Professional Services Leadership, Marketing & Rainmaking
From the category archives:
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.
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.
Service professionals know everything they need to sell their services. It’s how they organize that information and how they approach prospective clients that determines whether or not they make the sale. Michael McLaughlin, author of Winning the Professional Services Sale, talks about how services professionals can convert a sales lead into a paying client.
By connecting, collaborating, and getting commitment, service professionals work to get the sale without overtly selling, which can turn clients away.
(Time: 11:43)
In this podcast, David Meerman Scott talks with Mike Schultz, President of Wellesley Hills Group and Publisher of RainToday.com, about what he calls World Wide Raves. Also the title of his book, Meerman describes World Wide Raves as online content that gets people talking, blogging, tweeting, and downloading. Listen to this podcast to learn how to create World Wide Raves around your marketing ideas so that you can become the talk of the web and ultimately generate sales for your business.
(15:04)
Click here to subscribe to the series via iTunes.
Chances are you’ve had difficult client relationships. Communication stops, the client doesn’t give you what you need, and you don’t get the results you want. Before you throw in the towel, you should make every effort to resolve the problems and get the relationship back on track.
In this podcast, Andrea Howe, founder of BossaNova Consulting Group, talks with Mike Schultz, President of Wellesley Hills Group and Publisher of RainToday.com, about how to identify a relationship that’s falling off track and what you can do to set things right.
(13:24)
Click here to subscribe to the series via iTunes.
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.
(Time: 14:52)
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.
(Time: 11:26)
Click here to subscribe to the series via iTunes.
Many professional services firms see their competition winning new business by blogging, connecting on social networks, and launching podcasts and online videos. And they want to know, “How can I do the same?”
Dana VanDen Heuvel, founder of the Marketing Savant Group, explains how firms can create a social media marketing strategy. Topics he addresses include what questions firms need to ask themselves and how firms should integrate a CRM system into their plans.
(Time: 10:54)
Interested in hearing more? An extended version of this audio interview is available to RainToday.com members.
Click here to subscribe to the series via iTunes.
Millions of business professionals have a profile on LinkedIn and LinkedIn is consistently ranked as one of the top social networking websites out there. So, how does a marketer tactfully and effectively use this resource?
Jason Alba, author of I’m on LinkedIn — Now What? and the DVD LinkedIn for Job Seekers, explains the finer points of netiquette (Internet etiquette), the best way to build a list from your connections, and what your personal profile should look like.
(Time: 8:32)
Interested in hearing more? An extended version of this audio interview is available to RainToday.com members.
Click here to subscribe to the series via iTunes.
The strategies for marketing and selling for professional services firms aren’t that complicated. But getting the leaders together and choosing a strategy often is.
In this podcast we look at what leaders can do to make change happen at their firms with Dr. John Kotter, professor of leadership at Harvard Business School and author of New York Times bestsellers A Sense of Urgency and Our Iceberg Is Melting, as well as one of the world’s most influential book on organizational change, Leading Change.
He says people fail to successfully make change not because they lack capability and intelligence, but because they simply haven’t been through a lot of big changes. The good news is you can learn it. You can do it. You can make some remarkable things happen. You just have to think in a different way.
(11:58)
RainToday.com’s Podcast Series “Marketing & Selling Professional Services” is produced by the Wellesley Hills Group.
Click here to subscribe to the series via iTunes.
no comments, be the first