Q: Do you have any recommendations for marketing services to service companies? I am often in a position of trying to address the client’s needs but not getting to meet the ultimate client—I feel at the mercy of a client with whom I don’t have contact.
A: This has nothing to do with marketing services to service companies. You could be marketing products to product companies. You could be marketing antimatter at a Star Trek convention. Whatever you’re selling, you have to get to the ultimate client, that special person we usually call the decision maker.
Decision makers are in the position of decision making because they are leaders in an organization. They’re trying to solve problems and they’re trying to build a better future. They have many different priorities and are trying to focus on the greatest impact, and the greatest return challenges to tackle. So they’re not avoiding you! You’re just not getting through to them. Or when a support staff gets your message to them, they say “You handle it. Doesn’t seem like it’s something I need to put on my radar screen.”
My advice in this case:
1. Keep trying to get on their radar screens. Email them. Call them. Send them letters.
2. Appeal to their need and the impact your service will have. They’re looking to spend their time on conversations and avenues that will make a difference. If it’s important enough, they’ll pay attention. If it’s not important enough, perhaps you should sell something else.
3. Perhaps it’s important enough, but your message or communication vehicles don’t convey how important it is. I’d suggest you get professional help getting the message across.
4. Don’t settle for being sent down the food chain. Don’t let yourself be relegated to levels below those that can influence, or directly purchase, your services.
5. Build your brand in the market. Sure, this is a long-term, heavy-investment, high-energy, high-commitment activity. But those that do it succeed, and those that don’t always fight the “best kept secret” battle in the marketplace. That’s usually no fun.
I’m in conversation with the marketing department chair of a prestigious graduate business school about teaching an MBA course on professional services marketing. Last week he asked me to develop a syllabus. Coming up with the topics: no problem. Coming up with possible cases: no problem. Developing a reading list: no problem. None of it is a problem…there’s more excellent content out there than we’ll ever have time to cover.
I’d like to solicit your help. If you were back in business school, what cases or topics would you want to cover? I’m looking for those articles, cases, books, blogs, and any kind of content that has helped define how you think about and approach professional services marketing.
Here are some of my initial thoughts on cases and readings:
Reading:
Professional Services Marketing by Mike Schultz and John Doerr
“Hustle as Strategy” by Amar Bhide
“Putting the Services Profit Chain to Work” by Heskett et. al.
“The One Number You Need To Grow” by Fredreck Reicheld
“Competing on Resources” by David Collis and Cynthia Montgomery
Managing the Professional Services Firm by David Maister
“Corporate Postioning: How to Assess – and Build – a Company’s Reputation”
Cases (most are Harvard Business Review):
McKinsey & Company (A): 1956
Addleshaw & Goddard LLP
Infosys Consulting in 2006: Leading the Next Generation of Business and IT Consulting
The Architect’s Collaborative, Inc.
Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm
At a recent RainToday.com webinar that I delivered, someone sent in this question:
Do you have any advice for firms where the majority people or staff are primarily project focused, meaning, they are supposed to be focused on billable work only? Business development isn’t “billable,” where do they find the time?
Here are a few ways I could rephrase the question:
Tony Bettencourt, one of my closest friends, is the chef/owner of Sixty2 On Wharf, an award-winning, Italian-inspired restaurant in Salem, MA. I always enjoy hearing him talk about his visits to other Italian restaurants he respects because, while the chefs might all draw from the same list of fine ingredients from this one particular part of the world, each outcome bears the unique stamp and flavor of the chef that created it.
I’m thinking about this as I write a recommendation for Winning the Professional Services Sale by Michael McLaughlin. My area of focus is selling and marketing professional services, so, when I opened the book, I felt like Tony must feel when he walks into another Italian restaurant. This is my area. My tastes are discerning. I can be picky and I’m easily turned off by sloppiness, lack of talent, and underwhelming execution. On the other hand, I’m open minded (at least that’s what I tell myself), and I’m always waiting to be pleasantly surprised.
Definitely in the second camp with Winning the Professional Services Sale. Michael McLaughlin has done a fabulous job. Full disclosure: Michael writes for my publication, RainToday.com, and we’ve known each other professionally for a number of years. You can bet, however, that if he wrote a bad book I wouldn’t be talking about it here on my blog.
Here are five things I like about Winning the Professional Services Sale:
Opportunities are abundant to expand your consulting services into global markets, as there are many industries that are doing well despite the depressed economy. And according to famed consultants Alan Weiss and Omar Khan, technology makes it so that you don’t need a physical presence.
Weiss and Khan, authors of The Global Consultant: How to Make Seven Figures Across Borders, talk about how to get started working internationally, how to make inroads in developing markets, and how to build critical mass and establish yourself in overseas markets.
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:
Oftentimes in professional services firms, marketing plans are created and never completely implemented. Or, when they are implemented but not given enough time to show results, the firm views the campaign as unsuccessful.
John Doerr, president of Wellesley Hills Group, founder of RainToday.com, and co-author of Professional Services Marketing, explains what it takes for firms to implement a strategy.
I just had the most disturbing conversation with one of the CEOs with whom I work.
CEO: “Our largest client just told us that they want a 20% cut in our fees.”
Me: “What services don’t they want you to provide anymore?”
CEO: “Oh, they still want everything we’ve always done. Just for less money.”
Me: “So, let’s figure out the strategy to deal with this.”
CEO: “Ah, a little late. I already told them we would do it. But once the economy bounces back…”
Random act of seller-on-buyer violence? I think not. This frightening trend has exploded into a full-fledged social epidemic. But why?
Maybe it is because so many professional services firms are struggling for new clients or simply trying to hang on to existing ones. Maybe it is a seismic shift in the dynamics of the client / service provider power matrix (i.e., the economy). Or maybe we have all lost confidence in the true value we provide for our clients. Whatever the case, we shouldn’t allow it to come down to this humorous (yet, sadly, very close to the mark for professional service firms) depiction I came across recently:
Tony Bettencourt, one of my closest friends, is the chef/owner of 
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