Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

Chief Client Experience Officer in a professional services firm?

Hospitals have them. Hotels have them. And, according to this HBR blog post, so do other B2C and B2B companies. I'm talking about a Chief Client (or Customer) Experience Officer. Caution: I'm not talking here about someone who has been designated to "look at our customers' needs and ... make their experience with [our firm] more efficient and pleasurable."

Instead, I'm talking about client experience as a strategic differentiator, in the same way that Southwest Airlines created an entirely distinct passenger experience that was totally unique from any other airline's experience.

But I have yet to find a professional services firm that has decided to:

1. create 3-5 differentiated “client experiences” that ultimately would be distinctly recognizable as their firm, setting them apart from competitors; and
2. help their people to consistently deliver those differentiated client experiences repeatedly.

One of the ways I think professional service firms could tackle this challenge is to exchange knowledge with someone who is a Chief Client Experience Officer in a services company.

Do any of you know of a (professional) services firm that has tasked a person to be a Chief Client (or Customer) Experience Officer? If so, I’d be interested in interviewing that person for a future blog post or speaking engagement with my clients.

I’d appreciate a referral.

Setting up effective professional services alumni relations programs

A CMO of a very well-respected financial services company is considering creating a structured alumni relations program for his firm. I volunteered to reach out to my senior marketing contacts about formal alumni relations programs. If your firm has such a program, we’d be interested in your perspectives on the questions below.

(If I get enough answers to merit another blog post on this subject, I’ll aggregate them and get something out!)

• What are the most successful aspects of your firm’s alumni relations program? The least successful?

• If your firm uses alumni relations for business development, is your approach active (e.g., directly asking for referrals, and/or including the alumnus in your referral outreach) or passive (e.g., saying “we’d appreciate your referrals” but no follow up)?

• What reciprocal benefits do you offer your alumni, e.g., actively promoting them for board positions, or actively helping them develop their own business? 

Professional Services Marketing 3.0

I recommend Bruce Marcus's new book, Professional Services Marketing 3.0. Like Bruce, it's a thoughtful, well-grounded piece of work that is filled with respectful observations and crisp comments on the state of marketing in professional services.I only wish Bruce's work were more widely known outside of law and accounting circles.

One of the points Bruce makes so well, in an excerpt published recently in CPA Trendlines, is about the importance of client-facing practitioners and marketers working better together. We're not talking here about simply being better collaborators (although collaboration is enormously important).

We're talking about the difference between marketers' knowing the firm’s work capabilities and really deeply understanding its practice and how practitioners think. We're talking about developing new skills -- on the part of marketers and their client-facing practitioner colleagues -- toward cross-enterprise expertise and competitive advantage.

To that end, I say "Onward!"

Leaders' retirements mean big changes for professional service firms

Here's another reason why I'm keen to develop a cross-sector educational program to help tomorrow's professional service firm leaders manage and grow their firms effectively: the impending retirements of today's baby-boom generation leaders. How well prepared are the next generation of management consulting leaders to move their firms ahead?

Take a look at my comments about this issue, in the new issue of Consult, Canada's magazine for certified management consultants.

Building skills and credentials to grow a professional firm

How are professional service firms helping their current and future leaders gain skills and credentials to manage their companies?

As yet, there is no United States-based cross-sector educational program that integrates the deep knowledge and best practices of growing a firm so that it can compete effectively. That intelligence lies inside the minds (and silos) of sector-specific associations, professional firms and individual leaders.

I want to change that. My colleagues and I are building a Brain Trust of professional service firm leaders who will serve as advisors about the creation of such a program. 

Here's an article that outlines an emerging vision for this idea. It's published by one of my collaborators, the Association for Accounting Marketing, in its new publication, "Growth Strategies." 

Contact me if you'd like more information on this initiative.

Grief + Gratitude

I am slowly returning to action after my daughter's death a month ago. It's hard, but good, to work with my wonderful clients and colleagues. So, yes -- I am grieving -- but also grateful.

I co-authored this article this summer, with Diane Schmalensee from Schmalensee Partners. It's just out now, in the latest issue of Marketing Management magazine.

The article, "Building C-Suite Skills," reviews the multiple capabilities that marketers need to develop in order to advance toward the C-suite. It offers a special focus on cross-functional, or T-shaped skills.

Professional service firms: A famous partner’s name should stand for something more than that partner

In this post, I summarized an article by an author who advised professional service marketers to focus their marketing efforts internally (and not to clients “externally”) to a law firm’s partners.

My recent posts have featured comments from top tier professional service firm CMOs (none of which are law firms). One argued that PSF clients rely on institutional brands, especially in global buying situations. Another CMO advised “firms to be cautious about not allowing partners to dominate relationships.”

A third PSF CMO argued that PSF brand investments must extend beyond an internal-only focus.

A fourth comment came from a public professional firm CMO, who wrote: “the mindset of the private partnership . . . is outmoded and needs to be modernized . . .”

