Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

Rainmaker, Rainmaker, Make me Some Rain

My friend Ford Harding recently asked me to review the newly published second edition of his classic book, “Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field.”  At the time of his request, I thought:  “Geez, I hold Ford in high regard, but how am I ever going to find the time to squeeze this in?” 

But I discovered how easy it was to open the book at random points, and flip pages to valuable nuggets, sensible tips, practical charts, simple forms and interesting anecdotes.  Literally, every single random page either reminded me of something I haven’t done, gave me a renewed perspective I haven’t considered recently, or illustrated a new insight into ways I myself could become a more effective professional services seller.

So, fear not, you potential readers who feel like you can’t clear the decks to read one more business book.  I’ll bet this one can actually make an immediate improvement in your revenue results.

Here are some of my reactions to some of Harding’s points throughout the book:

He says professional service firms do a poor job of training professionals to market and sell.  He declares: “If you don’t take responsibility for your own development, no one else will.”  My reaction? This statement suggests that professional service firms don’t have to take the responsibility to train their professionals; I believe they do have to take this responsibility (even however much we can debate the efficacy of training as a platform for productivity improvement).  Harding goes on to say “Don’t let the lack of a mentor stop you from learning.  Go out and take care of yourself.”  My reaction?  Yes, smart professionals should learn how to advocate for themselves as part of their own career advancement.  But that's not enough for an entire enterprise to succeed.  Harding (and others who point out the benefits of this kind of entrepreneurial action) should consider making a stronger case for professional service leaders to provide the kind of formal mentoring and training from which most professionals could benefit.   

Harding does everyone a tremendous service in that he speaks plainly throughout the book.  In my own work, I find that so much of what is not working in professional services marketing is the use of jargon that gets adopted from other business sectors, without the appropriate comprehension of the terms.  Take the term “lead generation,” for example.  Harding calls it “getting leads.”  He says, “You need to get face-to-face with a prospect in order to get the sale.”  How refreshing!

I wish the book did more to address the very real presence of the Internet, web-based social networking, or what some call “”conversation marketing.”  For example, in Chapter 8, Harding cites Rule 13: “you must be selective about who you network with.” Doesn’t this seem like a limiting mindset?  Doesn’t it ignore the importance of digital media channels and social networking?  Isn’t it a fallacy that one can be selective about networking, when indeed, especially when using digital marketing channels, a conversation takes on a life of its own?  Certainly, Harding is right to ask people to prioritize and be astute about their networking efforts.  But to assume that one person in a network is “better” than another is a one-way mindset.  Not for the digital age.

Harding offers several visuals, in Chapter 11, that illustrate what he calls the “structure” of networks.  At first, his exhibits made my head hurt!  But in fact, they appear to be quite helpful as segmenting and targeting exercises, as well as for mapping out networking relationships.

Also in chapter 11, exhibits Four and Five are excellent diagrams of the buying cycle for clients (even though that’s not what these diagrams were labeled; it’s what I perceived from them).

Toward the end of the book (on page 235, if you need to know) Harding states, “You will find pricing is the most persistently difficult part of selling.”  If that’s true, why is it addressed so late in the book?  I  understand that Harding is not positioning himself as a pricing consultant, but pricing is indeed the elephant in the room for many professional services sellers.

Ford, great job, once again, on providing real value to the field of professional services marketing and selling! 

I'm at the February 2008 Carnival of Trust

My friend Charles Green is using the blog carnival concept (a collection of blog posts that are deemed worthy of a blogger's chosen theme; I think Charlie started his Carnival of Trust in 2006.) 

The theme for the Carnival of Trust is a demonstration of business trust.  Each month, the (rotating) host selects the Top Ten trust-related blog postings from across the web during the prior month.  This month, Michelle Golden is the host, and I'm thrilled that one of my posts was selected as a Top Ten!   

