First Key Habit of Highly Effective Marketing Services Professionals

Habit 1 Communication Procedures

5 Habits of Highly Effective Marketing Services Professionals may help those who are struggling to improve their job performance.

Habit 1: Communication Procedures
Without question, one of the most essential elements of any good relationship is clear and open communication. As a marketing services professional, practically everything that we do is communication in one sense or another.
With this in mind, it becomes evident why communication procedures are the most important skills for us to develop.

I have previously written regarding some positive ways to communicate with others. This article is well worth the reading. However this time, we’ll look at some procedures that can be set up that will facilitate greater communication.
The first step to more effective communication is to eliminate unnecessary informational inputs from your life. We have to do this first by getting organized. Since I’ve written about this before, I’ll summarize very briefly here:

How do we eliminate information?

Inbox – Have one place where all incoming physical information goes and process it no more than once a day.

Email – Do not leave emails in your inbox after you are finished with them. Email responses generally yield more emails, so be conservative with responses.

Trash Can – In most cases, when in doubt, throw it out.

Phone – Marketing folks can get bogged down with unimportant telephone calls. However, don’t dismiss calls from sales professionals out of hand. Consider the marketing person who told me she hated telemarketers. Did she think clients thought the same of her when she called trying to market the firm’s services, or does she view the business development team in the same light as telemarketers.
Highly effective people respect the work of other professionals and will take a call from someone with a service they might be able to use. The key is knowing when to end the conversation and how to tell the person their service is not needed at this time.

Another time waster with the phone are people in your network who call to chat without a specific business reason for the call. It is important to keep these conversations short. You can end the call with an agreement to meet sometime in the future to talk about business opportunities.

You have now been shown how to eliminate some of the communications overload. Remember, these tips do nothing to reduce the 4000 advertising messages you receive each day, but they are a start. Now what can you do to improve your communications methods?

1. Answer every important email Clients love knowing that their question is important to you. Even if it’s a rude email, be sure that you answer it in as peaceable way as you possibly can. I had an irate client who emailed me while I was at a convention. I happened to check my email that evening and responded immediately. I told her I was at a convention, but the person who could help was also at the convention. I subsequently had lunch with him the next day, we laughed about the problem, and solved it. I got back from the convention and had a lovely email from her telling me she knew I would solve it.

2. Return every important phone call How do you handle calls to and from clients? Are you in the habit of returning calls the same business day? What about colleagues, people in your network or vendors? I have put together a prioritized list (from my standpoint) of important people. The lower they are on the totem pole, the less necessary communication is with them. If they’re not on the list, communication is usually not vital. However, do not confuse vital with important. Vital might be the difference between winning and losing a client. However, important might be the one call that connects you to your next client. This is why time management and priorities are so important. Highly effective marketing services professionals have a system for handling phone calls. On the business development side they even have developed methods for handling voice mail when their reach potential clients.

3. Encourage communication How do you handle communication with your team? As marketing advocates we have to work successfully in a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment. The firm’s brand really depends upon the communication you receive from your team. If this isn’t part of your plan, you need to incorporate it soon.

4. Set up a blog I like the functionality of a blog. Make sure your firm’s experts are contributing and get the word out to all your clients, prospects, suspects and vendors. Have your experts and other team members tie it in with their alumni associations as well.

5 Habits of Highly Effective Industry Professionals

Next week the Rising Market Newsletter will feature the results of an industry survey and 20 years of experience marketing professional services to edify subscribers as to the 5 habits that are reflected in highly effective leaders who market professional services. The newsletter is published by Business Development Professionals. You can subsribe by sending an email to customerservice@businessdevelopmentpros.org

The complete results will be posted on this blog over the next two weeks. Join the blog and you will be emailed the complete White Paper.

Extending the Reach of Social Networks

When your career is marketing professional services, how do you use your networks to expand your business base and careers?

You must approach each person in your network not only in terms of whether they personally have contacts or information that can help you reach new clients, but whether they can introduce you to people who do. In my sales training programs I tell attendees they need a mentor. A mentor is someone who can help them navigate through a client's decision matrix and who is interested in seeing them succeed. If you have been selective in building your social networks, the people you have connected with will want to help you like a mentor.

