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.