Take a look at some of the other entries.  For me, the most fascinating points included:

• If you proclaim yourself to be a trusted advisor, you may be jeopardizing other's perceptions of you as such.  (Ron Baker)
• Especially In light of the American presidential primary season, Paul McCord's gripping question:  Can trust be marketed and/or sold? 

Pricing: An Elephant in the Professional Services Room?

Kudos to RainToday for launching a study on pricing in professional services (even though it only covers U.S. firms).  Some of the things the study will cover include:

• firms that have been able to charge higher prices to see what they do differently than those with average and lower fees
• how brand recognition affects the ability of firms to charge higher prices

But for me, especially as I dive into writing my next book about erasing the silos between marketing and selling in PSFs, the really big questions are these:  How do firms go about coming up with their fees, and what's the role of pricing research? I wonder how much PSFs are doing, at the executive or practice level, to understand where the market is (clients' feelings about prices, competitors' pricing practices and oh, of course, THE ECONOMY).  Do business developers and marketers actually work together on this issue? 

The answer is, I'll bet: NOT ENOUGH.  Complete the questionnaire and please prove me wrong.

I think the findings will corroborate my own research that there's not nearly enough rigor being applied to this huge marketing and selling integration issue.  Talk about a functional disconnect:  Most PSFs' pricing policies aren't policies at all.  Prices are still set too tactically.  Many hard-working business developers are charged with the huge responsibility of morphing their firms' fee structures on the fly, and justifying their decisions later.  And there isn't enough focus on the marketplace ramifications of shifts in pricing.

I told the truth -- and got hired anyway

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

For those of us -- ahem -- seasoned pros, we're supposed to have handled every type of engagement, right?  Our prices are set to match our marketplace tenure, right?   We want to be recognized for our experience, right?   

OK.  Tell the truth.  You HAVEN'T done it all, have you?  There are some types of assignments you HAVEN'T actually worked on.  Professional service marketers and business developers know that seriously UNCOMFORTABLE feeling when a potential client asks: "Have you ever done this type of work before?" or "Have you worked for a firm like ours before?"  (And we know how critically they need us to proclaim, "OF COURSE!")

Last month I had two such moments.  Prior to the inevitable questions, I had made a decision not to try to fake it in any way, but to tell the unvarnished truth.  (Which is good, because I'm a lousy liar.)  I said, "Well, no, I have not worked for a firm like yours before."   

Both times, I forced myself NOT to rush ahead with a too-anxious, too-glib explanation.  I waited and waited, for what seemed like eons, for the inevitable replies, "Uh ... well ... then, what makes you think you could help us?"

Both times, I had carefully prepared my answers.  I tried to think ahead about what would reassure these potential clients that I could indeed help them.  I addressed my shortcomings with my heart in my throat. 

And, incredibly, both times, I got hired for important marketing strategy engagements -- without having to give references (another shocker).

OK all you professional services marketing and selling gurus -- why did these great clients hire me?    

Five Biggest Professional Service Presentation Don'ts

My clients and business associates know I spend a lot of time writing and speaking about differentiation.  Imagine my glee, then, when my friend Ford Harding, author of Creating Rainmakers, wanted to know if I would join him and a consulting friend in coming up with our counsel on a single topic: “The Five Biggest Professional Service Presentation Don’ts” – things you shouldn’t say or do at a competitive presentation of your services to a potential client.

From what angle might we three approach this challenge?  How might our different orientations influence the advice we would give to a client about the same topic?   I said, “Count me in!”   

We are: a) presentation coach Sims Wyeth (www.simswyeth.com/Blog) who can help wet blankets set themselves on fire; b) myself, author of Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win;  and c) Ford Harding, who can bring horses to water and get them to drink (www.HardingCo.com/blog). 

Each of us agreed to post our “Five Biggest Don’ts” simultaneously on our own blogs.  If you want to see the “Five Biggest Don’ts” of the others, just click on their blog links, above. 

