How to Keep Going in a Tough Economy

Anyone who has played a sport has heard their coach say, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” The athlete’s reaction to this simple statement says a lot about their character. If you never were an athlete, you might have heard Billy Ocean sing about this. Yet, how does this apply to marketing professional services? Are we tough? Do we need to get going?


The coach was talking about mental toughness as opposed to anything physical. Attitude has a lot to do with our success as marketing services professionals. For many professionals, it is time to invest in an attitude adjustment as a first step.

In times of trouble, management turns to marketing. What happens when we project a “glass is half full” mindset? What happens when our sense of pride responds with, “it’s not marketing’s fault. Things are tough out there. Competition is fierce." While management doesn’t look to marketing to be cheerleaders, sometimes we need to cheer. We also need to be on the same page with management when defining the “it.”

“When other companies simply battened down the hatches, seeing only risk during the recession, the more successful competitors found opportunity and pressed their advantage… "  (Source The McKinsey study; an independent report, that studied nearly 1,000 companies over an 18-year period (1982–99) including the US recession of 1990 to 1991,which showed that companies who increased their marketing expenditures in a recession were the only ones whose profits rose substantially when the economy recovered.) Sounds a lot like the tough kept going.

When management calls you in to say that marketing resources need to be reduced once again, you need to be prepared to tell management what marketing can do to make sure that business grows in the coming year. Are you prepared for this? Management needs marketing to offer tough love with an attitude that this (recession) too will pass. As your competitors are cutting their losses through marketing resource reductions, your battle plan needs to make better use of the marketing resources at your disposal. If management isn’t challenged, your budgets will face the consequences.

What is different with the marketing of professional services firms today? Since the last significant industry recession occurred in the 1980’s, many marketing professionals today weren’t exposed to its realities. Living through an experience is very different than reading about it in a white paper. Therefore, on one level we have less experienced individuals at many firms. However, this does not even take into account the firms that have replaced marketing professionals with other professionals as part of cost-cutting measures. I know several engineering firms that have asked principals or senior project managers to split their billable hours with corporate marketing tasks. 

After all, how hard is it to show your clients and prospects that your firm is able to withstand the hard times? Numerous studies over the years have shown that, on average, it costs five times more for a professional services firm to find a new client than to keep an old one. Focus on the significance of that statement; it is one of the most powerful concepts in the world of marketing professional services.

Yet, can replacements accomplish the same results as marketing professionals? Or, can professionals with less than 7 years of industry experience bring context to marketing needs?

How effective were the replacements when the NFL had its last lockout? Professional services firms that have chosen this path face two obstacles: expertise and focus. Some have discovered the inherent problems with this approach and are now looking to hire experienced marketing professionals. Because of the dismal results of the past three years, many are even elevating the role to chief marketing officer status. This is a good sign in the industry. However, CMO needs to be more than a title.

A seasoned professional with vision for client service and an action plan for acquiring and retaining clients when the economy is recovering is the investment many firms are looking to make. These are the people who keep going when things are tough. The talent that knows when to cheer and how to leverage resources. Professionals who have expertise in both marketing and business development. Are you in this position today? If not, do you have the roadmap to arrive? The Chinese proverb tells us that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” For marketing services professionals, the first step begins with attitude. The journey should include equipping, training and mentoring to fill in any gaps along the way. Attitude, character and passion for learning are the leverage points that elevate someone with less industry tenure above those with more. Great ideas and creative solutions don’t hurt either.  Aristotle put it this way nearly 2400 years ago, ""We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."

How to Measure Social Media and Discover New Clients

Who believes that management is skeptical about social media? Perhaps it is because they haven’t seen new clients or projects as a result of their efforts. It might have more to do with a lack of measurement tools. We should begin at the beginning.  How are industry marketing services professionals measuring the results of their social media endeavors? 


The smart money in social media is now on discovery and analysis rather than monitoring and analytics.

Why is this important for professional services firms? The industry is searching for actionable information in their social media activities. How many managers believe that marketing people are playing when they monitor social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook? Yet, other networking activities are all about business. The promise of social media must start to bring networking results. But, like other marketing channels, it is simply another door clients can come through. Social media discovery helps you understand the most valuable characteristics of your clients. This understanding enables you to be relevant in your communications.  It sounds so easy. Maybe that is the problem with management, we sold it as an easy marketing operation.

Simply joining a social media site is not enough. It is like joining an allied industry (client-oriented) organization and never going to any meetings. The process is simple. You need followers. Followers are interested in content. You deliver compelling content on the social media sites and people will follow. Followers, followers everywhere, but not a client among them is management's concern. Therefore, social media is not about shouting at your clients, but becoming a magnet to draw them in.

