As you build and promote your expertise in an area or industry, you not only build you credibility in the marketplace but also your visibility.  Interestingly enough, have you ever noticed the professionals with a very defined and narrow focus are often the ones who are perceived as being experts?  People want to work with successful people and because of this you will find that beating the pavement for new business isn’t quite as hard.  Focus not only gives you opportunity to choose your clients but to command higher fees.

The marketplace continues to be fiercely competitive.  As big firms are looking downstream, taking whatever business they can, it’s more important than ever for you to stand out or differentiate yourself by communicating your strengths. Sometimes that means looking at what you do, then going one step further.  For example… Do you specialize in working with small businesses or owner-managed businesses?  The manufacturing industry or lean accounting? Construction companies or family-owned construction companies?

This approach will not only help you identify the right prospects, but it will also help you uniquely position yourself to win the right kind of business.

What happened in our experience to turn us from trust to distrust?

Think about some of the messages you hear from sales people:

• We care about our clients (Prospect: Well, you should. Prove it).
• We know your industry (Prospect: Really? When was the last time you attended one of our trade organization meetings?)
• We offer superior service (Prospect: You and every other professional in town)

How do you overcome the cynical prospect to build trust?

• Back it up.  We work with a firm that offers a service guarantee along with a multi point client service program that every employee has to complete. If a client doesn’t believe they received the level of service for the fee, they are encouraged to pay for the value they received.
• Educate the prospect.   We do this all the time. Firms that we work with have limited or no experience working with a marketing agency. We realize that it’s our responsibility to walk them through every recommendation, learn about their critical business issues and make them smarter about marketing and business development.
• Be transparent.  Some ideas are not the best ideas for a variety of reasons. A strategy can be seriously flawed. It takes a little tact to tell a prospect that their new widget won’t work or maybe your firm isn’t the best fit for them. When you are transparent, honest and open, you will begin to build trust.
• Set the ground rules and expectations.  Ever felt abused in a relationship? This can happen with a prospect too. Too many “free” half hour consultations can make you feel a little used and abused.  Don’t be afraid to define expectations for the relationship early especially when it comes to your time.  One way is to offer a no cost half hour consultation. Prospects know there is a time period needed for you just to get up to speed on their business issues.

How do you build trust with your prospects?  Tell us.

So how do you keep your marketing efforts moving?

Get the right people on board. We used to think that if a professional didn’t have sales skills or a knack for marketing, it’s better to not get them involved.  Sure, every firm needs rainmakers but you also need someone to keep the umbrella open. These professionals are awesome at other tasks like researching a prospective client or reporting to the group about industry trends.

Commit. Commit. Commit. An easy way to do this is to set a weekly or monthly meeting time with your marketing committee.  Get it on the calendar.

Manage your efforts. You don’t need a fancy project management system to keep track of your marketing efforts. A simple spreadsheet works great.  Write down the major projects, initiatives, deadlines and who is responsible for executing the tasks. If you have an administrative person who is hyper organized, extend an invitation to join the team to take notes, etc.

Be realistic. Trying to do 10 things perfectly just isn’t realistic. Try for three instead. For example, rather than trying to organize a series of webinars for clients and prospects, try to do just two instead.  If you want to launch an industry niche team, don’t fret about having every piece locked down.  Start with simple steps like identifying current clients and experts in your firm.

You can break the stop…start…stop cycle with a little planning and commitment.

T.J. Sullivan, founder of Campuspeak, a speaking/workshop agency out of Denver, has a great book called “Motivating the Middle: Fighting Apathy in College Student Organizations”.  You know what?  His philosophy applies to the business world too.

It goes like this.

Every firm has ‘thirds’; the top third are rock star performers. They always follow through, are conscientious, have an owner mentality and inspire others. The bottom third are professionals who would rather have their fingernails pulled out than go on a sales call; don’t participate in firm meetings and scowl at the thought of someone piling on another task on their to do lists.

The middle third is where you should be focused.