To officiate, Ford, Sims and I have assembled a crackerjack panel of fifteen totally objective judges, selected for their diversity along multiple dimensions and their sublime sense of humor.  ;-)

Suzanne Lowe’s “Five Biggest Professional Service Presentation Don’ts”

1. Don’t try to differentiate or position your firm on the spot.  Sorry, pal, your whole firm should have thought of this BEFORE the presentation.  If you find yourself trying to come up with a one-time differentiation or position just for this presentation, it’s evidence your firm really ISN’T that well differentiated or positioned.
2. Don’t promise service offerings or delivery capabilities you aren’t SURE can be delivered, or that are wildly divergent from your firm’s differentiation or positioning strategy.  You’ll regret it later!
3. Don’t copy your competitors.  Your prospects will want you to match your rivals, but this is just asking you to sink to the lowest common denominator. Don't be tempted to go there!  Rather, think of a different, MORE VALUABLE way to delight your prospects.  And make it FIT with your firm’s uniqueness.
4. Don’t forget that one of your bigger competitors may not even be those regular foes you encounter at other presentations.  It may be your own prospects, who may decide NOT to purchase your services if they can do it themselves.
5. Don’t forget to review your value proposition and pricing strategies before you present your fee estimates.  Make sure you substantially challenge yourselves before the presentation to determine where the clients REALLY seek value.  It may be they seek value for something they haven’t articulated.

If you would like to submit additional “Professional Services Presentation Don’ts,” Ford, Sims and I would be glad to pass them on for rating to our totally objective board of fifteen judges.  Just add your comment at the bottom.

(To see a rainmaking expert’s choices for "Presentation Don’ts," go to Ford Harding's blog.  To see a presentation coach’s choices, go to Sims Wyeth’s blog:  www.simswyeth.com/Blog).

I'm tracking others' insights - on Pricing and Value Propositions

I've been watching Chris Marston's blog.  At first glance, it appears he's just one more of many law-firm-management commentators.   But take a closer look.  For you non-law-firm professional service marketing leaders, Marston is one of the few who talks about PRICING and VALUE for clients. 

I love his comments on his late-summer post on the 4 C's of value pricing:  "(Say it with  me now) The Price of work has NOTHING to do with time."  Or this post, even earlier in the summer: "Outside in pricing is about looking outside of the four walls of your office building to determine what your work is worth to the client. Did you ever think to ask your client what it is worth? Why not? "

I still can't believe how often professionals -- even marcom consultants with whom I work -- are still using the hourly-pricing model, or who haven't pushed clients to re-think it themselves.  (If they did, they'd have to address their own value propositions. ) 

Marston is right on; as professionals, none of us should be afraid to find out the REAL perceptions of our value to our clients. If it means we have to push ourselves to improve, so be it. 

It's no fun otherwise. 

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. 

Ford Harding’s advice on growing books of business with clients

Here’s the final post of my four-part Q&A with Ford Harding about professional service firm cross-selling and increasing a firm’s revenues from strategically appropriate clients

Lowe: What’s your best advice to professional service firms and their rainmakers about how to grow their firm’s book of business with their clients? 

Harding: My first advice is personal change rather than institutional change:  “treat the cross market like any other market.” You need to provide just as much service, just as much attentiveness to the people in your organization, as you would to someone on the outside. Leave it to the management of the firm to make the other people want to do it more. But from your perspective, treat them like any other market.

There is a tendency to feel that because you are part of my company, you should do this for me and I shouldn’t have to work at making you do it.  That is a misguided approach, and won’t get you the results you want.

Lowe: We should think of all our colleagues as our clients?

Harding: From the management point of view, you want to create an environment in which people are encouraged to cross-sell, and grow the firm’s overall book of business with clients, and there is some incentive for doing it. But it is very tricky to try and force somebody to do it.

How to overcome cross-selling hurdles – inside, and those that clients erect

Here’s the 3rd post of my four-part Q&A with Ford Harding about professional service firm cross-selling and increasing a firm’s revenues from strategically appropriate clients

Lowe: What advice would you give a firm that is approaching selling –- even selling “solution sets” -- from a fragmented perspective?  Think of global corporations that sell in silos. 