Management needs to understand that social media is all about conversations and somehow becoming part of the conversation. Yet, what we need to measure is the context of the conversation. At a cocktail reception, do you just barge into a conversation between one of your clients and a prospect?  Probably not and social media requires a smilar etiquette. When management can see the relationship between the audience and the author (their thought leaders), the power of social media will be revealed. Unfortunately, most companies are currently promoting solutions that measure static counts of words, phrases and other text attributes, at the exclusion of context and theme. This is a huge issue, because when you separate words from context, you lose relevance and accuracy. Management is not only frustrated but they can claim that social media is a waste of time and money. It is your responsibility to change their minds.

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.

Goals and Objectives Key to 2011 Marketing Plans

In the book, What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, Mark McCormack refers to a study conducted on students in the 1979 Harvard MBA program. In the study, students were asked, "Have you set clear, written goals for your future, and made plans to accomplish them?" Only three percent of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13%  had goals but they were not in writing; and 84%t had no specific goals at all.

The members of the class were interviewed again 10 years later, and the findings were incredible. Students who had goals were earning on average twice as much as the 84% who didn’t have any goals. The three percent with clear, written goals were earning 10 times as much as the others.  What does this have to do with marketing for professional services firms?

Setting goals and planning your path for bringing in new projects for 2011 is hard work and can feel slightly overwhelming with all of the other year end business activity. It is the old, "up to you neck in alligators" story. Many professional services firms believe they can survive just fine by copying last year’s marketing plan and adding a contingency. Or, in the case of the last two years, deleting some resources.

What did your 2010 plan look like? Can a simple contingency in 2011 make it look better? Professional services firm marketing is not rocket science, but the facts are clear: Firms with a strategic focus and current client assessment in their marketing plans are more successful. Maybe they are not 10 times as profitable, or even twice as profitable, but they are moving forward in the right direction. That isn't bad considering many firms in today’s economy simply want to return to profitability.

With 2010 ending this week, it is not too late to plan out your marketing for 2011. At Business Development Professionals we have been working with many firms helping them plan their strategy and actions for 2011. Our initial conversation and assessment are free. The 2011 results for your firm could be priceless.

The Double Helix that is Professional Services Marketing

Do you remember your first job when you began marketing professional services? Perhaps you were a design professional who moved over to marketing. Many of you were like me, a marketing professional who was connected to professional services.

Either way, the first months were a baptism by fire. Insiders needed to bring marketing into their world and outsiders needed to become translators for the professionals in the firm.

Change often creates an environment of friction. Successful careers take the sparks and turn it into a flame. Others see the sparks and burn out. You have succeeded in a special industry.

Marketing professional services is very different than marketing commercial products. Marketing an intangible service is really about marketing a promise. This is where the double helix of professional services marketing takes hold. Some of you might be thinking this is the parallel and intertwined paths of marketing and business development. You are partially correct. Let me illustrate what I mean.

A professional services firm can be compared to the human body. The hand is very important, but not everyone is a hand or should be a hand. The hand needs to rely on the other parts in order to be effective. The elbow might not seem important until the hand needs it to complete a task. However, none of the parts work without blood flowing through the veins and, of course, oxygen. Consider marketing the blood and business development the oxygen. Professional services firms can be very complex.

Now we need to drill down to the double helix of marketing. One strand of the helix is everything we normally consider as marketing. It is the essence of promoting our services. I like the way one of my friends put his role,"I get to work with geniuses and my only contribution is the ability to put a few words together.” This statement probably means more to the people who entered the industry from the outside, but it is still relevant. When we develop a proposal, write a press release, prepare project sheets, modify a website, or create a presentation, we are “stringing a few words together.” Our success is dependent upon stringing the right words together. This is where we need to be aware of the other string of the helix.

Life cannot exist without both strands of the double helix. Marketing professional services is the same.

What would all of your marketing resources be without strategy? You could win awards for content and graphic design, but what would that mean for your firm. Management would congratulate you, but what would they say at the end of the day when they were looking for a return on their marketing investment. This is why the other strand is intertwined with our marketing resources. Do you join social media groups like LinkedIn to place witty comments in the discussion areas? This is, in the words of Shakespeare, “a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

When marketing becomes strategic is it focusing on clients. Since clients are not all the same and don’t buy cookie cutter marketing solutions, the other strand of the helix takes on added importance. Just like the marketing resources strand can’t exist alone, the client-centric strand needs the power of our marketing resources in order to create new projects for our firm. When marketing operates this way, the job of business development is much easier.

A number of years ago a municipal client asked me a question about why we were searching for a partnering architect for a project. He said, “Your firm is the most qualified firm in the country for our project. Teaming with a local architect is like rolling the dice.” I replied, “Without a local architect on our team, we won’t have any dice to roll.” Our market research had told us that this client only hired local architects. My mission was to find out who was the preferred architect. At the end of the meeting I had a couple of names. Without the market research we would have listened to this decision maker and gone after the project alone. We would have lost.