Why else have you taken the time to build a social network, if there wasn't an expected business outcome? You have agreed to join others and help them. Why shouldn't there be a quid pro quo?

Also, look for friends or colleagues who are competitors, partners, vendors or clients of the firm you are interested in. This part of your client acquisition strategy not only allows you to learn more about the organization, but you also may be able to discover value-added information you can use to show your knowledge of the organization in a way your competitors can't.

When you work you network like this, a few hundred contacts can turn into thousands. You can imagine the impact that expanded reach will have on your ability to build business.

Are You Wierd Enough for Networking?

Why is networking so difficult for many architects and engineers? First, your parents taught you not to talk to strangers as a kid. Networking is uncomfortable because of this. Second, there are social etiquette issues and not wanting to be seen as pushy. Third, public speaking is our greatest fear next to the fear of death, plus what do we have to say? Find out how being brave enough to extend a hand can bring unforeseen opportunities for creating new business for your firm.
Who is sitting near you right now? Look around. Do you really ever know exactly who you are attracting? A fun exercise: Consider the folks who surround you at any moment , and think about the role they could play helping you uncover leads for new projects.
We're out and about in our everyday lives all the time, but not until we slightly tweak those simple interactions toward a project-related conversation do we realize the wealth of contacts waiting on our doorstep. I believe that what we are seeking is seeking us - we just have to demonstrate the courage to get out of our comfort zones, extend a hand and meet the people around us.
Brave little moments like this can reveal incredible relationships and opportunities virtually at our fingertips. I encourage people to become a COW: a Citizen of the World, finding creative ways to engage people in conversations that artfully turn toward your firm's value proposition.Here are a few points that can help you get outside your own comfort zone:

1. Realize that networking is weird for most people. You're not the only one afraid to stick out that hand or start a conversation. Fear of rejection shapes most of our lives ... but it's the brave ones who go beyond that False Evidence Appearing Real that make others comfortable in relating back. We all converge in the streets as brothers and sisters during an earthquake - why not generate that same relatedness all the time?
2. Find natural opportunities to connect.With a little practice, you can learn how to start up a conversation anywhere: in the line at the coffee shop, checking out at the grocery store or in the elevator at the office. When you want to buy a new car, you see them all over the place. When you want to find ways to connect with people, you'll be overwhelmed by all the opportunities to do so surrounding you every day. You just have to start looking!
3. Add a simple question to your brief conversations: "What do you do?"It's a simple ice-breaking question that most people don't think to include in their short, passing conversations, yet it turns that everyday conversation into one that can help you. If you ask someone "What do you do?" they will most often ask the same question of you. This easy question gives you a project-related conversation that can shower you with information and connections that you would have simply walked by.
4. Develop your 30-second "Elevator Speech."In the Fusion Seminar we spend time helping people position their value proposition in their "Elevator Speech" which is your response when someone asks you the question, "What do you do". Everyone involved in the design and construction industry needs to have a response that says more than, "I am an engineer or architect." Your response can open doors and lead to more questions, or be followed up by a response like, "My neighbor is an engineer." You can't become a networking star overnight, but you can take baby steps and try these techniques the next time you are at a meeting, reception or event. The results will surprise you.

Small Design Firms Benefit from Sending a Monthly Client Newsletter

Small business in general, but small engineering and architectural firms specifically are behind the eight ball when competing agaist larger firms with more resources and larger marketing departments. How can they even the playing field? Last week I posted a blog about using social media to compete. That is the first step. Small firms need to drive clients and prospects to their websites. Websites have to be interactive and offer visitors something worth the visit. Review my previous blog for details.

However, sometimes it is not about resources, but past experience.

