Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

Mid-level marketers learn about The Client Experience

In this new 90-second video, I'll describe one of the curriculum offerings for the November 2014 cohort of the Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI) -- the client experience.

I've highlighted some of the skills growth areas about the client experience that professional service leaders want their mid-level marketers to understand. These areas include: researching and mapping the client experience (digitally and in-person); designing a unique client experience that aligns with the firm’s differentiation, positioning and branding strategies; and delivering the experience consistently across channels.

 

 

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.

Mapping out "sample experiences" for clients

Many of you know Charles Green's substantive Trusted Advisor work. He sent me a new piece recently, in which he says: "The best way for a client to learn how to work with you is to let them work with you. Create a sample experience."

These two short sentences offer an incredibly good articulation of how to integrate marketing and selling. 

Green writes: "Sample selling the services might mean brainstorming; a small project; a lunch-and-learn; a webinar; a series of articles; a series of conversations for which you don’t bill time; sharing of some previous work."

Now read that sentence again.

Green's points raise three huge issues, each of which pertains to the powerful benefits of integrating Marketing and Selling in professional and B2B firms.

1. Marketers and practitioners, working together, can map out a series of well-integrated sample experiences for strategically-targeted clients and prospects. By thinking about offering sample experiences, they are encouraged to let go of old paradigms of what should be in the marketer's purview (webinars, a series of articles) and what should be in the practitioner's purview (conversations for which you don't bill time; a small project).  Instead, they can consider the best outcome of that sample experience: to acquire, retain or build share-of-wallet with strategically appropriate clients.
2. By considering how they might offer different sample experiences depending on the outcome they seek (acquire, retain and build share-of-wallet), marketers and practitioners can begin to break down their notion of what the firm really sells. Is it protected (but hide-bound) methodologies and relationships?  Or is it the dedication to solve the client's problem in a uniquely favorable way?  
3. Too many professional and B2B firms are stuck trying to measure the ROI of tactical marketing or selling programs that are too loosely tied to real marketplace outcomes (acquire, retain or build share-of-wallet with strategically appropriate clients). If they worked together to create sample experiences, they'd more quickly break down these old notions of measuring ROI.  

Write to me and let me know how your firm is doing at creating sample experiences. What's worked? What are your lessons learned?

Professional productivity

So the news is out.  One-million-year-old Roger Clemens gets to go to his team of choice amid much hoopla and money.  And Kevin Garnett, despite his role in producing wins for his team, can't get any respect. 

Is there anything we can learn from these sports scenarios about the economic value of individuals on teams, and the complex issue of "player productivity?"

In this context, I'm not referring to the way professional service firms compensate their top revenue producers -- typically by promotions and/or shares in a firm's equity.  This time, I'm talking about the way professional service firms manage their professionals' "touches" with clients, and the impact on individual and company-wide "productivity."      

Like many other heavily matrixed professional service businesses, it's challenging for marketers to know who's in touch with which clients, how often, when and with what content.  Unfortunately, the tug of war between many gatekeepers, all trying to favorably position themselves with clients through a communication "touch," ends up making the whole firm look bad because so many others within that same firm are doing the same thing. 

Actually, I think professional sports is onto something. Professional service businesses should do more to standardize their measures of individual professionals' impact on the firm's marketplace progress (beyond the obvious measures like "selling business").

How about a few new statistics and acronyms? 

• CCPS (having a low Client Clutter Perception Score). 
• CRMI (achieving a high Client Relationship Management Index). 
• TLP (Thought Leadership Percentage; a high percentage indicates a significant amount of new intellectual capital developed). 

Professional sports has made fascinating progress in assessing the economic value of individuals on teams.  Professional service firms remain more subjective than they should.   A little objectivity and structure could make the game at least more interesting.