Middle performers care about the firm. They just don’t want to be asked to take on too much or lose their flexibility. They don’t see praise, would rather fly under the radar. They will work on a proposal, prep for an important client meeting but don’t see a need to participate. His premise (and we agree) is in order to grow an organization, you need to engage the middle.

Here are a few ideas?

• Ask them questions. “What’s the one thing we can do to make our firm stronger?”. Then listen. They may realize that they have more to contribute then they first thought.
• Start your meetings on time. Middle professionals hate long meetings or tasks. It panics them when they cannot control their own time.
• Minimize conflict in your firm.  Middle folks hate conflict. Work out the kinks before you hold a meeting or learn how to take discussions offline to keep meetings flowing.
• Give them a meaningful support role. Is your firm going after a big prospect? Middle people are great at doing the detail research.  Ask them to research the prospect, the industry, identify hot buttons for the meeting.
• Take personal time with them. If you are a partner, try to swing by middle’s office to check in with them. Ask them how they are doing.

Thinking about how you can motivate your middle (ok, diet tips later) can help you build a strong firm for the future.

Here are a few comments that we heard at the conference….and our answers to them.

“What? We need to redesign our website, newsletter and brochures?”
Remember: Branding first, “cool tools” second.  Websites always need improving, brochures go out of date. Before you start down the path of improving your tools, be sure your brand message is clear. If you cannot clearly articulate why your firm is different, your tools will be not as impactful as they should be.

“How do we measure this stuff?”
Everything you do should be measurable. You can look at hits from your website, click thru readership data on your e-newsletter, number of readers visiting a story about your firm in an online news story, etc.  It’s a bit of a trial and error process. A good marketer can help you learn how to continually test and tweak your efforts.

“We simply don’t have the professionals in place to manage our marketing”. If your firm is at a place where partners are wasting billable hours creating Power Point templates or fretting over the client newsletter, it might be time to consider getting help. You can either hire a marketing professional (who had darn well better understand professional service firms), or bring in a consultant who is adept at helping you to prioritize and organize your marketing department. A good consultant can either temporarily fill the gap as an outsourced marketing director or work with you on a project basis.

Think about the cogs that drive your firm’s marketing.  These can include business development, client outreach, public relations, niche or practice groups, collateral materials, communications and – the one that we want to talk about – external communications, primarily e-newsletters.

Clients often ask us about how to put together an effective e-newsletter.  They are excited to build a newsletter to promote new services, professionals and deliver their brand message to clients, referral sources and prospective clients. They spend thousands of dollars on a newsletter tool, push it out to their email list and nothing happens.

The cog stops working. Why?

Here are a few reasons why e-newsletters fail……and what you can do to get your marketing machine back up and running.

You don’t have a goal for your e-newsletter. Too many firms don’t think about a strategic goal for using e-newsletters. What is your goal?  Is it to promote a new practice area? Educate and build expertise with prospects?

Lack of commitment – Sure, sounds like fun at first. Then you begin to realize how much work it takes to identify topics, write meaningful, client focused content, get it approved and out the door. Deadlines are missed……and well, the machine roars to a stop.

Terrible list management. Professional services firms are notorious for not having the ability to build a simple list.  This typically happens because data is scattered in billing systems, personal Outlook contact lists or they are hidden on a new client form that is never circulated.  The best quality list is called a ‘house list’, built by your partners and managers, with email addresses for people you have relationships with. Good email communications is permission based; you push it out and the recipient has the option of opting in or saying ‘no thanks’, and opting out.  Also we discourage purchasing email lists from third party brokers as these can set your firm for potential CAN SPAM violations (that’s a totally different discussion!).

It’s in the wrong hands. The e-newsletter is viewed as an administrative task and is eventually relegated to an administrative person to find content and manage it.  Successful communications start at the top.  Partner level participation is critical to identifying content, ensuring that it passes ethical/legal rules check and is geared to the reader.