I once served as the Marketing and Business Development Director for a 50-person engineering firm and struggled with ownership over website design and external marketing communication. The owners couldn't agree on what should be listed on their website, ignoring my advice and the advice of a web designer. For more than five years, they had been trying to find agreement and perfection in a new website. I checked the site the other day and it is still the same. An idea to create an external client newsletter had the same result. Therefore, sometimes it is not the lack of resources that prevents small firms from communicating with clients, but a mindset that shouts "what we have always done is not worth changing." Some small firms look at marketing as risk they are not willing to accept. However, I digress from the topic...... Client Newsletters.

Small firms should be using another tool to connect with their project universe. They need to create a monthly client newsletter. The newsletter should be electronic, one page and offer news, trends and articles that would be of interest. Lessons Learned could be the topic of an on-going newsletter column. Articles that add to your firm's "expert" status will also help to drive readers to your website or to the telephone to call you direct. Another valuable column would be anything to do with your involvement in community activities. A client interview would provide your messge with third party credibility.

However, when a small business is up to its neck in alligators, it is hard to remember the mission was to drain the swamp, or in this case, to build additional business. In addition, many small firms don't have the internal resources to produce a professional quality newsletter each month and can't afford to outsource the project to a marketing firm that might charge several thousand dollars per month. Maybe they did outsource marketing in the past and the results did not meet their expectations. These firms are not interested in throwing good money after bad.

Would they use this business building tool, if the cost was about $500 per month? That is the question I am asking 100 small architectural and engineering firms this week. What would they receive for their investment? They would receive a list of everyone who opened the email, as well as the names of people who clicked the links that were included in the newsletter. They would be obligated to provide the list of people they want to send the newsletter to and reivew and approve the content in a timely fashion.

This is simply an idea to help small architectural and engineering firms level the playing field with some of their larger competitors. Do you know any firms that could benefit from such an investment? Email trystanderson@businessdevelopmentpros.org

http://www.businessdevelopmentpros.org/

Social Media: Design Firms Most Pressing Challenge

What is the most pressing challenge facing design firms today? Some would say it is the economy or lack of stimulus funds for infrastructure projects. But the reality is the changing nature of branding and how the industry is adapting. Marketing has become conversations that are initiated in the client universe and your challenge is to become part of the conversation.
Remember the classic McGraw Hill advertisement with a man sitting on a chair in an otherwise empty room, with this text, “I don’t know your company, your name or your product. Now what were you trying to sell me.” This represented traditional marketing through the channel of print advertising. Design firms have traditionally used print advertising, direct mail, and cold calling to build business.

Traditional branding is a top down approach with companies defining their brand. Today brands are being defined by conversations. Brands are defined by what people say about the firm. Is this how your firm is engaging clients?

If the brand for any architecture or engineering firm consists of a set of promises, isn’t it the company that decides the promises? Yes, core values of a firm are created internally, but the branding of the promise happens outside. In an environment where every firm offers “quality services, on time and under budget,” it is difficult to differentiate. Difficult unless you have built trust and relationships in the market place. Look at it this way: Traditional marketing was like taking a sledge hammer and hitting your prospects and clients over the head with it. It was almost like, “Believe me, or else.”

Branding today is like a magnet that draws clients to the company. This is the real value and purpose of social media in a business context.

Your firm might be filled with Gen Y employees who Twitter, blog and post on Facebook. This is not a fad, or something that young people do when they aren’t playing video games. Social media is the place where you cultivate your brand in the new economy.
In the traditional sales funnel you have the project universe at the top and as the funnel shrinks prospects are turned into clients. Today’s funnel has website visitors at the top who develop into leads and eventually clients. Before we go any further, it is important to point out that social media is not replacing the need for business development people or departments. Leads in the funnel don’t magically become clients because they heard about your blog or follow you on Twitter. But social media does act as trust agents. Unlike the businessman in the McGraw Hill advertisement, they trust what you are about to sell to them. Therefore the new tools of social media add power to traditional marketing.

