Dancing with Strangers: Turning a First Date into a Wedding Celebration

Have you ever gone on a blind date or danced with a stranger? The blind date is filled with mystery and intrigue. It doesn’t matter how the encounter was started, your response is directly related to a positive outcome. It can be nerve wracking, but remember the other person is having a similar response. Both parties are at risk. A wedding is the furthest thing from their minds at the initial encounter.

The same is true in the professional services industry when one business wants to interact with another. There is always a first meeting and it often feels like you are dancing with a stranger.

Everything that comes in between is the interesting part. When you’re dating, you’re gathering information about each other: what you both like to do, eating and entertainment habits, recreation, family, job, and even hobbies. This courting process can take some time. Sure, there is always love at first sight, but that doesn’t work for a majority of people. Even when it does, additional knowledge does come in handy, especially when you’re discovering the things that you do well together. Your heart says a lot about developing this relationship, but so does your head.

It's no different when it comes to professional services marketing. You need to deepen your relationship with prospects over time, interacting in a variety of settings, learning more about each other's needs and capabilities while progressing seamlessly from one interaction to the next. Many firms will call this a strategic approach to business development, but not every firm employs it. Like travelling on the road to a lifelong relationship with another person, you need to know when to commit more resources to the relationship as well as when to pull back and give the prospect some space.

When you are courting, it is a process of nurturing the relationship. In your business it is the same thing with every lead you come across. You have to dance with a lot of strangers before you find the ones worth developing a deeper relationship.

The process for professional services firm is defined as building a relationship with qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready, regardless of budget, authority, or timing – and of ensuring a clean hand-off to principals at the right time. Just as in dating, lead nurturing can be described with defined stages, including:

1. The Prologue
2. First Encounter
3. Dancing
4. The Proposal
5. Negotiation
6. The Wedding

The Prologue
The introduction is the first time your future client hears of you. It is up to an associate, vendor, mentor, website, social media profile, or some othermatchmaker to make you seem interesting and attractive. You don't have direct control over the introduction, but the more you can do to
influence it, the better. Just as a nice haircut and a manicure prepare you for that first date,
every marketer should prepare for that introduction.


Discover Your Ideal Prospect
The first step in the introduction should be to determine your ideal prospect. Just as you
know you like tall, dark and handsome, you should also know that the best prospects for
your services and solutions are companies in the United States with 100 or more employees,
in the pharmaceutical and healthcare verticals. It’s not usually this simple, but having an idea
of what your ideal prospect looks like will help you focus your marketing. If you know that tall, dark and handsome is often at your alma mater’s tailgate parties, you’ll probably want to be there, early and often. In other words, network where your ideal prospects congregate.

Build Your Brand
If you’re wondering whether branding matters in professional services marketing, a 2010 branding report says the answer is yes, concluding, "If you are well known, whatever lead
generation tactics you employ are likely to work better." In fact, 65% of companies that claim
they are well known report being good or excellent at lead generation, while only 44% of the
not well known companies report being good or excellent.

Brand matters because buyers of professional services are still people and emotions impact economic decisionmaking. Your prospects are overwhelmed with choices and information – more than any buyer could evaluate rationally. This means that no matter how disciplined a buying process is, emotional brand impressions do influence vendor selection. Web 2.0 is also changing the way marketers build their brand. With the growing popularity of blogs, podcasts, social media and the like, buyers would rather talk to each other, instead of listening to a marketing message. So take advantage of this by creating thought leadership, using Web 2.0 techniques.

Create Thought Leadership
One way professional service firms can build their brand is by helping buyers research early in the sales cycle, demonstrating that they are trusted advisers who understand the prospect's problems. By using thought leadership to engage prospects early, you build awareness and increase your chances that the prospect will respond to future demand generation efforts.

Creating thought leadership helps your prospects learn more about you, your background
and how you think. It helps build the foundations of a relationship: familiarity and trust. At
this stage, don’t hide your thought leadership content behind registration forms. Set this
content free to allow it to spread virally.

Write White Papers
White papers are used at almost any stage of the pipeline, from lead generation to customer retention. They typically range from four to eight pages, and shouldn’t be more than
12 pages long. According to Michael Stelzner of Writing White Papers, “A white paper is a persuasive document that usually describes approach of an article and weaves in
persuasive corporate messages typically found in brochures.” And studies have shown that white papers are highly viral; that is, they are passed around by 60% of technology professionals. According to a study by MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm, this is because white papers are considered to be credible resources for thought leadership and subject matter expertise.

