Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog

PwC marketers praise the 2015 Professional Services Leadership Initiative #PSLI @SmithSchool

High performing marketers from PwC talk together about the benefits they received from their participation in the 2014-2015 Professional Services Leadership Initiative (PSLI). These include making connections, access to leadership, and building relationships.

  

The PSLI is a unique executive development program for high-performance marketers and managers. It is targeted to globally prominent professional and B2B companies that demonstrate a notable commitment to pursuing marketplace excellence. The PSLI is unique in its approach because it only allows non-competing companies to become sponsors. JLL, T. Rowe Price, PwC and Randstad were the PSLI’s sponsoring companies for 2014-15.

In the last two years ,these world-class professional enterprises have sent more than 40 high-performing marketers to the PSLI. Topics included marketing models, global branding, digital marketing, data analytics, partnering with agencies, integrating marketing and sales teams, and client experience management. The group also completed team-based Action Learning Projects, in which they applied what they learned to real problems facing their companies.

 

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Three trends in 2014 for professional services branding

One of the modules in our upcoming November 2014 Professional Services Leadership Initiative will be Global Branding. Check out my newest video about three trends I observe about professional services branding for 2014.

 

The first trend is the way brands are impacted by technology. Increasingly, professional service firms must manage the consistency between the digital and in-person manifestations of their brands. Plus, they must manage this consistency across an array of digital channels, including web, mobile and numerous social media.

The second trend is brand globalization, in which professional enterprises must manage their brand identities across varied cultures, languages, and geographies. Global brand management is also complicated when professional firms merge with or acquire other enterprises. This situation brings up issues regarding brand architecture, and naming, too!

The third trend relates to professional service marketing leaders’ growing interest in determining the brand’s value to the enterprise.

The Financial Strength of the Service Sector

I always appreciate it when someone points out the financial strength of the service sector, especially in a way that quantifies revenues in context.

Services management or marketing leaders (especially those of you whose focus has been -- ahem -- rather domestically narrow lately), take a look at today's New York Times op-ed piece, "An Order of Prosperity, To Go." Thank you, author Michael Cox!

Among the key points I found noteworthy:

• "Exports of American services have jumped by 84 percent since 2000..."
• "America ... ranks number one in global services by a wide margin."
• "We exported $144 billion more in services than we imported..."
• "Our edge ... was nearly four to one in architectural, construction and engineering services."
• "All told, the United States is competitive in 21 of 22 services trade categories."

For those of you who are globally focused (and good for you if you are), this article also suggests some ideas about how the Obama administration could more favorably position the United States' services exports globally.

Professional service marketing in Asia

It's a sign that a sector is maturing when someone begins to study and write about it -- in this case, professional services.

It's a better sign when someone looks at that sector by geography -- in this case, Asia. 

But it's an even stronger sign of the significance of the sector when someone begins to look at a function within that sector -- in this case, marketing -- through the lens of geography. 

Robert Sawhney's new book, Marketing Professional Services in Asia (LexisNexis: 2009), does just that.  To use a thoroughly American expression, I send "high fives" to Bob. (Alright, how about the more international "kudos" instead?)

Sawhney makes well supported points, right away in his first chapter, that professional service marketing in Asia must be considered differently than one might consider it in the Western world.  As an author myself, I always appreciate it when another writer backs up his or her points with credible evidence beyond his or her own opinion.  Sawhney does that well. I'll wager that many Western PSF marketers could trim hours off their learning curve (and avoid costly mistakes) if they'd read just this chapter alone.  A few chapter 1 points caught my eye (rely on word of mouth, not advertising; be careful when trying to measure client satisfaction).

Sawhney's chapter 11 -- a substantive exploration of targeting, segmentation, differentiation and positioning -- was a bit non-Asia specific. Too bad. I'd have liked to hear Sawhney's views on differentiation in Asian PSF marketing strategies. Maintaining a pre-emptive distinction is a vexing challenge for PSFs that do business in Asia. Does a marketer need to think about differentiation differently when considering an Asian marketing strategy? Robert, tell us more about this! (Full disclosure: Sawhney cites some of my own research in his discussion of differentiation, although I didn't know this when I began my review of his book. And my research was not Asia specific.)

Robert, please write and research more on professional service marketing in Asia!   

Globalization and the Power of Intention

Most U.S. based professional service firms are working hard to gain a competitive foothold in the increasingly global economy.  Every meeting I attend has some discussion about making breakthrough moves in China or India.  But often I feel that the frame of reference is still deeply American.   Everyone knows they need a new reference-point, but no one has cracked the code yet.

Take a look at Todd Sattersten's 800-CEO-Read blog post about Eastern Influences on Business, which features three interesting points:

• The conviction that executives should be motivated by a broader purpose than money.
• The idea that companies should take a more holistic approach to business--one that takes into account the needs of shareholders, employees, customers, society, and the environment.
• [The importance of putting] purpose before self . . . that enlightened leaders should master any impulses or emotions that cloud sound judgment. Good leaders are selfless, take initiative, and focus on their duty rather than obsessing over outcomes or financial gain.

These ideas have the potential to change the way we marketers think about pursuing global competitive gains with globally-relevant marketing strategies.  But contemplating these new ideas also means we have to envision the potential for (gulp) competitive losses.  And that of course makes us tend to stick to what we know best -- an American traditional business mindset. 

Can marketers help our tradition-bound and risk-averse colleagues to embrace these powerful new ideals?  Would it help a marketer to have the INTENTION to help the firm become more globally relevant?  I'm intrigued by the idea that marketers, having a new PURPOSE, can help their firms gain strategic traction where they never could before.