Social media is where the conversation begins. When people are drawn to your firm, you are in a unique position to listen to their needs. This process enables your firm to build trust and create relationships before business development takes over the sales process.
For example, Linkedin is an excellent site to build your reputation as an industry expert. Expert status is a powerful way to differentiate a firm from the competition.
Differentiation isn’t easy because there isn’t a silver bullet in branding. Your competitors might also have expert status. Therefore, civil engineers must be intentional in embracing social media. The important part of cultivating the brand conversation is the transparency of your company. The end game of social networks is to drive people to your website. Therefore, your website has to be interactive instead of a yellow page ad. This means you need to have interesting content like a blog, videos, and articles. Marketing departments must be actively linking this information to their social networks. If you don’t have a blog, it is easy to start. Your marketing department is probably filled with ideas. For starters, why not interview clients for your blog? Another idea is to share lessons that you have learned. How about shooting videos at events? If you have a community outreach commitment, a video shot at an event could go viral after linking it to your social networks. Helping others in the new economy is good for business. It goes back to the concept of trust.

Finally, the most important thing about your transparency is the requirement to allow every staff person to participate. It makes sense based on pure numbers and possible connections, but it also makes sense in building trust and growing relationships. When more people in the client universe understand your brand (your promises), there is greater potential for additional work. This is a reality that is not shaped by economic conditions, but by your flexibility and desire to embrace change.

About the authorTryst M. Anderson is president of T. Marlowe & Associates, a training and personal development organization specializing in marketing and business development training for engineers and architects. He has 20 years experience marketing professional services and has written more than 100 articles for trade and industry magazines. He can be reached at trystanderson@businessdevelopmentpros.org or http://www.businessdevelopmentpros.org/

Help Your Clients Communicate with Customers

The following article was written to help the parking industry improve its communication with customers. It was originally published in the Parking Professional Magazine. It might help you communicate with your customers, or, better yet, help you advise your clients in ways to improve their communication with customers.

Parking as a Second Language

In a world of constant change and a knowledge economy, effective communication has become more important than ever. Communication is especially important in the parking industry. Policies, procedures and a market that has more demand than supply combine to make communication a difficult prospect for the parking professional.

Professionals in the parking industry understand that their business is a combination of art and science. Consultants and parking administrators have developed formulas for projecting parking demand and future parking needs based upon certain development scenarios. This is the science. The science is often difficult to communicate because of the jargon used in this industry. Terms like “effective supply”, “parking geometrics”, “functional design”, “level of service”, “parking demand ratios”, and “user group analysis” are all understood by parking professionals, but need to be translated for everyone else in the world. How good are we as translators? If parking professionals are not understood what happens to the image of the industry?

When you bring art into the equation, the language really changes. Art is required because the collection of data represents only a snapshot in time.
What happens if the snapshot changes? What about the peculiarities of the downtown or campus that don’t fit the formula or model? Art is the professional’s personal experience. Experience allows adjustments for the quirks that are often presented in interpreting and analyzing the data. Communicating the art component and its intangible characteristics often leaves the politician, business leader, housewife or English teacher with a puzzled look followed by a “can you explain that for me?”
Responding to the puzzled look results in another 15 minutes of dialogue without a definitive answer. Colorful PowerPoint slides don’t make the translation process any easier.

The answer users want is their parking space. Users of hospital, downtown or campus parking have a simple need: an open parking space that is convenient to their final destination. Although most people have become accustomed to paying for parking, everyone would prefer that it is free. It is easier for a conservative politician to communicate a desire to support a liberal tax increase without voting for it than it is for a parking professional to communicate the reasons why parking isn’t free and will no longer be convenient. After all, parking is free at the mall. Sometimes a parking professional appreciates industry jargon because it confuses the message.

“If the parking generator had an effective supply of 20 percent of the total zone equivalent, with corresponding parking geometrics and levels of service, we would not be forced to increase rates to this degree. You asked for a Cadillac and we gave you one,” is one way to confuse a parking rate increase. It is a way to win a battle and lose the war.

Even if it is easier for parking professionals to win a series of battles, it is important to have a strategic communications plan in place to be in position to win the war. This is especially important when the science gives way to art.

