Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

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.

   

Question the status quo!

I think I'm a misfit -- and a pretty successful one.  I've always been an early adopter of new ideas.  It hasn't always been a smooth ride, but I have throughly enjoyed my consulting career in which I prod, nudge and encourage my clients to move toward tomorrow's marketplace leadership.  Most mornings, I wake up thinking, "What's going to be new for today?"   I'm optimistic about pursuing the future.   

But I'm certainly not a genius, and I don't think you need to be a genius to inspire your colleagues to stride toward tomorrow's marketplace.   Nevertheless I loved reading the Sunday New York Times' Bright Ideas "Ping" column by G. Pascal Zachary, "Genius and Misfit Aren't Synonyms, or Are They?"  (subscription required)

The best reference in the article is about a quote from Andy Grove, former Intel chairman:  "When everyone says that something is true, be very skeptical."

Heavy lifting: Leading a firm toward new marketing strategies

I'm reminded almost daily about how hard it is for organizations to change, even when doing so means making people's lives better, and yet how important it is that they just START somewhere on the road toward competitive effectiveness.  I've written that even small steps can start professional service firms on a journey toward great gains. 

Many of my readers know that I publish a monthly newsletter The Marketplace Master, in which - for 2007 at least - I'm exploring what happens when one or a few individuals take professionally courageous steps to lead their firms toward marketplace gains.  I announced in January that I would focus on stories about people "doing things differently."

Of course, the risk I faced when I announced this idea  -- and directly related to the "it's hard to change" theme mentioned above -- is that I would have a hard time finding good examples.  Well it happened for my May newsletter issue, which is about how professional service firms are thinking astutely about social networking as a marketing strategy.   Or mostly not thinking astutely about this subject, as I learned in my search.  Here's the article. 

Let me know if you have found anyone who has made progress in leading his or her firm toward adopting a social networking strategy.      

Be VERY Afraid . . . NOT!

June's Fast Company magazine just published another chapter in the "CMOs-are-doomed" horror-genre of stories.  This one is called "The Most Dangerous Job in Business."  Of course, according to Fast Company, citing a survey by respected executive search firm SpencerStuart, it's the Chief Marketing Officer. 

The piece breathlessly stokes fear with comments like "the new reality is that CMO jobs are incredibly perilous," and "Maybe the CMO post should be acknowledged simply as the "fall guy" job in the C-suite."

Frankly, I am not seeing this amount of turnover in the CMO position for professional and B2B service firms.  Sure, there is movement in the role, and it does appear to have  linkage with the advent of new firm leadership.  But I simply don't see the point about this "be very afraid" tone.  Many of my clients have served in their roles for more than five years. 

A nugget that I did find rang true follows: "So what's it going to take to get the CMO off the endangered-species list?  Perhaps a clearer definition of the position and what's expected..."  To this I say a big "WELL, HELLLooooooo."

Everyone knows I heartily endorse better "expectation-setting" in the professional and B2B service arena.  And that it's the responsibility of both the CMO-wanna be and his or her potential C-suite colleagues to improve on this.

But I reject the notion that CMOs are sitting ducks, stupidly subject to the cruelties of a capricious senior management, with simply no idea when the axe will fall.  Or if there's an axe at all.  Please.   

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

I'm awarding the "honesty" award to my fellow blogger Barbara Walters Price, who posted the following observation on her blog in response to my latest series of posts that "expert" marketers have got to ramp up on strategic skills in order to help lead their firms, and their own careers, toward greater competitive effectiveness.   

"We all give lip service to positioning and differentiating but precious few of us know how to make it happen." 

She's right, of course, but my question is, "WHY is this the case?" 

Isn't knowing how to develop operationally-rigorous differentiation and positioning strategies (not branding) incredibly critical for a senior marketer to know?  Shouldn't fee earners expect that we know how to do this?   

Some answers might be:

• There are precious few sources of cogent work on differentiation and positioning for service businesses.  I've written about these topics extensively, but that's not enough, I'm sure.      
• There is not enough of a focus on the FUTURE in most professional and B2B service firms.  Everyone is too busy thinking tactically about today, instead of how to make astute competitive gains for the future (which is where one has to go if one wants to become differentiated or to capture an improved position).  This situation makes pursuing differentiation and positioning a political football for marketers; many of us must take care to choose our battles. 

Any thoughts, folks?

 

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

I gave a speech last week to a professional association on the topic of "The Evolution of the CMO."  I was half-way through my points about how marketers need to step up their skills in quantitative analytics (and qualitative, too, but I wasn't there yet), when an audience member raised her hand and said (I paraphrase),"I don't WANT to do more work -- I already have enough to do!" 

I replied that I believe marketers need not to do MORE but instead need to evolve their roles in a new and different direction.  She replied (this time no paraphrase), "I told my boss, when he hired me eight months ago, that I would not do any math.  He agreed, so I won't do any quantitative stuff." 

I was -- and am still -- astonished at her remark.  I wasn't the only one; others came up to me to exclaim their amazement at her claim -- and how it will ultimately limit her career as a "marketing expert."

I'm convinced that her firm will, sooner rather than later, get beaten by competitors.  With a CMO who is that stubbornly blind - regardless of the question about math skills, how can they win? 

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

Here's a continuation of my thoughts on what "what makes one marketer more expert than the other."

A marketing expert finds a way to get closer to the firm's clients. This requires that marketing leaders help their firms learn more about the clients than they already know.  Of course, doing this may be a hurdle that marketers must overcome, especially in precedent-oriented sectors like law and accounting.

Michelle Golden crystallizes the feelings of many private-firm marketers when she talks about "the stifling power of partners [who are] obsessed with bathing in the same bathwater as all their competitors and fellow association members."