Create eBooks
As an alternative to white papers, consider eBooks, defined by David Meerman Scott as the
"hip and stylish younger sibling to the nerdy whitepaper." An eBook delivers the content in a
form that's designed for quick scanning and reading online. The content tends to come in
more bite-sized chunks (as in a presentation). With newer versions of Microsoft PowerPoint,
audio can be added to each page/slide.

Use social media
Social media continues to grow in popularity, and has become another conduit to your
prospects. Sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace allow people to build online
relationships by joining groups, chatting and commenting about products and services. On
LinkedIn, for instance, you frequently see questions from your network asking for
recommendations for services and consultants.

Blogging is a great way to build thought leadership and, therefore, your brand. Your blog
should fill the information needs of your prospects and invites comments from readers.
Podcasts – essentially audio clips of you speaking instead of writing, or of an interview with
another thought leader – are a great attachment to your blog. RSS feeds and content
formatted for mobile devices such as Blackberry, Treo and iPhone extend your blog’s reach.
The YouTube phenomenon cannot be forgotten. A funny or clever short video that goes viral
can quickly build your brand.

The First Encounter
The first encounter is all about making a good first impression. Remember, you don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. Don't come on too strong or you'll scare your prospect away. Who would say, “will you marry me,” after their first dance? Think about philosopher, Toby Keith, when he wrote that “sometimes I want to talk about me”. Don’t make the first encounter all about you. Use the precious time as an opportunity to learn more about your prospect's wants and needs, as well as to share some relevant information about yourself.
The prospect might be in the early stage of the selection process so carefully plan the delivery of information. If you know where the client is at, you might want to go with thought leadership information. Either way, they should be short and to the point. You’re trying to make a good first impression.

Develop case studies
Also known as success stories, case studies are short, one or two page documents that
vangelize a client’s success and ROI from use of your solution. Sections typically include
an introduction, challenge and solution. And don’t forget to include a compelling client quote or two and a short section at the end that tells about your services and company.

Dancing
Prospect development starts here. Your prospect has shown at least some interest in you. You don't want to ruin a good first impression by calling too often or asking for
too much commitment too soon. Instead, develop the relationship by sharing additional information at the right time. If tall, dark and handsome responds to your overtures,
you want to talk to him and try to gather more information: Is he single? Is he interesting? In professional services relationships, it’s much the same: make offers of more information at scheduled intervals and determine the level of interest at each stage. The goal, of course, is to get agreement from your dance partner that the relationship should move to the next level.

Share relevant third party information
You don't need to create all the lead nurturing content yourself. You can demonstrate how well you understand each prospect's wants and needs by sharing relevant third party content with them. This can be as simple as emailing a news article and saying "Based on our conversation last week, I thought you'd find this interesting."

Make it personal
Remember, the goal of "courting" is to build a relationship with a real person. Buyers of professional services are people, so the human touch matters. John Nesbitt in his best seller Mega Trends, wrote that as our culture became more dependent upon technology, we would need to have more human interaction. He coined the term: Hi Tech=High Touch. Lead nurturing is a conversation, not a series of disjointed campaigns. Personalize email responders and landing pages. Make sure each step connects with the prior one. And except for webinar invitations, don’t make the same offer twice in one email flow.


Make it personal. The goal of courting is to build a relationship
with a real person.

The Proposal
When identifying your ideal customer, marketing and business development must work
together to determine the best indicators of success, in terms of what
the client looks like (markets,services,geography, etc.). During this discussion,
you should also determine the activities that result in agreement-ready
lead. For instance, if a prospect fits your demographic target, responded to your email, and asked for more information, you might give him a 5 or 6 on readiness to move forward. If he asked for your assistance in writing the RFP or talks to you about project-specific budget issues, you might put the prospect at an 8 or 9.

Use customer references
Client references are always excellent ways of closing new clients. Marketing should
cultivate and nurture existing clients and gain permission to use them as references. Care
should be taken with references to ensure any single reference isn’t over-used. Remember
that they’re doing you a favor. Get these references published on LinkedIn as well.



The Wedding
The Deal. The Close. The Win. Ultimately, making the sale is up to your
principals, but by implementing a sound nurturing and scoring process,
you have helped them by establishing a relationship and positioning your
company as a leader with the prospect.

Leveraging Social Media in Professional Services Firms

Professional services companies are discovering that social media marketing is quickly becoming an important method for driving business growth. While the idea of using “free tools” to drive marketing can be exciting, this excitement is often followed with the realization that these tools take time and commitment. At the end of the day, the million-dollar question is: can social media help professional service firms make more money?