Communicating the art factor is needed when the local market and users of parking facilities react differently to the parking environment. For example, there was a consultant that had projected the need for a large parking structure to support a downtown retail development. The structure was built and paid for with revenue bonds.

When the revenue projections were not being met, fingers started pointing. The pointing was being done by lawyers, politicians, media, consultants and developers. It was a community with a downtown development district and county economic development group that competed with the city’s parking professionals. Even within the city framework, parking was at odds with finance and economic development.

The media had reported that the consultant had failed to assess the local market needs in the context of user perceptions. It seems that people parking in downtown were reluctant to park in structured parking. They would rather find street parking several blocks outside of the “normal” walking distance zone (another popular industry term needing translation). It also had to do with the City’s decision to leave street meter rates lower per hour than the new parking structure. The combination created conflict. Assessments of user psychology are not in a consultant’s typical scope of services for a downtown or campus parking study. In addition, a consultant recommending market rates or higher for street parking is usually listened to. However, in this instance the politicians refused to raise the on-street meter rates to silence constituent’s complaints. The consultant had warned about the consequences of not raising on-street meter rates. Memories can be short when communication strategies have not been used in the study process.

In another example, a City completed a downtown parking study, with the results tied to a bond refinance. The underwriters questioned the consultant about the ability of the private sector to build structured parking in the downtown over the next several years. Underwriters were concerned that private developers could build and lease parking at below market rates. The private market was not financially viable for structured parking, according to the consultant when land costs, taxes and construction costs were factored in. Private rates would have to be $3.00 per day higher than city rates in order to meet pro forma numbers.


If a private entity developed a parking structure, the rates would have to be at least 40 percent higher than the proposed rate increases expected to be approved by the City to support the bond refinance, according to the consultant. The bonds were sold based upon these assumptions for an unencumbered revenue stream.

Everything was fine until an economic development initiative started by a state/county coalition to secure a large company headquarters in downtown included a subsidized parking structure. Early on the city’s parking professionals indicated they didn’t want to own the facility because of long-term maintenance concerns. They were also financially strapped and saw tax increment financing as the only way the structure could be developed. The potential negative impact on the city-owned parking revenue stream was never evaluated. After the development deal was approved, the company discovered the structure had at least 500 extra parking spaces and announced plans to lease those spaces to anyone needing parking in downtown. The structure will be completed 18 months before the headquarters is occupied, allowing all 3000 parking spaces to be leased at below market rates for those 18 months. In addition, when the building opens many of the people working there will be transferring from other buildings in downtown. Many of those people are currently using city-owned parking facilities. There is a possibility that the city’s parking revenue stream will suffer in a couple of years.

Politicians in another city sold the highest revenue generating parking structure to a development team without considering bond covenants, market cost of the real estate or replacement cost of new parking. This happened because parking was not at the table and the downtown development people told the politicians it was a “good economic development” deal. The warden in the movie, Cool Hand Luke, gave us the answer to this dilemma when he told Paul Newman, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

The parking professionals in all of these examples were not proactive in presenting their needs to parties that could negatively impact their operations. Finding a seat at the downtown or campus development table takes diligence. It is a seat that is not advertised or solicited. People at the table live by the golden rule, he who has the gold rules. Parking is gold.

The organizational structures of the city or campus often preclude parking from any real input before development decisions are made. Even if this is the case, parking needs to get the ear of the administrators above them in order to maintain a positive flow of information. Otherwise parking will follow the Japanese proverb, “Vision without action is a dream; action without vision is a nightmare.”

How could communications have helped these situations? I made a presentation at the 2000 IPI Convention titled, “Size Doesn’t Matter: How Parking is Driving Downtown Renewal” that focused on the need of parking professionals to create partnerships with downtown constituents through communication. Parking professionals need to create alliances with chambers of commerce, economic development groups, downtown development districts, business owners, education entities, etc.

Whenever the seed of growth or development is planted, parking professionals have to be at the table. If they are not present, parking will suffer. Remember, no one wants to pay for parking and you are the villain making them pay. Staying in an adversarial position is a no win situation for the parking professional. There is a saying, “If you are not at the table, then you are probably on the menu.” Parking professionals should take this seriously.

