Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

Social Networking and Professional Services: an oxymoron? Part 6 of 6

Here's Part Six of my six-part conversation about professional services firms and social networking, with Microengagement’s Tim Gilchrist and Steve Fisher.

Lowe: What are your predictions for the way the professional services will or will not embrace social networking and its byproduct, social media?

Gilchrist: You have a fundamental change in the way people prefer to do business.  For example, in the legal services arena, you have LegalZoom, a semi-crowdsource entity gobbling up market share in the legal services world; what they have done is simplify the process.  [For traditional law firms] 70% of their effort is expended in selling the product, and the other 30% is in the execution.  Now, take that model and flip it upside down, and you get 99% execution and 1% sales.  and it is extremely effective.  I think that will be replicated across many, many other type of services.

Fisher: Whether it is going to be two years, five years, or ten years –leading edge firms are going to embrace this.  How quickly the rest of the firms are going to catch up, I just don't know.  The ones that do are going to have the competitive advantage.

Social Networking and Professional Services: an oxymoron? Part 5 of 6

Here’s Part Five of my six-part conversation about professional services firms and social networking, with Microengagement’s Tim Gilchrist and Steve Fisher.

Lowe: In many professions, there is almost a procurement mentality, where potential clients issue RFPs and firms respond.  Will social networking change the way professional or business-to-business services are purchased?

Fisher:  It doesn't have to change unless businesses want to be more efficient about [purchasing their professional services].  If businesses don't take advantage of [a social networking model], they are not going to be leveraging speed-to-market, flexibility and different strategic solutions.  And that is about competitive advantage.

Tomorrow: Fisher and Gilchrist make predictions about professional service firms and social networking 

Social Networking and Professional Services: an oxymoron? Part 4 of 6

Here’s Part Four of my six-part conversation about professional services firms and social networking, with Microengagement’s Tim Gilchrist and Steve Fisher.

Lowe: Professional service firms are very client-oriented.  But in order for this social networking paradigm shift to occur, it's got to be the client of the professional service firms who wants to work differently, or who wants to receive value differently.  Will the clients of law firms, accounting firms, architecture firms be willing to receive value differently; value that they collaboratively develop with their professional service providers?

Gilchrist:  Either in product development or service delivery, you have 'x' number of staff who are smart about such-and-such.  That level of experience and intelligence stays relatively the same, even as the company progresses in time.  If you engage in a social networking-like exchange of knowledge [like Microengagement's Virtual Executive Roundtable], you stand to geometrically increase the amount of knowledge you can deliver to your customer.  And, you gain the advantage of stepping outside the boundaries of the company and bringing ideas in.  That is a lot about what 'crowdsourcing' social media is.  It starts very organically, with people who are willing to exchange knowledge rather than the people who are forced into a dog and pony show.  Social networking is based on a partnership mindset; it's not anything that is staged.

Fisher: There are many different avenues today – some more focused than others – to try and access subject matter experts.  [An example of social networking could be a brainstorming session [in which a] business leader has access to four or five trusted friends or colleagues.  One perspective might be customers or consumers.  Another might be distribution channels.  Another perspective might be from an organizational development standpoint.  You could bring these people together and spend a couple of hours bouncing ideas off of them, not only getting their individual perspectives, but getting their discussion among themselves that adds value to their perspectives.  From the result of that conversation, you are a whole lot smarter about specific issues. 

Monday: Will social networking change the way professional services are purchased? 

Social Networking and Professional Services: an oxymoron? Part 3 of 6

Here’s Part Three of my six-part conversation about professional services firms and social networking, with Microengagement’s Tim Gilchrist and Steve Fisher.

Lowe: When do you think the business world is going to "get it" about social networking, and what will it take?  Do you know of any good examples of social networking from the professions?

Fisher: Whenever you have a profession that depends on that certificate on the wall that says, "I have the degree," you tend to think you know more than the customer does, and in many cases, you do.  But I think you become less sensitive at looking at customer needs. 

Gilchrist: You can see the flip side of that in consulting as well, through the Ernst & Young product called Ernie, where they are trying to get more contact with the customer and have sacrificed a great degree of control to extend the customer relationship.  Then there are all the new companies (like ourselves) where you cannibalize traditional value chains, leaving only the customer interface.  This is a very close parallel to what happened in software 15 years ago, where the value chain moves up to the customer, and everything else becomes vended out.

Tomorrow: Will professional service firms' clients want to be socially networked? 

Social Networking and Professional Services: an oxymoron? Part 2 of 6

Here’s Part Two of my six-part conversation about professional services firms and social networking, with Microengagement’s Tim Gilchrist and Steve Fisher.

