Professional Services Leadership, Marketing & Rainmaking
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In the Selling Consulting Services forums, a member recently asked about everyone’s favorite topic, cold calling. “Should I do it? Must I do it?,” he asked. He went on to explain that he’s trying to reach senior people and wants to share information with them on how to solve a specific problem based on work he’s done at similar organizations.
He also explained that he is not very comfortable calling someone he doesn’t know, pretty par for the course with how most people feel.
It’s no secret: the firms that are the best at selling do things differently than those that aren’t the best.
This dandy of a chart by Aberdeen Group covers a lot of ground, including, getting business developers up to speed and selling fast, keeping the best sellers, and so on.
But what jumps out at me: what the top firms do to maximize cross-selling and up-selling.
Click the image to download the Selling Consulting Services Free Report
A lot of what we talk about here on the Services Marketing Blog focuses on marketing. (How’s that for a revelation.)
Marketing, however, isn’t worth much if you can’t convert great strategy, brand, positioning, and messaging into opportunities. And it isn’t worth much if you can’t convert those opportunities into new business.
Ahh, the fruits of unselfish play. Being at the Gaahden watching Rajon Rondo lead the Boston Celtics to victory with stellar team play over LeBron James and his soon to be former team the Cleveland Cavaliers, I thought I’d rack up a few dimes myself by making note of four excellent posts on the RainMaker Blog.
Stuck in a Rut? Set Challenging Goals to Break Out and Grow Business
Michelle Davidson articulates the importance of setting goals that push you to the limit.
The Key to GREAT Service Delivery
Erica Stritch shares a bit too much about her recent drinking problems as she helps us understand the importance of setting and meeting expectations in service delivery.
How to Rev Up Your Referral Engine
Michelle Davidson shares an easy way to generate more referrals.
Four Crucial Elements to Rainmaking
Allow myself to introduce myself. Here I share (surprise surprise) four crucial elements to rainmaking. And not one of them is a skill. Have a look and let me know what you think.
Professional services leaders face all types of challenges on their way to growing revenue. Marketing, business development, strategy development, you name it. There’s no cookie-cutter growth strategy. One size certainly does not fit all.
But on the road to strategy development and revenue growth, there are areas that all B2B professional services firms should focus on. In Wellesley Hills Group’s recently published Five Drivers of Revenue Growth for Professional Services white paper, we’ve outlined the five major areas that affect a firm’s ability to grow.
Because there’s no everyone-should-do-this strategy, executives must first look at the core of their firm’s activities to know what’s working and what’s not for them, and develop a strategy that will work given their own desires and circumstances.
For a few years now, professional services firms have felt the crunch of the economy and held on tight. You’ve heard the horror stories and experienced the pain. Time to move on.
If you want to stop playing defense and start playing offense, if you think it’s time to take advantage of the opportunities to grow your firm and succeed, the first thing you need to do is set your mind to it.
Batten down the hatches. Stick to your knitting. Trim the fat; trim some more. With no end in sight for the recession, you must embrace new ways of leading if you want to compete in a downturn…
STOP! You and your team have heard the mind-numbing drumbeat of endless how-tos “in a downturn” for the past 24 months. And it has wrought the following:
Now that the end of the Great Recession is here, services firms must renew hustle, passion, intensity, and competitiveness. It’s time to roll out words we haven’t used for a while: innovation, opportunity, and progress.
As always, it’s up to leaders to make sure they happen. This four-step process will help them stop leading in a downturn, and start leading in an upturn.
Most businesses head into 2010 with a healthy dose of uncertainty. I like it. It’s not because I enjoy not knowing what’s coming, if the economy will double dip, or if the banks will need more TARP funds to weather the financial storm.
I like it because where there’s uncertainty there’s change. And where there’s change there are new opportunities to tackle, mountains to climb, and successes to achieve.
As I speak with leaders of professional services firms these days, the big questions looking forward are about fear, risk, and reward. Early last year fear was rampant, few were willing to risk anything, and firms were playing defense to protect their margins by tightening their belts.
“They told me I had to become a thought leader or I’d never achieve great success as a professional.” This is what a leader at a professional services firm told me recently that a marketing consultant told him.
He didn’t say this to me matter-of-factly either. He said it with a mix of fear, skepticism, sadness, and hope.
He was…
Giving Away Products and Services to Create Loyalty
A reporter for a major business publication asked me whether businesses that lower prices and give away free services for buyers that are struggling to “give them a break” is a good strategy for keeping them loyal when the economy turns and their financial fortunes improve. Here’s what I told him…
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