How does the industry add value to the downtown or campus? What is it worth and who are the beneficiaries? These are two questions that begin the dialogue of alliance building. The importance of these alliances goes beyond the synergy created when multiple groups come together for a common goal. Parking needs friends not enemies when they go before politicians or boards of regents for rate, fee and fine increases. Parking professionals need to be alliance builders and communicate their active participation.

Some parking departments have used customer focus groups to learn what is important to users of their facilities. Focus groups are a valuable form of market research that is not used enough in the parking industry.

Parking professionals have to communicate the value of the parking system, including how integral it is to renewal and development. This is also true on a campus, but with a different sphere of influence. Campus parking professionals need alliances with admissions, athletics, students, faculty, human resources, the president/chancellor as well as the board of regents.

Because America has entered another time of tuition increases, it will be extremely difficult to receive approval for parking rate increases. Therefore, communication becomes a critical component of parking planning. The theme for the knowledge economy is not who you know or what you know, but how you communicate your message to the people who need to know. Simply put, they are the customers who pay for parking and, ultimately, control the purse strings.

The industry’s parking consultants have not addressed the communication aspects of parking planning because their core competencies are in engineering and design. Communication is a discipline that comes out of journalism and marketing schools.
However, more importantly, the communication process has not been addressed because its importance was not a priority. Limited resources point the client toward a minimal scope of services assessment.

In addition, the city and campus environment have separate departments for communications. Parking does not want to take on the responsibility of another department or pay for services that should be included in another department. Again, we go back to alliances. Does the parking professional wait for the Finance Department to sell revenue bonds before asking for a meeting? Not usually.

In the same way, parking professionals need to create alliances with other departments to ensure that communications is a focal point for every parking improvement or assessment. If there is a communications-related department outside of parking, the parking professional should look at the annual communications plan to determine how much of the budget is devoted to parking. Speak their language or be ready to translate parking for them. If the staff of that department is not comfortable with parking communications strategies, then determine whether outsourcing those services is possible. Once the budget is approved, it is very difficult to change or alter its scope. Parking professionals know the level of difficulty based upon their own budget development and approval process.

Communications also has to be integral to the training for parking staff. This is extremely important for any staff member who deals directly with the public. Common courtesy and polite behavior are the foundation for molding employees into parking professionals focused on customer service. Does your training program have a communications focus?

Finally, parking should not be the language you use with customers. If your customers need to use a definition of terms in order to understand your system, you have missed a communications opportunity. Common words and consistent use of terms should be your priority.

Your system might include parking lots, remote lots, reserved lots, surface lots, car parks, garages, structured parking, parking structures, street parking, meter parking, free parking, two-hour parking, restricted parking, accessible parking, single thread helixes, ramps, double threads, side-by-side, pay-on-foot, cashier, and other phrases taken for granted by the parking industry. Successful parking departments keep signage and graphics simple and consistent for the users of their facilities. In addition, these departments have started to add amenities to their parking services.

The only thing constant about the parking industry is change. Communicating changes to your customers is the best way to be successful in this industry.

Communication at each step of the process not only produces feedback for positive change, but also bridges the gap of understanding between the parking industry and the general public. That is a process we can all afford to adopt.

Where Did the Marketing Dollars Go?

Everyone who makes a living marketing professional services has found out that they are expected to do more with less. Although some firms have kept budgets intact and a few have increased budgets, the majority have made cuts. Often the cuts have come with reductions in staff. Therefore, the survivors are not only doing the work of others, but they are doing it with fewer resurces. In an environment where competitors are coming out of the woodwork, these professionals are being forced to work smarter. The old school members of this fraternity have worked through previous recessions. Some might have been around to experience the Jimmy Carter double digit interest rate and double digit unemployment. But, for many of the people marketing professional servies, they have never faced these circumstances. These are the folks who need to avail themselves to all available marketing resources. They could join the Linkedin group Marketing Professionals United, a forum for sharing advice, best practices, etc.