Sink or Swim Faster!: Making a Splash in Marketing Professional Services

"As competition intensifies, many professionals are discovering the limits of conventional marketing wisdom.  They are finding that marketplace concepts and approaches employed by organizations selling toothpaste, cereal, and other tangible products, or even other types of services, aren’t readily transferred to professional services. Indeed, marketing such services is different."

- Paul Bloom

Marketing Professional Services is Different

Building a Service Brand is Different Than Building a Product Brand

I’ve been to a lot of marketing presentations by various branding firms. At each presentation, a marketing firm gives examples of firms that sell products like Apple and Zappos, This is how you do it. The marketing firm then goes into how Zappos isn’t a shoe company, it’s a customer service company. Selling shoes isn’t like selling accounting services, no matter how customer-service oriented the accountant is. Even the nicest accountant must tell you when your actions could lead you to getting audited by the federal government.  When you’re selling a service, you’re both a technical expert as well as a trusted advisor. You can’t get fined or end up in jail for buying the wrong pair of shoes.  A mistake on a client’s taxes can mean serious fines.

Door-to-Door Sales and Cold Calls Don’t Work When You’re Marketing and Selling Professional Services

When you’re selling professional services, much of what you’re selling is how you do what you do. It’s about relationships. Every now and then you’ll need to call someone to set up an appointment, but it’s only effective if an introduction has been made by someone your prospect knows and trusts. I’ve worked and consulted for several professional services firms but the old-school mindset still exists. One employer who sold engineering and surveying services told me that I needed to just stop by each local architect’s office and see if they had any drawings that we could take a look at.  There are several issues with this strategy:

Most architectural firms have a receptionist. If I show up unannounced and ask to speak to anyone in the office without an appointment, chances are I’ll get blocked right there;

It’s rude to show up without an appointment; and

If a doctor showed up on your doorstep asking you to be their client, how reputable does that doctor look?

When you’re selling a professional service, your reputation is critical to your brand. Client referrals, published articles written by key staff, and conference presentations are a few of the many ways for a firm to establish its reputation. Sending a marketing professional out door to door is just a great way to annoy many of the professionals you’re trying to work with.

You Can’t List Features to Market and Sell Professional Services

Again, in professional services, it’s all about the how. How you market your services is just as important as what you do and it’s all about crafting a great story and a way you conduct business that you and your employees believe in.  If you would have told me in college that 15 years later, I would be writing a book about marketing for professional services firms, I would have laughed at you.  In undergrad, I studied film.  In graduate school, I studied entrepreneurship. While one subject helped me learn how to tell a great story, the other taught me how to sell an idea. Marketing for professional services is basically those two skills combined. In this book, you’ll learn how to tell your company’s unique story (or project experience) and how to transfer that story into tools and tactics that help you win future projects. Telling your company’s story in a fun and creative way is the key to winning over your clients.

Marketing and Selling Professional Services Is Really about Educating Your Prospects

A Request for Proposal (RFP) response is really just a tool to educate your client on why selecting your firm to complete a project is the best choice. If your marketing team hasn’t done the necessary work to be able to communicate how your firm is different, then your marketing team can’t really help your firm win new projects.  Building the right collateral materials (i.e., resumes, project sheets, project approaches, etc.) with owners and senior management is critical to documenting how your firm is different from your competitors (differentiation is important and we’ll talk more about it in chapter 7).

It’s Time for a Marketing Department

The division between marketing and operations happens the moment a firm begins on an explosive growth path. When the firm began, the principal could handle most of the functions and grow the business through referrals. Then, the firm gets its first big client. This client has a project that will take several years and will require the firm to take on more staff to meet the additional work.

As time goes on, it becomes clear that the principal and/owner of the firm realizes he or she can no longer single-handedly manage operations and marketing for the firm. At this point, the firm fractures into an operations component and a marketing component. The principal may not be comfortable with marketing.  The reason the firm has grown is because the principal is one of the best problem-solvers for the firm. He or she really excels at performing the service that has led to growth.  With preconceived notions of what marketing is, the principal thinks this job can be easily outsourced. The common approach is to just find someone who is extroverted, personable, comfortable with cold calls, and capable of creating new business. The idea the principal has is that the marketing and business development team will take care of the sales and marketing efforts and the operations will get the overall job done, There, problem solved.  Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.  Again, selling a professional service is different than selling a product.

Building Trust

If you’re selling architectural, engineering, construction, software engineering, legal, accounting, or health care services, your expertise and ability to grow your firm depends solely on a prospective customer’s ability to trust what you’re selling. When you’re selling a product, you can analyze the differences and pricing relatively easily. When you’re selling professional services, clients have to make a decision based on trust.

