Professional Services Leadership, Marketing & Rainmaking
From the category archives:
When I lived in Brussels I was fortunate to get to know Walt Hopkins, consultant and Arithmodigmophile. Since 01/01/01, Walt has written an almost annual missive on Arithmodigmophilia, a word he coined to describe his love for numbers and patterns. I received his 09/09/09 message today. Compelling and thought provoking as usual.
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.
Last week, I was interviewed by the estimable Michael McLaughlin, author of Winning the Professional Services Sale, for an article in his well respected Management Consulting News.
His questions to me were:
Visit Management Consulting News if you’d like to read my answers.
Everyone in professional services at one time or another thinks, “We should run our own seminars!” When folks call me for advice or help about running seminars, they’ve often read some book about how easy it is to get started with seminars, generate attendees, and make lots of money.
In my experience, there are more “first time, out of the gate” failures than successes, and it all starts with misconceptions about what it really takes to make marketing with short seminars successful.
So we at Wellesley Hills Group and RainToday.com have produced the Short B2B Seminar Planning Starter Kit. Above, you’ll find the video that goes along with it, featuring the dulcet tones of narrator Mary Flaherty, our research and content development manager. The rest of the kit includes the following tools and topics:
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:
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, and I were talking a few weeks ago about the sorry state of unemployment. Folks that have had solid, good paying jobs and career success in the past are, for the first time in their lives, facing unemployment.
Many of these folks now need to make a big sale (i.e. get a job), and they’re struggling.
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.
Most services firms want short-term leads, leads that are ready to buy now. In contrast, the best service firms focus on the 75% of leads that are long-term opportunities that take six months to two years to develop. It’s not easy to do, but successful marketers do just that.
In this podcast we talk with Dan McDade. Dan helps B-to-B companies fill their forecasts with qualified revenue opportunities as president of PointClear. Specifically, we revisit a questions-and-answer session we had with Dan in a recent webinar with Raintoday.com.
(Time: 9:09)
Hear the rest of Dan’s advice by visiting the RainToday store and watching Dan’s webinar Best Practices: 10 Actions to Immediately Improve Your Lead Nurturing Program.
RainToday.com’s Podcast “Marketing & Selling Professional Services” is produced by the Wellesley Hills Group.
Click here to subscribe to the series via iTunes.
Lead nurturing is a highly-relevent topic nowadays with most firms struggling to win business in the current recession. Why? Roughly 75 percent of all leads are long-term opportunities that need nurturing.
Listen as Dan McDade, founder and president of PointClear, explains how the best firms focus on these opportunities by using meaningful, thoughtful, and enjoyable communications.
(Length: 09:34)
Interested in hearing more? Listen to Dan McDade’s RainToday.com webinar, Best Practices: 10 Actions to Immediately Improve Your Lead Nurturing Program.
RainToday.com’s Podcast “Marketing & Selling Professional Services” is produced by the Wellesley Hills Group.
Click here to subscribe to the series via iTunes.
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