Harding: Somebody has to be responsible for it and it has got to be a short rope. It has to be very clear who is responsible and there is not a lot of room for deflecting off onto other people.

Lowe: What about simply setting up account teams and using an account management approach?

Harding: That is part of the solution, but you also have to set up some processes for teams.  For example, “What do we communicate to each other? Who has ownership for meetings? Who can call whom? What are our strategic goals for this client over the coming year, 5 years?”

Lowe: One of the things that I have heard from clients of professional firms is that they want to resist putting all of their dollars into the bucket of one firm. One of these clients actually said to me, “I am not allowed to spend more than X percent of our annual budget on one particular provider, because of conflict of interest concerns. Our parent company tells us we have to break it up.”  How does that impede the professional firm from doing a good job of cross-selling?

Harding: If you have the right relationship with the CEO that is all irrelevant. He or she can change the rules.

Lowe: Are the clients of professional service firms drifting towards the purchaser model, increasingly using a procurement mentality?  What are your thoughts about clients becoming too fragmented to articulate their own spending levels or perhaps too centralized using a procurement model?

Harding: My prediction is that it will go in cycles in any given firm.  I can think of a particular pharmaceutical firm which has supported practically three-quarters of my clients over the past 5 years. They are buying huge amounts of professional services, particularly consulting (and other things as well). It is a very decentralized, very fragmented organization. At some point, somebody is going to look at what all is being sold and say, “Let’s put a lid on it.”

Next time:  Harding’s advice on growing books of business with clients

How Professional Service Firms Can Think Strategically about Selling

Here’s the 2nd post of my four-part Q&A with Ford Harding about professional service firm cross-selling and increasing a firm’s revenues from strategically appropriate clients

Lowe: Regarding the idea of “thinking strategically about selling solutions,” is “cross-selling” a simple way to get at the gist of the issues?

Harding: Cross-selling means selling multiple services to the same firm, in multiple geographies or multiple functional areas.  There are ways to that that are strategic, and ways to do it that are very tactical and not very effective.  It is like networking – you can do networking that gets you nowhere, or you can do networking that gets you something.

Lowe: My own focus is to help professional firms do a better job of pursuing a bigger “end-game” in the marketplace.  In order to do a better job, professional firms must ask questions like, “how can we ascertain the client’s available spending levels?” or “How can we get past the client’s fragmented way of spending money?”  What are the characteristics and processes of the firm that does think strategically about cross-selling? 

Harding: At one end is what some people call “clean-sheet of paper” selling.  You go into the client and you hear what the client needs and you design, from scratch, a solution to the client’s problem, and you package it and sell it to them.  At the other end are professionals who practically say, “I sell nails, and if you don’t need nails, I can’t help you.” But to go from being very functionally focused on “I sell X” to the clean sheet of paper selling – is an impossible step in one leap. From habit, you have a lot of people who have grown up in a silo and understand how to sell something small. Now we tell them they are going to integrate and cross-sell, and they are at a loss at what to do.

There is a half-step in between the clean-sheet-of-paper sale and the single service sale and it can be very effective for a firm, which is what I call selling solutions sets.  A solution set is where you take all of your services that relate to a particular client need, say an acquisition or merger, and when the merger takes place, everybody is affected within the client organization. The CEO – s/he needs certain things; the head of HR needs certain things, the CFO needs certain things and you can package a solution from the various parts you have and you sell somewhat of a different mix of things to different people.

But you sell the total solution to the CEO: “we are going to help you solve the merger integration, and we are going to put a package together that will take care of all these areas with “one-stop-shopping.” This solves one of the big problems of fragmented strategy implementation, and helps avoid a lot of finger pointing.  If you sell solution sets, there’s no finger pointing.  Much of what I’ve just described is in the new edition of my book Creating Rainmakers.

Next time:  How to overcome cross-selling hurdles – inside, and those that clients erect