Lowe: I’ve watched as professional firms are beginning to embrace blogs, podcasting or other social media techniques. Do you think these firms have embraced a strategy of social networking, or do you think they are just feeling their way?

Gilchrist: Part of the beauty of the whole movement toward social networking is that a lot of these companies are left with no choice. Look at YouTube, which sold for $1.65 Billion; you can’t ignore that. In the end, it’s a good thing. Companies that otherwise would not engage their customers at all now are having to do so. The market conversation will continue with or without them. The smart ones are going to sit down and think ahead about things that might happen, like when customers design and produce TV commercials [about their firm] and put them on the Internet. Look at the example of Microsoft’s Channel 9 and Lego: at first suing their own customers for hacking software and then embracing them and turning it into part of their production (Lego).

Lowe: When do you think the business world is going to “get it” about social networking, and what will it take?

Fisher: A lot of business-to-business companies I dealt with did not “get” even talking to their customers on a regular basis, even through just traditional media: getting on the phone or conducting a feedback survey, let alone leveraging the new social media. So the answer to the question is: it depends upon the company and how customer-oriented it is. You might find that 20-25% of companies say they are really close to their customer, and the other 75%, to varying degrees, are either not that close or don’t even bother to talk to the customers at all. It’s not in their comfort level. Inertia is a big factor.

Gilchrist: The thing I like to focus on is the new crop of kids, call them Gen Y or whatever. I refer to them as ‘natural born crowd sourcers.’ Think about just a few of the facts of their upbringing and how they think. Look at Gen-Y’ers, and contrast that to a 40-year-old. We did our homework alone. They wouldn’t know what that is. For us, ‘play’ involved getting on a bike and riding. They just jump online. So they really do approach collaboration differently. Their heroes are not the sort of brilliant misunderstood geniuses that overcame everything; their heroes are more the (famous) people who got where they are by collaboration.

Tomorrow:  Are professional service firms less sensitive to clients' needs than they could be?

Social Networking and Professional Services: an oxymoron? Part 1 of 6

Many of my readers know I publish a newsletter called The Marketplace Master™ as a companion to my book, Marketplace Masters, How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win.

The focus of my May 2007 issue was social networking -- arguably the strategic springboard for professional service firms’ embrace of social media – blogging, podcasts and other digital conversations. I figured I’d have an easy time finding firms that have considered the strategic implications of deploying digital “conversational” marketing and business development vehicles before plunging ahead.

I figured they’d have thought about how profoundly “social networking” is already changing their marketplace (actually, I believe, for the good), with the way it breaks down the barriers between the exchange of knowledge, and the way it stimulates a two-way, community-oriented conversation.

I had a devil of a time finding a professional firm that has devoted substantial thought to social networking. As I engaged in my own social networking to find the best examples I could find, I bumped into Tim Gilchrist and Stephen Fisher, co-founders of Microengagement. They had some fascinating observations that deserve some air time. Here’s Part 1 of my 6-part Q&A with them.

Lowe: My impression is that professional service firms are enormously unprepared for how social networking will shift their marketplace. Is this your experience? Why do you think this is so?

Fisher: That rings so true, based on my experience of about 12-13 years of consulting. Some of the reasons have to do with pride: “We are very smart guys and we can figure this out ourselves”. There is very much inertia against getting on board with social media and I think that is going to change over time.

Gilchrist: There is a certain hubris going on in the business world, where people in positions of control do not want to include even their own customers in the decision making process. A book I was interviewed for, The Cluetrain Manifesto, really turned me on to the power of seeing the market as a conversation (a conversation with your customers), and the power that that has. The fact is: most professional firms actually lock their customers OUT from idea / brainstorming parts of product development and service development.

Fisher: It very much is the “not invented here” mindset. The idea of calling somebody for additional expertise beyond what we had was very much an anathema to us.

Lowe: I’ve watched as professional firms are beginning to embrace blogs, podcasting or other social media techniques. Do you think these firms have embraced a strategy of social networking, or do you think they are just feeling their way?

Fisher: I think a lot of people are very overwhelmed by all the different choices. A lot of them don’t completely understand the differences between the types of social media and, from a strategy perspective, what will really fit their business, as opposed to my experience at my consulting firm years ago.  We wrote a quarterly newsletter. We put in some neat charts and graphs and wrote about timely topics. We sent them out to existing clients and we got some phone calls. Or we conducted seminars where we would invite clients to come together and share information. These were very much ‘old media’ techniques and it still does not mean they are not relevant. But this is a whole new world.

Tomorrow:  crowd-sourcing, Gen-Y'ers and how professional service firms should move with their market

Grill Debbie Weil about blogging

Many professional service firm marketers and managers are on the fence about the value of blogging for their businesses.  Take a look at Debbie Weil's blog post inviting people to grill her during her September 20 teleconference about the rationale for blogging.  Now that's bold. 