When a firm shifts from having a principal doing most of the selling to hiring a full-time marketing professional, it’s going to take time for that person to grow the business. Many of the seasoned marketing professionals interviewed for this book said it can take between 18 months and three years to get into a new market. Building trust (similarly to personal relationships) takes time, consistency, and patience.

Growing revenue in a professional services firm requires a strategic marketing approach that leverages the trust, experience, and best practices that your firm has established in the past to attract new clients. In a Harvard Business Review article by Paul Bloom, Bloom states Professional service firms can emphasize three attributes or personality features to set themselves apart: ‘gray hair’ (more experience, specialization, credibility and contacts), more brains (better solutions to problems), and superior procedures.  This book will help your firm capitalize on your marketing and business development efforts. You’ll learn how to train your staff through a thorough on- boarding process to teach your marketing staff how your firm’s experience makes you uniquely qualified to solve your clients’ challenges (if you don’t have documentation on this, you’ll need to create some).  In addition, your marketing team will need to meet each team member at your firm to learn how they add value to the firm or solve your client’s problems, and the secret sauce in the form of processes and procedures that makes your firm a success.

Communicating How Your Firm Does What It Does

The secret sauce of how your firm does what it does is wrapped up in your firm’s project experience, history, and how it provides services. Yes, the firm may have a website that details some of the services, but the secret sauce is buried in the mind of the founder. The key to building a fantastic marketing program for a professional services firm is teaching your marketing team how your services – and the way you do them –  set you apart from the rest of the competition. The 30-Day Jump Start plan will help your marketing professional gain a solid understanding of your firm, your competition, and clients. The strategic plan will help your marketing team communicate the value your firm offers and what other markets they should target.

After you have a strategic plan, your marketing team can develop your proposal materials. These documents (also known as marketing collateral) will help you communicate your value in a more specific format to prospective clients. Once you have documentation on how your firm does what it does, it will be easier to design an even better web and social media strategy that continues to communicate key messages that reinforce your brand.

Marketing Is an Internal and External Function

Although communicating your brand externally is important, how you communicate the value of marketing and customer service within your organization is even more important. It’s absolutely natural for a division to happen between marketing and operations, but what isn’t okay is for an organization to value operations above customer relations. When operations is prized above the client, the company will fail. If the designer, software engineer, or project manager make the client feel like an idiot every time the client asks a question, no matter how gifted the engineer is, he or she will be finding a new client to work with if the client feels like he or she isn’t valued.  The best way to make a client feel valued is to make sure each employee feels valued. Communicating key values within an organization and then externalizing these values to clients is the best way to ensure clients receive a consistent experience. How an organization views its internal and external marketing efforts is key to building a firm with a brand that can grow and evolve.

Marketing or Business Development: What’s the Difference?

You may be familiar with the following terms: Marketing Coordinator, Marketing Assistant, Marketing Manager, Director of Marketing, and Director of Business Development.  You may also be a little unsure of the differences between the roles. Anoopa Jaikaran, a Marketing Director at a Tampa civil engineering firm says, Business development is outside sales with a salary. Marketing is inside sales with a salary. Sales itself is a commission-based outside position. Her explanation gives you an overview of the categories and below, I’ve given you a little more detail about each specific role.

Intern/Marketing Assistant

Experience Level: Little to none

Education Level: High school/Associate degree/Still in college

Description: A marketing assistant usually hasn’t been in the industry for very long. He or she may have an interest in graphic design or writing. Your first few months in this position will be learning the terminology, the endless acronyms, and a lot of company research to help create project sheets and resumes.

Marketing Coordinator

Experience Level: 1-5 Years

Education Level: Associate degree/College degree

Description: Marketing Coordinators can have various levels of education but usually have been in the industry for at least a year. Often, receptionists or administrative assistants can find their way into Marketing Coordinator positions after learning more about the marketing functions of an organization and wanting to be more involved in that area of the organization. Marketing Coordinators create resumes, project sheets, have the capacity to assemble 80% of the marketing materials needed for an RFP, and do the production elements of an RFP.

Senior Marketing Coordinator

Experience Level: 5-7 Years

Education Level: College degree

Description: Senior Marketing Coordinators may or may not have a Marketing Coordinator or Marketing Assistant helping with preliminary stages of RFP preparation: resume updates, project sheets. At this point in their career, Senior Marketing Coordinators can write most RFP responses by themselves. The Senior Marketing Coordinator may oversee a small budget for events and other proposal or RFP-related expenses.