People often misquote Vince Lombardi on his comment about winning. He didn’t say, “Winning is everything.” He said, “Preparing to win is everything.” When professional services firms understand the nature of the double helix in marketing they are preparing to win. When their business development team takes the field, the only question is the final score. Have you put your firm in this position?

Why Senior Management Hates Training

Does senior management in professional service firms really hate training? The executives I have been talking to lately seem to reflect this attitude. This response comes during conversations about the marketing, business development, client loyalty and communications training I offer to these firms. However, the attitude extends to all types of training.

When you consider that companies worldwide spend in excess of $100 billion to train employees with skills needed to improve their job performance, you would think that management loves training.

Right? Wrong!
It appears that while they spend a lot of money, they also believe it doesn’t work. Can you imagine one of their clients having the same attitude? Would a client ever spend a significant amount of money with a vendor while believing the money is going down a dark hole? Business doesn’t really operate this way. You meet client expectations in the same way training is supposed to meet your education expectations.

Why is there a disconnect?

First, when I begin the conversation about the importance of providing marketing and business development staffs with the tools to improve their effectiveness and job performance, these leaders are always in agreement. The problem starts to surface when these senior managers acknowledge that they are not directly involved in the training. Training only works when senior management is focused on the process and personally involved. Therefore, the mindset of senior management and their employees is the reason for negative attitudes as opposed to the content of the training.

I have discovered a five step process to help senior management love training.
It begins prior to the actual training. Employees have to want to learn. This sounds like a no-brainer, but the reality of the workplace is much different. Without delving into the entire psychological spectrum of how adults learn, I will simply state the adult learning is predictable. However, management’s announcement of a training program immediately puts two questions in an employee’s mind: How will this improve the firm’s performance and why does management think I am weak in this area? In other words, management must convince employees how the training impacts the firm’s performance and how individuals will benefit. Management can never under estimate the “what’s in it for me” aspect of training.
When employees realize the need for change or improvement, they will gain a desire to participate in training. A good way to accomplish this is to have employees involved in the process. Members of the marketing and business development team should be at the table with senior management when training is on the agenda.

If the decision is sourced to the marketing and business development team, management will never buy-in to the decision. The same is true if management excludes the marketing and business development team from the discussion. Senior management needs ambassadors to carry the torch for training. They also need to be the ones who light the torch.

The next step in the process is changing negative attitudes and behaviors among employees. The pessimistic project manager attending a sales skills seminar might start with the attitude, “here we go again”, “another management training du jour”, “I have been there and done that before”, or “why is management wasting their money on this crap.” This baggage is just like a blood clot in an artery. The flow of knowledge and information will not reach the brain until the attitude is altered.

Another reasons management hates training is the fact that even when employees learn the objectives of the training, they don’t apply it to their workspace. Discovering negative mindsets is as important as diagnosing skill gaps. For example, if a firm focuses on the client experience in a training program, but the business development staff maintains an attitude that clients today buy on low fee, the training will be ineffective. The primary reason our training programs always include homework prior to a seminar or workshop is to impact negative attitudes in advance.

Leaders must be included in the training process. Although the day-to-day marketing and business development activities of any firm does not involve senior management, these leaders must participate in training. This is easier when the training is performed in-house, but can be accomplished when people are sent off-site for training. Management must be interested enough in the training to ask that employee to conduct a lunch time presentation of what was learned and how it will impact the firm.

When people leave any training program they are not entirely prepared to put new skills into practice. Old habits die hard. Remember we are talking about changing attitudes and behaviors that have developed over years. So how does a firm ensure that new skills are put into practice? Companies typically expect employees to work this out for themselves. After all, didn’t they invest the money to have the person trained? Evaluation and measurement 30, 60 and 90 days after the training is one way to ensure that new skills are being put to use. The leader who was also trained can help reinforce the training outcomes with the primary staff who were trained as well.

Measurement is not as simple as asking staff whether they liked the training. Research indicates that only 50% of companies keep track of employee’s feedback about training programs. Even worse is the fact that less than 30% use any reliable metrics. If your firm is looking to provide “edutainment”, then asking employees whether they liked the training is measurement enough.

However, this approach penalizes training like our business development and marketing programs that push people outside of their comfort zones.

It also leaves your human resources departments flying blind as to training’s impact on operations. When you analyze training programs against the business results you are looking to improve and track the results accordingly, you begin to discover solutions to training effectiveness. In addition, changes in behavior can also give insight into the effectiveness of the training.

Although there are many hazards on the training battlefield,the real landmines are located outside of the classroom. Creating a receptive mindset for the students before training begins and delivering a supportive environment afterward will dramatically change senior management’s opinion of training. It will also dramatically improve the business impact of training programs. Senior managers looking for a return on their training investment will be glad to see this.