This article will answer the following questions:

1. How does social media drive business revenue?
2. How do firms resource the time needed for social media?
3. How can blogs drive professional service firm leads?
4. How does the B2B application of social media for professional service firms work?
5. How can social media support offline marketing activities?
6. How do industry firms get started using social media and keep generating content?
7. How is the cost of customer acquisition lower when using social media compared to outbound methods like direct mail, advertising and print

First we must frame the problem that professional service firms are working to solve using social media. If you don’t know the root of the problem, understanding the details of social media will not be relevant to your business. Traditionally, large commercial businesses have had an advantage over small business owners because they’ve had larger marketing budgets and could spend more money on outbound marketing techniques like print advertising and direct mail. This is true in the professional services industry as well. Social media is one way to level the playing field. But like Alice in Alice in Wonderland, it won’t make any difference which path you choose, if you don’t know where you’re headed. First step: Identify the problem.

In the old marketing model, budgets dictated success.

Successful professional services firms have long thrived on word-of-mouth to help promote their services. With social media, these firms are now able to use free tools to help increase word-of-mouth while decreasing the need for outbound advertising platforms like the yellow pages, cable television ads, newsletters, magazines,newspaper ads, etc.

The 10 Fundamentals of Professional Service Firm’s Social Media Success

Professional services firms that successfully use social media…
1. Commit weekly resources to creating content and engaging in social media.
2. Have some methods of understanding how social media activity had an impact on business results.
3. Regularly generate content using blogs, Twitter, Facebook or other social platforms.
4. Don’t try to do use every platform, instead focusing time and resources on the social media channels that drive the best results for their business.
5. Use social media to drive participation in offline events.
6. Set clear expectations for customers regarding frequency and types of social media interactions their company is willing to provide.
7. Leverage social media to position their company as a thought leader within their industry.
8. Provide clear calls-to-action and opportunities to generate leads and new customers using social media.
9. Use information and data from social media to drive business strategy.
10. Balance paid and organic search engine traffic.

Does your content marketing mix include blogging, search engine optimization, whitepapers, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, email marketing and pay-per-click advertising?

The Importance of Building a Blog Network for Professional Services Firm Success

Business blogging has been on the rise for many professional services firms. Some companies have taken blogging to another level and are creating more business because of it.

Instead of a traditional blogging approach, these companies built a network of internal blogs to match their diverse service offerings. Why do it this way?

Blogs are a key driver of organic search engine traffic. In order to create content that was relevant to diverse service areas; these companies have built blogs on different topics. Each blog serves a dedicated purpose and audience. Another important component of the multiple blogs is to have both general and specific blogs. Having both broad and specific blogs allows a company to generate search traffic from niche, low-search-volume keywords as well as broader, high-search volume keywords.

Blog about niche topics related to your industry to drive quality leads that can be captured using landing pages connected to calls-to-action.

Do you Twitter?

Where does the power of social media come from? It is evident when you realize that, unlike email, which is often communication between two or a small group of people, Twitter updates can be seen by hundreds and even thousands of people. It is the process that brings clients to you. Twitter is a place where you can expose your firm as thought leaders.

Plan how often you will engage with client online beforehand as an effort to set expectations for online customer service and engagement. This begins by making sure you have optimized your web pages for better search engine optimization. The second step is to set up landing pages so you have a method for driving leads. Finally, you create content around long tail keywords. Keywords become the niche to your business that will help drive incremental increases in search engine traffic.

The web is full of so many good ideas, that often the best use of time and resources is to apply someone else’s idea to your own industry. This approach has worked for professional services firm, with targeted blog posts and keywords strategies driving the best results for traffic and leads.

Social media also provides a secondary benefit of providing better business intelligence and insight. When clients are inbound to your firm, you can develop a better sense of how to emphasize your strengths and exploit competitors’ weaknesses. The bottom line: sharper, longer-term goals and a clear road map on how to get there.

Professional services firms need to take an integrated approach. Industry firms need to understand that tactics like social media, blogging and search engine optimization drive more powerful results when used together, instead of only picking one tactic. Integrating social media tactics and content creation drives results, and it is important to track the results of each of these tactics to determine the best ways to invest time and effort.

Final Thoughts

1. Start blogging today. “If you’re not blogging, you’re letting competitors win,” is how Tryst Anderson frames the importance of blogging in his Social Media Seminar. Blogging is such a powerful driver for improving organic search traffic and leads.