Director of Marketing/Marketing Manager

Experience Level: 10+ years

Education Level: College degree/Graduate degree/CPSM certification

Description: At this level, the Director of Marketing or Marketing Manager has probably performed every position listed thus far. He or she is comfortable with a variety of software applications (or may be a little rusty), understands proposal management, can handle multiple deadlines, and coordinating with multiple resources. The Director of Marketing can oversee digital marketing efforts as well. He or she may manage the Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts for the firm. In addition, the Director of Marketing may draft and publish articles for the company website, manage email campaigns, and other marketing projects (i.e., public relations and client surveys) as directed.

Business Development Representative

Experience Level: 1-6 Years

Education Level: Associate degree and/or completion of a sales training program

Description:  In coordination with a firm’s senior management team or Marketing Director, the Business Development Representative will network, cold-call, and set appointments.  The Business Development Representative will also help introduce key project staff to clients when a real need for services and a budget has been established for a future project.  Business Development Representatives are the most successful in their position when they have a clear focus on pursuing projects in one to three specific markets such as: Retail, Healthcare, Municipal, Higher Education, K-12, or Commercial.  In larger pursuits, the Business Development Representative will coordinate a strategy with senior staff, the designated project manager, and marketing team.

Director of Business Development

Experience Level: 7-10 years

Education Level: College or Graduate level

Description: Usually a Director of Business Development or a person performing Business Development duties is all about The thrill of the chase. Typically, this professional has some kind of background in the industry and went to school for it, or he or she came up through the marketing ranks and now does outside sales. The Director of Business Development will network, cold-call, set appointments, and follow deal flow from the start all the way through to the signed contract for the project. The Director of Business Development may also do periodic check-ins with clients during the project to ensure the client is satisfied with the project throughout. The Director of Business Development will also coach and coordinate pursuit strategy with senior management and staff members.

Chief Marketing Officer Experience Level: 15-20 years Education Level: Graduate level

Description: The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) oversees all aspects of marketing and business development. It is helpful if the CMO has a marketing background as well as experience in business development. The CMO works with the CEO and CFO and helps create the strategic direction for the firm. The CMO will have a budget as allocated by the CFO and have appropriate LOA (Limits of Authority) for expenditures. He or she will also oversee marketing and business development, create a strategic plan, manage the plan, and ensure yearly sales goals are met. The CMO may also train or hire training resources to help educate senior management and key staff on marketing and business development.

What Kind of Marketing Professional Does a Firm Need?

As you can see from the list of seven roles above, the skill sets of marketing professionals can be quite diverse.  Below, I’ve given a firm breakdown based on company size and the type of marketing support typically found.  Since revenue per employee can vary so much between different service industries, I’ve broken the firms down by the number of employees instead.

Small Professional Services Firms (15 Employees or Less)

A small firm with less than 15 employees typically hires a part-time contractor help build out a website or company marketing materials and the owner of the firm may still be doing a lot of the business development and selling for the company.  If the firm can afford to hire a marketing firm at this point, it will prove to be beneficial in the firm’s growth as the right marketing consultant can help a small firm create a growth strategy and the marketing infrastructure to win more project work.

Growing Small Professional Services Firm (16 - 50 Employees)

If a firm is growing rapidly and is now past 15 employees, it’s time to look at hiring a full-time marketing person.  A Senior Marketing Coordinator or Marketing Director will create a marketing strategy and communications plan.  He or she will be responsible for implementing the plan.  When the firm hits 25 employees, it may also be time to hire a business development professional.  Since marketing is more of an internal role and business development an external role, it becomes challenging  (and ineffective) for the marketing professional to maintain both internal and external roles.  Firms that want to prevent marketing staff burnout and keep a steady pipeline should consider hiring two professionals (one to handle marketing and one to handle business development for the firm).  Although it’s tempting to hire one person to do both (like a Marketing Director or Director of Business Development), it’s not the best long-term strategy for growing the firm.

Medium Professional Services Firm (51 - 200 Employees)

At this point, the firm may now have several office locations, specialities, and service offerings.  A 50-person firm should have a Marketing Director to oversee the marketing strategy and ensure consistency in brand messaging between the various locations or specialities.  A medium-sized professional services firm may have one to two marketing coordinators reporting to the marketing director based on the budget.  When a firm reaches this size, it may have senior project managers or project executives taking on some of the business development responsibilities or a business development professional to oversee the development of new markets.

Large