No idea of what to write about. The best newsletter programs are built around a calendar schedule. Literally write out a calendar for the year, along with categories that you believe are important to your readers.  For example, one firm that we work with is heavily involved in the community so their newsletter has a community corner to highlight a recent event or community cause they support.  Leave room for breaking tax or legal topics. Some content is pretty predictable: Year-end tax planning stories are great for October, stories about impending legislation is great content right before Congress recesses.

You forget to measure it. Biggest reason why the engine sputters. Firms often forget to measure their efforts.  Depending on which platform you use, you have to be able to run basic metrics like how many readers opened a story or clicked thru content. Having metrics will help you learn to test and tweak your content.

Buy the right tool. There are terrific e-newsletter tools that are specifically built for professional services firms.  BizActions offers libraries chocked full of articles and content authored by CPAs, attorneys and others. PDI is another third party service that provides you with a variety of templates, content libraries and support. These services also give you metrics, manage your lists (to avoid CAN SPAM violations), and save you hours of searching for content. Many of these tools offer geographic exclusivity so your e-newsletter is not pushing content similar to a competitor in your marketplace. If you decide not to invest in a third party content delivery platform, Constant Contact or Emfluence are terrific sources to help you build templates, manage lists and provide you with delivery metrics.

Last of all, we tell firms to stop speaking French……..It’s not “we”, first person speak and chest beating that wins trust and relationships. It’s about the “you” in your content. Be mindful about providing content that is educational, fresh and written with the reader in mind.

• A great idea is to read something TOTALLY out of your comfort zone.  Pick up a magazine (WIRED magazine is a favorite) or read a blog about something you know nothing about. You will start to see connections.
• Run, walk, swim, meditate, take a long drive……give yourself permission to slow down the neurons so you can pick up on other cues.
• Talk to someone who does something completely different than what you do. Learning about what other people do for a living can give you great insights into how others behave and view your profession.
• Find the top experts in your field. Log on to their blogs, get the RSS feeds……get plugged into the leaders.
• Align yourself with other experts. Share knowledge. Employment attorneys share ideas with other employment attorneys; estate planning professionals have their own organizations.  You can learn a lot from tapping into other experts and position yourself as knowledgeable at the same time.

Have you ever heard the expression “how to eat an elephant”?  One bite at a time (with respect to those wonderful pachyderms!). The same goes for your marketing efforts.  If you can break down the smaller steps, you’ll have an approach that is easier to follow.

Most professionals tend to be reactive, rather than proactive, when it comes to marketing and business development. Opportunities like giving a presentation to a business group or writing a whitepaper will eventually come to you – why not speed up the process!

Developing an approach can be as easy as figuring out how to integrate marketing into your everyday practice. It’s really setting up a systemic way to do a little at a time while kicking yourself in the backside to get it done!

Here are a few ideas (we suggest doing these on a Friday afternoon to set yourself up for a productive week):

• Write down the names of two referral sources you want to connect with for the week either through an email, phone call or in person lunch or whatever works for you.
• Be really clear about your next steps for meetings. Write down the goal for the specific meeting you want to have.
• Applaud or recognize one person or a client each week.  You can do this by using your status bar on LinkedIn. Do you have a client who just won Entrepreneur of the Year? Put a note on your status bar to say congrats.
• Spreadsheets are fabulous for tracking your marketing activities. Create a tab for the top referral sources, another tab for ‘wish list’ of clients you would like to have, marketing activities (presentations, articles, meetings, etc) and put the spreadsheet on your desktop. Assign a few deadline dates, with detailed ‘gotta do’ notations, and you’ve got a working business development tool.

We believe in helping clients build their expertise to ultimately grow their firms. Knowing how you can leverage your knowledge to help others is what it’s all about.

You will find a whitepaper, “The Expertise Perspective: Get Known for What You Know”.  We encourage you to download it and take a few minutes to learn how you can build on your expertise to find new clients, keep the ones you have and have a little fun along the way. If you visit the contact page, you can sign up to get future articles, read blog posts and enjoy other tools to help you.