Top of Mind Must Come of Age in Marketing Professional Services

Marketing is ultimately intended to connect our firm’s value proposition with clients. Most firms with a marketing plan do a good job of making the connection. With the advent of social media where clients can talk directly with us and other clients, professional services marketers are sorting through how this impacts their marketing strategies.

Noise is the enemy of our marketing endeavors. Clients bombarded with thousands of independent messages each day is a prime example of noise. Our messages can get caught in the middle. The interaction of social media might not all be beneficial. Social media is becoming the primary communications tool that represents a fundamental shift in how we communicate.

Marketers and management should be asking what is in it for our clients. This is the context where “top of mind” should be our focus as marketing services professionals. You have heard the comment, “He is in your head” or “she is in your head.” The comment is related to something someone said or did that impacts the person’s thought process. Sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it is not.

Marketing services professionals need to make this a good thought for their clients and prospects.

When your client needs the services you deliver, your name must be on the top of his mind. How is this done? Innovation is the first word that comes to mind. However, innovation to improve performance, production, or profits is not the hook that will get you to the top of the client’s mind. It is deeper than how innovation has improved your firm. It must be innovation that impacts the client’s vision, need or dreams. It has to be innovation that can’t be lost in the noise of all the other communications bombarding the client everyday.

The key words in your value proposition can get you to the top of the list for a Google search. This will cause management to jump for joy and cause a tingle to run up the leg of your webmaster. There is a chasm between SEO and being on the top of the client’s mind. It is definitely a good idea for the client to have your firm and its value proposition on the top of his or her mind. However, the image in the client’s mind is a person.

Who in your firm is that person? It could be the charismatic president, but the president’s reach is too limited to be on top of every client and prospect’s mind. It could be vice presidents, principals, office managers, business developers or project managers. It has to be one of them. How do they get there? Stories!

Debriefings are a good place to begin the process for moving your firm to the top of a client’s mind. I remember a debriefing when the client told me who had been selected for the project. My response was, “That is good for the competitor, but it might not be good for you.” The client said it was good for them and went on to tell me where we came up short. It was subjective and based on a weighted formula voted on by the selection committee. However, I had a relationship with the key decision maker and knew he would listen to what I said next. I then mentioned the two things that we had presented that the competitor couldn’t. But I didn’t simply recall the facts of our presentation, I told him a story. The project didn’t go well for the client and when the next project came up, we were invited to submit a proposal without any competition. We had a place in the top of his mind.

Telling stories is more than listening to clients. Social media is about listening to your clients, conversing with them, and encouraging them to become advocates for your brand. That's a good thing for marketing. However story telling does much more.

The fact is, our brains are wired for stories. Keith Oatley is a professor of applied cognitive psychology and a novelist. He describes stories as “simulations that run on minds”. He says that just as pilots-in-training spend time on flight simulators; stories may act as flight simulators for real life.

If top of mind is coming of age in professional services marketing, then story telling has to become the new art form of marketing. Granted, it is not really new because there is nothing new in marketing. Story telling is the new brand generator that keeps your firm on top of mind. When you have this position, the competition doesn’t have a chance.

The Chicken or Egg Theory of Marketing Professional Services Success

How you market and sell professional services differs substantially from how you market products. We all know this. Generating leads, closing new business, and turning existing clients into advocates completes the circle for most firms.


The question really becomes, “what are you actually selling?” Is it your services or something else? Although your services are “profit centers” they shouldn’t be at the center of what you are selling in today’s economic environment unless you want to be viewed as a commodity.

If you are still selling your services, you need a different outlook, different tactics, and different execution in order to expand your business.

How can I tell that most industry firms are selling services? I simply have to look at their websites. Are services the most prominent piece of information? Take a look at the HOK website and see what they are selling (http://www.hok.com/).

It mentions services, but it has a focus on markets and thought leaders. HOK is actually more of an advisor.


A marketing strategy to attack core markets begins with clients in the market. As an advisor you help the client by knowing what their needs are in the market, their competition and how they measure success. You can’t attack a market without understanding these things. You expand your exposure in the market when your client talks with his peers about your value.

Your value might include the services you provide, but more often than not, your value is measured by your relationship with the client. Can you see the difference? Your services become the icing on the cake when you are not seen as a commodity by your clients.

There has been a lot of talk in the professional services industry about cross-selling of services. Your firm includes a shopping list of services that are never sold entirely to one client. Often, a client might receive a single service. The trend for increasing profits was to sell other services to existing clients. This is not a bad strategy, but it misses the point about losing the “commodity” image. Separately, all of the services are commodities. The advisor brings them together to form a solution.

Yes, you should deliver more than one service to a client. The delivery of the services should be part of the on-going conversation with the client about his business model, growth plans and industry trends. This is the role of the advisor with a market focus.


Now we return to the beginning. The chicken or egg theory to selling professional services. Consider the chicken your role as an advisor and the eggs your specific services. The real change for many professional services firms today is finally seeing themselves as the chicken instead of the eggs. If you need to begin the transition, start with baby steps. Review your website. Help your good professional staff understand markets instead of services. Offer tools for growth and expand the conversations you are having with existing clients. Do these things and you will be amazed at how your firm becomes market focused and expands business with client advocates.