2. Focus on what works for your business. Professional services firms shouldn’t try to do everything when it comes to social media marketing. Twitter and Facebook need not be a major focus, if you find more business value in blogging and search engine marketing.

3. Use a content management system (CMS). As a professional services firm, having control over your website is critical. Content management systems could be called ‘Web Design for Dummies.’ Not having to rely on a webmaster to make changes to your website allows you to take control and quickly and easily publish new content.

Linkedin: Tool for New Business

How are you using LinkedIn to generate new business? The social networking site for business is certainly a place where you can reach clients. However many industry professionals are still sorting out how this makes business sense. Have you been asking yourself this question?

What was the “old school” method for networking before social media? There were industry events, cocktail parties, trade shows and other venues where you were face to face with clients. What was the platinum networking opportunity? I believe it was when you were talking with a client who viewed you as a trusted advisor and someone you were pursuing to become a client joined the conversation. When your client started talking about all of the great things you were doing and had done, what was the reaction of the potential client? It was always great to go fishing for new clients at these events, but you often went away like the Disciples who had fished until dawn without success. Using the strength of an existing client to open the door for your next client was always the best outcome you could expect.

The old ways are still the best ways to use LinkedIn. It is really about creating a three-way conversation between you, your client and the universe of potential clients active on LinkedIn. The problem with LinkedIn and other social media outlets is lack of private chat rooms. There is a process that will bring results and it is a three-way conversation. It just doesn’t happen at the same time. In order to get started you need to know your client is active on Linkedin. The next step is to ask the client for a recommendation. While most recommendations are from people you have worked with or for in current or prior positions, the most powerful are those that come from clients. Offer the client some suggestions for what to put in the recommendation. If your company is on Linkedin, your firm should pursue recommendations as well. Think about it this way. When an RFP asks you for reference letters from previous clients, what do you do? I used to send the person a draft of the letter to help him out. Although the client wants to help you, their time is limited. You make it easy for them. The same is true with LinkedIn.

Recommendations are always posted in Linkedin’s weekly updates sent to everyone you are connected with. In addition it will be posted on the update that goes to every one of your client’s connections as well. You can independently post it on the groups you are a member of. How many potential clients will then end up becoming part of this three-way conversation?

Finally, when I first started marketing professional services, my mentor told me to join allied organizations. But, he warned, don’t simply join the organization. Be an active member. He said, “You only get out of the organization what you are willing to put into it." The same is true with social media. You will only get business from it when you are willing to become an active participant.

Use Marketing Meetings to Change Corporate DNA

What is the best process for changing the DNA of your firm and turning it toward a corporate culture of business development and marketing? How often does the team meet?

It is not the frequency of meeting, but the content that matters. People are tired of attending meetings where the same thing is discussed and no action is taken. One way to change that attitude is to vary the content. One meeting might look at pipeline and hit rates and the next look at action items like calling on clients.

The pipeline meeting will look at short lists, upcoming interviews, results of past interview debriefs, secured revenue versus goal, etc. The next meeting looks at the status of the contact database, with emphasis on who is doing what. Do your BD people, principals and project managers know when client milestones like birthdays and anniversaries are coming up? Are they helping clients extend their business networks?

Sometimes you need to challenge people to make more calls. A contest to determine who can come up with the most useful information about a client is one way to get action started.
The person making the least calls might be required to bring donuts to the next meeting.

Lastly, your meetings should open discussion about your marketing and the tools that need to be developed to expand marketing opportunities. When your meetings begin to focus on action, you will be surprised at how many new marketing ideas come forward during your meetings.

Delivering Bad News

Receiving bad news is no fun. Giving it isn't either.

Whichever end you're on, here are three tips to better deliver and handle bad news:
Tell early and often. Get surprises out there as soon as possible. If you're not going to make your numbers, your boss can manage the situation better in June than she can in October.

Remember the past. It's likely you have some past experience you can draw from. Let this help you prepare mentally, but be humble — don't assume you know exactly what this bad news will bring.
Don't shoot the messenger. If you want people to be open and honest with you, don't blame the person delivering the bad news. Thank them for sharing and reward their courage to speak up in difficult times.

How to Keep Your Team Hungry

Marketing and business development people are a unique breed. In fact, some of your best project managers and principals also fall into this category.

What is it?

They don't look at market conditions and ask, "Why," or complain about tough economic conditions. They look beyond the trouble, sort through the chaos, understand competitors and find creative solutions. They bring optimism into the office every day. Not the pie-in-the-sky, nothing is ever bad kind of optimism. But, optimism that however bad things are, their hard work, intelligence and creativity will make a difference. The glass is never half-full or half-empty for them. Any amount of water is good enough for them.

