Professional Services Leadership, Marketing & Rainmaking
From the category archives:
Imagine yourself on your best day. It seems like you’re productive before you wake up, because something happened while you were asleep to charge your batteries, clear your thoughts, and give you inspiration while you snoozed.
You wake up and nothing can stop you. The path is clear and the ideas are flowing. You settle in to work earlier than usual and start plugging away. And it all starts clicking. You accomplish one goal.
And another.
And another…
Ask a professional service provider about the difference she makes for her clients and you might just hear something like this, “I help my clients first see, and then achieve, better futures.”
If a professional says this, they’re right that the concept of creating a vision of a new future is powerful. So powerful that we have included the concept as a core part of the RAIN Selling methodology. In RAIN Selling, the “N” stands for New Reality. It’s all of our jobs—in business development as well as in our daily work with clients—to help clients conceptualize situations, problems, and possible solutions.
In my recent podcast discussion with Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin, we talk about the power of helping people use pictures to solve problems and sell ideas. As you listen to the podcast, you should look at these graphics. They’re helpful in following along with what Dan and I are talking about, and will help you build your be-amazing-at-the-whiteboard skills.
Every business pundit has said at one time or another, “There’s no more misunderstood, argued about topic in business than <insert topic here>, but it’s really not that complicated. Here’s the secret to understanding it.” The concept of value proposition falls into this same category.
On the one hand, it’s a pretty simple concept to grasp. But like all simple, important concepts, it takes some thinking to understand it deeply and use it to your advantage. Let’s first look at a definition of a value proposition, then we’ll look at the three major components that comprise it so you can put it to work for you…
Every year about this time we members of the tribe engage in a sacred tribal ritual: sending email jokes, videos, and other types of hah hahs to each other so we can have something to talk about at our family dinners over green bean casserole and boiled chicken. (Thank you, tribal leader Len Glazer, for leading this annual rite.)
Those of us MOTs in marketing recognize these not just for their deep religious significance, but that, while they don’t reach everyone in the population, they do become semi(te)-viral.
Viral marketing is often attempted—but not often achieved—by many firms. For those of you out there that haven’t figured out a way to get it right, here are a few tips from the yarmulke crew.
If you’re going to cover a Barry Manilow classic you had better tread carefully. Barry may not have that much street cred with the kids anymore (if he ever did), but when he sings a song it’s smooth like buttah. When someone else sings his songs, it’s usually smooth like haggis.
The Man in the Chair ad is one such classic. First debuted in 1958, this McGraw Hill advertisement delivers a timeless message with clarity, grace, and impact. If you’re going to mess with it, you had better do it right, lest the world go all Simon Cowell on you.
I think the Business Marketing Association hit the nail on the head with their modernized rendition of the Man in the Chair at their 2009 conference. Nice job, BMA. Now, how about a little Mandy?
Here’s this week’s “Ask Mike” question:
Q: With marketing / business development budgets under pressure, what tools and techniques should be highest priority in terms of creating client conversations?
A: You can use tactics like personal emailing and cold calling that don’t cost anything if you do them yourself, but if you only use these two tactics you’ll be disappointed with the results.
Rough economy and all, most companies are spending dollars somewhere. With lead generation, if you prove that more expensive tactics create conversations, you’ll find budget. At some point you’ll have to. If there were short-term, cheap tactics that worked all by themselves over extended periods of time, everyone would know about them and use them. Then they’d get saturated and overused. Then they wouldn’t work.
People looking for shortcuts end up disappointed, but there are some short-term things you can do.
As students of marketing, we thought you might be curious to follow along the results of our “become a bestseller on Amazon.com” 48-hour campaign for our new book Professional Services Marketing.
The campaign centers around providing premium content to book buyers from ourselves and highly respected thought leaders in our field when they purchase from Amazon within a limited time frame. The thought leaders have all agreed to share with their constituencies the complimentary content, and to do so during the 48-hour window of the campaign. The content contributors and their excellent contributions include:
With the recent passing of Billy Mays, the world has lost a marketing genius. He didn’t follow the crowd and do things like everyone else, and he might have taken some flak for that. But how can you not respect someone who successfully translated knowledge of consumer behavior into a lucrative business with intelligent marketing at its core?
I’m not sure if a professional service firm ever approached Billy to be their advocate in the market, but that got me to thinking…what would that have looked like? Without further ado, here’s my tribute to Billy.
Inside all of us hides an inner nerd. I’ve been accused around the office of not hiding mine particularly well, especially when it comes to quoting famous and obscure movies alike.
A few years ago, I reviewed the American Film Institute’s top 100 movie quotes list, and shared the secret marketing messages hidden in each. When I saw Liquid Generation’s 100 best movie lines in 200 seconds, I realized that more hidden messages needed to be freed.
(Video caution: Some PG-13 in there…)
Here goes:
“He slimed me.”
Ghostbusters, 1984
Secret message: People know when you’re trying to pull the wool over their eyes or use a cheesy sales tactic. Don’t.
“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.”
A Christmas Story, 1983
Secret message: Don’t let someone scare you out of doing something you want to do. There’s nothing wrong with a little risk.
Marketer extraordinaire Paul Dunay noted to me recently that a blog is the Swiss Army Knife of social media. I happen to be a Swiss Army Knife fan, and I have a bunch at home. There’s the little one I used to have on my key chain. The all purpose knife is in the top drawer in the kitchen. And the mega, gaudy, way-too-many-things-on-it knife is in my tackle box. Different knives for different times and different needs.
I’ve been blogging regularly since January 2007. In recent months, it’s become evident that I needed a new knife with more tools. Since we at Wellesley Hills Group launched the original blog:
Sad to see the old one go, but we’re shelving the previous blog for a newer, shinier blog with more bells and whistles, that will best help us share this ever increasing volume of content with you.
Here it is. Welcome to our new toy. We hope you enjoy it as much as I’m sure we will.
As of today, the Services Marketing Blog is functional. As far as we know, it all works. But as anyone who has moved into a new house knows, while we’re officially at this address now and are receiving guests, we haven’t decorated yet. Soon we’ll be adding on various features and functionality to make the user experience as worthwhile as possible.
And we’d like you’re help. What do you think? What would you like to see added on? What would make the Services Marketing Blog as valuable a resource to you as it can be?
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