But a marketing expert knows that the real avenue to competitive success (both for the firm and the marketer him- or herself) is to own more nuanced knowledge about the clients than the competitors do.  If firm fee-earners and practitioners are obsessed with competitors, a marketing expert can make the case that a competitive edge can be gained by undertaking some client research.  For example, finding out about the ways decision-makers are influenced in their buying decisions.  What attracts them toward us, and repels them?  How are their buying criteria shifting from one year to the next?  What do our clients find distinctly valuable about us versus our competitors?  Exactly what makes one client more attractive to our firm than another (it's often NOT about revenues)?

Many of today's marketing team members and functional leaders don't have a working knowledge of market research and analysis techniques.  And, because most staff-side marketers have not grown up within the professions of law, engineering, management consulting, and the like, fee-earners can easily justify their marginalization (and they can continue to believe their marketers are NOT experts beyond the tactical steps they are currently managing).   

The easiest avenue to gain these skills would be to go to classes or executive education conferences on how to conduct and analyze client research or mined data from a contacts database.

Having new and competitively advantaged capabilities changes the expertise equation.  Market research and quantitative and qualitative analysis skills are a must-have in order to understand professional service buyers and "consumers" in a unique way that will benefit a firm and its clients. 

They are also a must-have in order to make gains on becoming an unquestioned marketing expert.      

Lessons I learned in 2006

Here's what I learned (or had re-validated) in 2006 about expertise-based marketing.

• Your credentials may get you in the door, but after that, it's how you behave that contributes to the growth of your business. James Brown, "the hardest working man in show business," had rock 'n' roll credentials that attracted generations of new fans.  He never forgot, though, that his and his band's expertise didn't really grow their reputation, but the way they behaved once they were in their "clients'" presence.   
• Don't be afraid to insist on your own duly-deserved recognition. How many of you saw the movie Happy Feet in the last several weeks?  How many of you knew that Mumbles' dances were choreographed and performed by tap-dancing legend Savion Glover?  Not many, according to John Rockwell's December 28 2006 New York Times article.  This situation puts into focus the very basis of "expertise marketing."  Why isn't Glover as big a brand name as Robin Williams or Nicole Kidman, whose names are prominently attached to this movie, even though his work is more than critical to its main theme?  Rockwell says, in essence, because Glover didn't require being more prominently featured.  Rockwell reminds all of us who are experts in our fields:  "To win respect, you have to do more than be the best there is. You have to fight, meaning negotiate, for the recognition you deserve." 
• Measuring client satisfaction can be a dead-end road.  Still, too few professional services firms are curious enough about why clients buy or re-buy.  I was impressed enough by Fred Reichheld's book The Ultimate Question to feature it in this blog and my Marketplace Master monthly newsletter.  It's the only book I've seen to simultaneously make a strong case for assessing client satisfaction while criticizing traditional modes of measuring it.  Reichheld suggests thoughtful, practical and meaningful ways to better understand clients' motivations.
• Telling clients the truth may be hard, but it's better than the alternative.  I hesitated to tell my clients why I had to be less-than-normally accessible during November and December.  (It's forbidden to use cell phones in hospital ICUs and heart-monitor telemetry floors).  My consulting friends urged me to tell my clients about our family's health care challenges.  I'm glad I was honest. I was in no mental shape to do a good job anyway, and pretending to be a fully functioning guru would have only hurt my good reputation eventually. 
• Telling the truth can be done well or horribly.  Those who do it well are most trustworthy.  I was impressed by how well the experts (in this case my daughter's surgeons) told us news that we found very hard to hear.  They told the truth with objectivity (telling us the facts but never insisting that their news was the final word).  They deferred to the experience of their colleagues, who they said could provide deeper illumination on a complex issue. They used examples to illustrate difficult concepts.  When they had to use professional jargon, they explained their terms.  Most importantly, they told the truth with empathy and tact.      

The sound of silence

My blog has been silent for the past two months.  I send my thanks to those of you who noticed and inquired if anything was wrong.  The answer is: yes, there was something terribly wrong -- one of my three wonderful children had her fourth surgery in three years, related to a rare form of cancer that was diagnosed in late 2003.  She's recovering now. 

I'm "recovering," too, and so is the rest of our family.  I tried blogging several times between hospital visits and helping her once she returned home, but I simply could not find the energy to say anything "signficant."  I knew my readers would understand once I got my marketing voice back, so to speak. 

Like you, my personal experiences shape my professional knowledge and the way I deliver my services.  To the extent that my empathy for others has been increased, our family's medical hurdles are a good thing.       

I send everyone my most heartfelt good wishes for a wonderful 2007. 

Is marketing talent overrated?

My November 2006 issue of Fast Company magazine features an interesting Final Word (p 116 for you hard copy readers). 

The column is called "The Expert on Experts," and it outlines K. Anders Ericsson's huge (by number of pages -- 918!) new book "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" (Cambridge University Press, 2006).  Ericsson says experts are experts because they "do things differently," and that experts really don't have any more ability than the next person.

I have spent a career helping professional service firms market their experts and their collective expertise.  But I have yet to hear a single person refer to their MARKETERS as experts.  It's as if the only expertise resident in a management consulting firm, say, are the management consultants! 

So here's my question for those of you who are trying to hire marketing talent for your professional service firm:  are you thinking of your next marketing hire as a Professional Services Marketing Expert?  Do we marketers have any idea what makes one marketer more expert than the other?  It's intriguing to imagine that we could do better at identifying our hoped-for marketing team members if we thought more critically about what it takes to be a professional services marketing expert (especially since we often end up scrambling for just the right marketing talent, and we often end up settling for someone who has simply got the right number of notches on his or her marketing belt). 

And, beyond that, what if we used Ericsson's idea that "expert" has more to do with doing things differently, than it does with just having tons of same-old same-old experience?