They are also always hungry.

Many firms decide the best way to keep their stars hungry is to not feed them. Although this sounds counter productive, it is true. Sometimes this is simply a default position. Let me explain. When I was marketing in the parking industry, many owners deferred maintenance on parking structures because they believed these facilities were indestructible. Unfortunately, their understanding of deterioration mechanisms usually came with a multi-million dollar repair price tag.

If your firm is like the parking structure owner, you might think these people are never hungry or give them a bland diet that doesn't satisfy. Either option works for a while. People on a diet know that not eating will start them on their way to losing weight. However, this is only a short term fix for the dieter, who will end up eating more when the results are not worth the pain of starvation. The same thing happens when they switch to a bland diet.

The diet you need to feed your superstars (aka marketing business development, principals,and project managers) are the three Rs: Recognition, Reward and Resources. Most firms concentrate solely on Reward. However, even this element of the diet can have unintended consequences for principals and project managers. For example, the yearly goal includes a 20% commitment to marketing for a project manager. That goal is not met, but all of the projects have high multipliers. During the yearly performance appraisal, you reward the person anyway and send a message to the superstars that marketing isn't really that important. It is the equivalent of management telling Babe Ruth that home runs are not important and he should try to reduce the number of strikeouts.

If you aren't doing it now, you need to begin offering a balanced diet that will keep these people hungry. You need to develop ways to recognize peak performers in the areas of marketing and business development. Affirmation of a job well done is not the icing on the cake for these people, it is the cake. The main course is winning the work. Going into battle with the competition and bringing home the prize.

Resources are considered the appetizers, salad or soup. They get you ready for the main course. Resources include allowing them to participate in appropriate training, personal development and education programs.

Are you now ready to develop a plan to keep your people hungry in 2010? You need to do more than the CEO of one firm told me recently, "Why do we need to send them to training or develop recognition programs? We pay them to deliver results." He was also the guy who complained about losing his best people to competitors.

Marketing and business development people are a unique breed. In fact, some of your best project managers and principals also fall into this category.

What is it?

They don't look at market conditions and ask, "Why," or complain about tough economic conditions. They look beyond the trouble, sort through the chaos, understand competitors and find creative solutions. They bring optimism into the office every day. Not the pie-in-the-sky, nothing is ever bad kind of optimism. But, optimism that however bad things are, their hard work, intelligence and creativity will make a difference. The glass is never half-full or half-empty for them. Any amount of water is good enough for them.

They are also always hungry.

Many firms decide the best way to keep their stars hungry is to not feed them. Although this sounds counter productive, it is true. Sometimes this is simply a default position. Let me explain. When I was marketing in the parking industry, many owners deferred maintenance on parking structures because they believed these facilities were indestructible. Unfortunately, their understanding of deterioration mechanisms usually came with a multi-million dollar repair price tag.

If your firm is like the parking structure owner, you might think these people are never hungry or give them a bland diet that doesn't satisfy. Either option works for a while. People on a diet know that not eating will start them on their way to losing weight. However, this is only a short term fix for the dieter, who will end up eating more when the results are not worth the pain of starvation. The same thing happens when they switch to a bland diet.

The diet you need to feed your superstars (aka marketing business development, principals,and project managers) are the three Rs: Recognition, Reward and Resources. Most firms concentrate solely on Reward. However, even this element of the diet can have unintended consequences for principals and project managers. For example, the yearly goal includes a 20% commitment to marketing for a project manager. That goal is not met, but all of the projects have high multipliers. During the yearly performance appraisal, you reward the person anyway and send a message to the superstars that marketing isn't really that important. It is the equivalent of management telling Babe Ruth that home runs are not important and he should try to reduce the number of strikeouts.

If you aren't doing it now, you need to begin offering a balanced diet that will keep these people hungry. You need to develop ways to recognize peak performers in the areas of marketing and business development. Affirmation of a job well done is not the icing on the cake for these people, it is the cake. The main course is winning the work. Going into battle with the competition and bringing home the prize.

Resources are considered the appetizers, salad or soup. They get you ready for the main course. Resources include allowing them to participate in appropriate training, personal development and education programs.

Are you now ready to develop a plan to keep your people hungry in 2010? You need to do more than the CEO of one firm told me recently, "Why do we need to send them to training or develop recognition programs? We pay them to deliver results." He was also the guy who complained about losing his best people to competitors.

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.