(Weil is the author of "The Corporate Blogging Book.") 

Professional firm web sites that generate leads

I am well known for encouraging professional service firm marketers and management leaders to do better at looking outside of their personal and professional confines, to truly embrace an outside-in mindset about marketing and growing their firm. 

This is hard to do.  We humans are instinctively interested in what we ourselves think, feel, know, or want to know. We are inside-out people.  But it's a competitive imperative to continuously resist this natural trend.  The firms that can exhibit and act on "Outside-In" thinking are the ones that acquire, retain, and grow their business with the best clients. 

A new study, just published in the July /August, 2006 issue of Consulting Magazine, corroborates this principle.   This time, the platform is web site ratings for firms in four sectors -- management consulting, IT services, accounting and law.  Take a look at the link to the study (and embedded PDF from Consulting Magazine's article Download 9A_Canon_6020_Exchange_08082006-055705.pdf ) to see what Edwin Hastings and Bob Buday (The Bloom Group) have to tell us about how professional firms stack up against each other in the lead-generation effectiveness of their web sites.  (Is your firm rated?  Even some great firms' web sites fared poorly in Hastings and Buday's web site analyses.) 

Even though Hastings and Buday evaluated the websites of only the largest firms, their points are applicable to professional firms of any size.  Their criteria for rating each firm's web site are firmly grounded in the "Outside-In" theory. 

If  you're not thinking "Outside-In" about the way your potential buyers seek information about your firm and how they use your website to make buying decisions, you'd better get cracking.   

Professional firm CMOs: unprepared for their roles?

I'm not the only one wondering about the appropriate evolution of the CMO function.  Take a look at Judith Rothrock's guest column on the dealarchitect blog.  No shrinking violet, she writes:

. . . the weakest executive position in technology, in terms of appropriate practitioner experience and knowledge is the Vice President of Marketing - the CMO.

Wow. She goes on to rap technology companies for picking marketing leaders from the wrong ranks.  (Those of us in the professional services arena could match her, example for example.) 

My advice to business-to-business and professional services firm leaders:

1. Print out Rothrock's suggestions about what should be a CMO's best skills and experience. 
2. Take this list to your next executive committee meeting.
3. Start a conversation today about how your firm can drastically improve the functional purview and its recruitment of its next chief marketing officer. 

Tomorrow's marketplace gains depend on it.

Nature calls

Who can help being mesmerized by live digital images of eaglets being hatched and nurtured right in their own nest?  Not to mention images that record real-time dramatic events like the largest chick killing its youngest sibling in order to get more food and protection from Mommy and Daddy eagle?

This is what I learned this morning about the “Bald eagle cam” that since January has been capturing minute-by-minute views of a Maine bald eagles' nest, and a companion weblog about their daily activities. The webcam and linked weblog has attracted bird watchers and bloggers from all over the world.

Fascinating stuff.  It's the quintessential bird's eye view of real life unfolding, better than any trumped up television reality show.  Of course, my readers will probably tell me that it's "nature" that makes these images and unfolding events so compelling, and, indeed, it is quite an "experience" to feel like you're in the nest with this eagle family.

It's the experience part of this story -- and the technological aspects of it -- that has set the stage for my post.

Professional service marketers are just beginning to address the possibilities of creating and repeatedly delivering a differentiated client experience. So far, at least from what I've seen, they've succeeded only as far as relatively static brand management will let them go.  I think it will be some time before professional service firms can figure out how to harness the creation and delivery of unique client experiences like DisneyWorld, where visitors experience the ultimate fantasy, or Ed Debevic's restaurant in Chicago, where diners relish the comedically fake rudeness of their servers.

You know where I'm going with this line of thinking: what would happen if professional service practitioners set up live web cams in their own environments?  Not for quality control, or productivity monitoring, or information-exchange video conferencing, but as a way to give clients a bird's eye view into the real workings of their service provider?

Of course, I'm not suggesting it's fine to breach the confidentiality of privileged client matters or broadcast private company information. But if hospitals, awash in HIPAA regulations about patient privacy, can figure out a way to broadcast live surgery, for goodness sake, why can't professional service firms harness the technology and unique intimacy offered by live web cams as part of their experience-based marketing programs?   Wouldn't it in fact be more compelling than slickly packaged podcasts and Internet video?  Wouldn't it be a powerful element of a relationship marketing campaign?  Wouldn't it be a fantastic credibility builder and trust generator?

But then again people can be more ruthless than animals, and it would take a confident and visionary professional firm to go this route.  Call me crazy (and many will):  I think it's worth a serious look.