monitored -- and it doesn't have to be incidental either. 

I urge professional service firms to get serious about harnessing word of mouth!

Question:  does your firm deliberately include word of mouth (or buzz marketing) as a formal element in its marketing programs?   Why did your firm take these steps, if it has?  If not, why not?  What are your lessons learned?   

Professional service firm identity management - Part 3

Here's Part 3 of my discussion on identity management in professional service firms. 

In a recent post and separate article, David Maister comments on the challenges that professional service firm leaders have in sticking to their strategy.  I've seen it happen myself: a firm determines a course of action, and then allows itself to be derailed when a "too-hot-to-pass-up" marketing opportunity comes along.  Maister bemoans their urge to be all things to all clients.

I believe this problem stems from multiple sources.  Professional service firms leaders have yet to truly understand that their "identity" is not the same as their "strategy."  In the absence of a robust strategy, one that requires specific actions and can be evaluated afterwards, PSFs end up pursuing a "who we are" approach to their growth goals. 

Unfortunately, many professional service marketers exacerbate this problem by urging their firms to coalesce around "identity," as if having an "identity" will help make real progress in the marketplace.  Instead it's only a stand-in, and marketers end up watching helplessly as their firms careen from marketplace opportunity to marketplace opportunity.  True growth is elusive.   

A firm's identity should be secondary to its go-to-market strategy.  Michael Perla wrote a good piece about the challenges and rewards of strategy on the MarketingProfs "Daily Fix" blog recently.   He quotes Sun-Tzu, the well-known military strategist and author of The Art of War.  "Strategy without action is futile, and action without strategy is fatal."  Notice that there is no mention about identity here at all. 

Maister provides great evidence of how professional service firms are mixed up between their identity and their strategy: it's the phenomenon of firms providing "full-service," or "total solutions."  This is simply a smokescreen for a firm that hasn't had the guts to pick a narrowly focused set of services, a well-targeted group of targets and segments, a deep and differentiated value proposition, a well-thought-operational infrastructure, and an objective evaluation process to measure it all. 

Geez, no wonder PSF marketers end up urging their firms to choose an identity!  It's their only alternative in the absence of real strategy. 

My question: what ammunition do professional service marketers need to effectively address this dilemma?  Can they wean themselves from the temptation to let their firms wallow in discussions about identity, in the absence of a potent marketplace strategy? 

Professional service firm identity management - Part 2

Here's Part 2 of my discussion of Identity Management issues for professional service firms.

Building an undifferentiated identity around a celebrity spokesman.  A few days ago, Larry Bodine's blog featured a post about accounting firm J.H. Cohn tapping Yankee manager Joe Torre to be its celebrity spokesman.  This move certainly will bring the firm some short-term attention, and likely will stimulate copycat moves from its competitors. 

But it begs a larger question:  what about the selection of a celebrity spokesman will really help a firm to favorably differentiate against competitors?  With all due respect to J.H. Cohn, and I admit I have had no contact with anyone in this firm, isn't this marketplace move really just a stand-in for a potent differentiation strategy?  Certainly, Joe Torre's persona appears unimpeachable, and, one could argue that a professional service firm does indeed enjoy increased visibility by aligning with a celebrity brand character.  Accenture has done this very effectively for years with Tiger Woods. 

Nevertheless, I'd rather see PSFs create brand characters from within their own ranks, a move that executive search firm Egon Zehnder International used very effectively by promulgating the very unique and robust intellectual capital of its founder, Egon Zehnder himself.  Marketers of a certain age will remember some fantastic brand characters of the past -- Victor Kiam for Remington's electric shavers, Peter Lynch for Fidelity Investments, and the founder of Wendy's, Dave Thomas.  Effective brand characters exist today -- Virgin's Richard Branson, Southwest's Herb Kelleher and of course the inimitable Warren Buffett.  But each of these folks is not only a "celebrity spokesman;" they literally help shape the unique identity of their companies. 

My question:  Will the celebrity spokesman phenomenon expand in the professional services marketing arena?  And if it does, what does that portend for firms' quest to develop a favorable differentiation platform?   

Professional service firm identity management - Part 1

I've been intrigued in recent days by several discussions about the complex issue of "identity management" for professional service firms.  I'll address these in the coming days, with a separate post that tackles an aspect of this complex subject. 

Here's Part 1.

Identity misinterpretation.  Malcolm Gladwell writes about the personal-branding phenomenon, Cesar Millan, "The Dog Whisperer."  For those of us in the expertise-based marketing arena, Cesar Millan represents a marketer's dream and a nightmare.  He's a dream because: his expertise is in high demand and is likely to stay that way for the longer term; he has a unique, credible and powerful positioning; he has a "branded" methodology; and he's a natural extrovert.  He's a nightmare because of the identity management challenges that inevitably surface when an expert has to be interpreted in small bites. 

Gladwell's astute remarks point out how easy it is to misunderstand the intellectual capital of an expert when one only gets to encounter that expert in short snippets, in this case small video clips of Cesar Millan in action.  (Several of Gladwell's readers voiced their strong objections to Millan's harsh techniques.) Gladwell recounts how he took the time to observe Millan's approaches in greater depth, and saw those techniques applied in a deeper and fuller context, so that he truly understands how powerful they are. 

My question:  As PSF marketers embrace marketing communication channels like Internet video clips and podcasts, are we mindful enough of the implications of the quick-take showcase of our firms' individual brand characters, versus the deeper exposure that purchasers inevitably need in order to assess a complex set of methodologies?  How many of our firms and practitioners are being misinterpreted by potential decision makers, and if so, do we know about it?