A final comment comes from a global firm CMO, who finds a major flaw in the author’s reasoning: “to say a law firm is not a consumer brand is probably true. [But] the conclusion that therefore it must not be a brand is not logical.  If an animal is not a circus animal, it can still be another type of animal!”

“The name of a growing, important law firm can certainly be embodied in the name of a famous partner. But it should stand for something more than that partner, over time Allen & Overy and Linklaters, or Skadden Arps come to stand also for a place where a specialty lives, where a young and aspiring lawyer can learn something, and an expensive but safe bet for a client who really needs assurance that he’s got top people working on a nasty problem. Nobody gets fired for choosing one of those… to borrow an old IBM credo.

Attracting talent is the lifeblood of such firms, without a big name this is very difficult. The big name must be built more by integrated PR and B2B marketing than by ads and TV.

So the major flaw in the [author’s] reasoning is right in the first subheader: to say a law firm is not a consumer brand is probably true, the conclusion that therefore it must not be a brand is not logical.  If an animal is not a circus animal, it can still be another type of animal!

And the idea that clients do not come for the name chiseled on the wall strikes me as nonsense. . . . they do. And in droves. Until it gets known that an old name “has lost it” . . .

So the next flawed logic is the idea that “ïf the partners walk, the business walks” and that therefore the brand is not important. Well. If Skadden, Arps, Meagher or Flom [had] walked, there would have been damage. They embody the brand. If a lesser person walks, not a lot. Which is why Skadden became the symbol for the brand. The author defeats his own argument here also.”

 

Professional service firms: private firm partners have outmoded mindsets about branding

In this post, I summarized an article by an author who advised professional service marketers to focus their marketing efforts internally (and not to clients “externally”) to a law firm’s partners.

My recent posts have featured comments from top tier professional service firm CMOs (none of which are law firms). One argued that PSF clients rely on institutional brands, especially in global buying situations. Another CMO advised “firms to be cautious about not allowing partners to dominate relationships.”

A third PSF CMO argued that PSF brand investments must extend beyond an internal-only focus.

In this post, a public professional firm CMO writes: “the mindset of the private partnership . . . is outmoded and needs to be modernized . . . "

“The writer reminds me of how back woods lawyers used to talk - they were the brand and the Firm was simply an administrative support to them.  Apart from the logistic nightmare of having 500 brands in one firm, it is also economically inefficient as most of these partners want an individual marketer to promote the individual. 

This is also a commentary that is very typical of . . . law firms who promote the star culture and who are focused on the local market.  What the writer fails to recognize is that it is impossible to use his recipe in the international market - lawyers are typically "local brands" and I think that this law firm was a small local law firm. 

The point that he misses is that it is the mindset of the private partnership that is outmoded and needs to be modernized and which is clearly inadequate to meet global market forces - rather than have marketers act as individual PR agents to second rate lawyers.”

Professional service firms: brand investments must extend beyond an internal focus

In this post, I summarized an article by an author who advised professional service marketers to focus their marketing efforts internally (and not to clients “externally”) to a law firm’s partners.

 My recent posts have featured comments from top tier professional service firm CMOs (none of which are law firms). One argued that PSF clients rely on institutional brands, especially in global buying situations. Another CMO advised “firms to be cautious about not allowing partners to dominate relationships.” 

Here’s a third comment from a PSF CMO, who argues that PSF brand investments must extend beyond an internal-only focus.

“. . . building the institution’s brand is critical to avoid the individual partners’ brands becoming too dominant. Certainly our culture, our people and their resulting actions day in and day out define what the brand can be. 

 And it is interesting to think that a majority of the value of branding could be from the internal reinforcement, but I would hate to believe that the investments in brand should only be internally focused.”

Professional service firms: don’t let partners dominate client relationships!

In this post, I summarized an article by an author who argued that PSF marketers should focus only on individual brands – those partners and rainmakers of a law firm.

The article’s points stimulated comments from a number of top tier professional service firm CMOs (none of which are law firms). In my most recent post, I featured a comment by a top tier PSF who argued that PSF clients DO rely on institutional brands, especially in global buying situations.

Yet another services organization CMO advises “firms to be cautious about not allowing partners to dominate relationships.”  

“The writer makes some valid points but I think part of the reason that marketing and brand building in PSF is so complex is because there is no single solution/answer. PSF brands are built around a combination of things: Personal relationships, Client rosters, Results, Reputation.

Clients can be driven by any combination of those. If anything it argues for firms to be cautious about not allowing partners to dominate relationships. The broader the basis of the relationship the more stable it will be.

In my opinion, the brand reputation of a firm is built around its core values and what it delivers for clients. The people who deliver on the mission cement the reputation, but without the resources/methods of the firm, the chemistry for success may be lost. A study done by one of our [experts] last year showed that people who were rainmakers in one firm were rarely able to recreate that magic in another.”