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Marketing Strategy

April 16, 2008
Consulting Firm Pricing Challenges Focus on Value

In the recently released Wellesley Hills Group and RainToday.com research Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report: Consulting Industry, 2008, we researched the top challenges facing consulting firms regarding setting their fees and pricing their services. The top challenges consulting firms face when it comes to pricing are:

  • Uncertainty about what price a particular client will accept
  • Pressure not to leave money on the table
  • Pressure to compete on price from prospects / clients

Each of these challenges fall under the general category of client value, whereas the next seven challenges mentioned were internal – focused on the firm itself. 

Should a firm be able to increase its perceived and real value to clients, then:

  • Clients will likely be willing to accept higher fees (though, granted, with each client you may never know the exact fees they will actually be willing to accept).

  • The firm will be less concerned with leaving money on the table because it will be more confident in the fees it is charging.

  • Clients will pressure the firm's prices less because they will have confidence in that firm’s ability to deliver additional value.

 

March 26, 2008
Do Well Branded Firms Realize Higher Fees?

The recently released Wellesley Hills Group and RainToday.com research Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report: Consulting Industry, 2008, focused on the consulting industry, will be the first of five industry reports to launch. The other industries of focus are:

  • Marketing, Advertising, and PR
  • Architecture and Engineering
  • Legal Services
  • Accounting and Financial Services

Over the course of the coming weeks, I'll be posting various pieces of data and commentary from the research here on the Services Insider Blog.

Regarding pricing, we wanted to know what brand leader firms do differently than the rest of the pack. Do they have different challenges? Use different pricing strategies? Do brand leaders grow faster? Are they more profitable? Have higher fees? Do they consider different factors when pricing?  

While both brand leaders and less well-known firms have similar standard rates, the median actual rates realized by the brand leader firms were always higher than the not-very-well-known firms – by up to 35% for entry level professionals.

Hourly Billable Rates
Brand Leaders vs. Less-Well-Known Firms

% Increase in Fees Realized by Level of Professional

The next time someone says that brand doesn't make a business and financial difference, show them the data.

March 11, 2008
Taking Advantage of Marketing and Web Technologies

This week's BtoB Magazine, The Magazine for Marketing Strategists, features a story on 5 trends worth watching regarding marketing technology. The "big five Web/tech trends worth watching" include:

  • Widgets
  • Social Feeds
  • Data Portability
  • Mashups
  • Open Mobile

So how much should most professional services marketers pay attention to these trends? For most firms, not much.

I can think of examples of how you might use them, but for the majority of services firms the opportunity is to take advantage of Web/tech trends...from years past. Here are four areas regarding marketing technologies and Internet marketing I'd like to see services firms employ before they start using Data Portability and Open Mobile...

Basics: In 2004 and 2005, we published two articles Services Marketing is Moving Online - Are You? and Five Effects of a Website on a Service Business Brand. These articles cover basics such as how professional services buyers are influenced by websites, how what you put on your website and how up-to-date you keep it affects both lead generation and brand, how websites affect referral patterns, and how websites affect the results of all your online and offline marketing activities.

These articles also cover common web marketing pitfalls firms should avoid. I've been pleased to see a number of firms over the past several years get better on the basics, but there's still a lot more work to do, and a lot of firms haven't yet caught on.

Value: Service firm leaders are proud of the value they add to their clients' businesses and typically aren't shy to talk about it. What they should do more of is demonstrate the value. It takes little technology effort to produce articles, podcasts, blogs, white papers, research, webinars, etc. on your website. The hard work lies in committing dollars and people to the regular production of  high quality content. Should you commit here, well established web and email technologies can be your best friends in disseminating the value.

SEO and Online PR: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it really make a sound? If your website is live on the web, and nobody sees it, does it really make a difference?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process by which you get found in the natural search results in Google and other search engines. A major misconception in SEO is that you need to simply put the right keywords on your site, build in the right "metatags", and submit the site to search engines to be indexed. If you think this will work, you're right! Assuming it's still 1996. Today, not only is this not enough, much of it isn't even that helpful anymore. 

Big picture, the three keys to SEO are having the strongest 1) Keywording, 2) Site Technology, and 3) Site Popularity, that you possibly can. With help from a good search engine marketing consultant, you can get your site keyworded fairly easily and get your website on the right technology so it's spiderable by Google. Once you're there, you're just getting started.

Now you must get other reputable sites to put links on their site and point them to yours! To do that, you've got to have a compelling reason for them to do so, and you've got to work hard to get them to do it. One compelling reason to get other sites to link to you is valuable content (see previous point). Just having the content won't get them to link to you, but if you have it and do the work of Online PR, you can get them to link to it. Your online PR success will drive traffic and improve your site popularity...so critical to get Google to give you good search rankings.

Segmentation, Targeting, and Communication: Here's what we know: the more specific and customized you can get with communications for individual buyers, targeting their areas of interest, specific need sets, geographies, industries, or any other segmentable areas, the more you can interest them in engaging (or re-engaging) your firm for services. CRM technology available today (and last year, and two years ago) can allow us to get this done and get it done well.

There are lots more technologies out there that you can take advantage of. Have a look at www.vtrenz.com, www.eloqua.com, www.exacttarget.com, www.plurapage.com, and www.nimblefish.com. It would be easy to fill a page with more...all different types of technologies and web applications to help you market and grow your firm.

All you need to do to take advantage of them is understand what you want to do from a strategy perspective, understand the landscape of technologies available to help you put your strategy into action, and then get it done.

 

November 24, 2007
Back to Basics

Last week I delivered the first of two webinars on the topic of Marketing Strategy, Planning, and Budgeting through RainToday.com. We had quite a number of questions that came in during the webinar and throughout the Q&A time.

One attendee wrote in:

How does one generate leads to serve clients that have enough need and finances to take advantage of me, as a solo practitioner with management consulting, financial planning, tax, and accounting expertise? I am not looking for a large practice, 10 to 15 clients that will spend $15,000 to $25,000 or more a year.

If I were to rephrase this question, it might go something like this:

How do I make a quarter of a million dollars as a solo practitioner in my field?

A simple, but broad question. Broad though as it may be, it got me thinking of the basics of building a solid small practice.

First and foremost, you need to be good at what you do. Obvious point, you say? In my experience, everyone thinks their services and their value are all that and a bag of chips. In reality, they're not that good. Making sure your services are, indeed, top quality is top priority.

Regarding your marketing and lead generation strategy, you need to:

  • Know who your target market is, and know as much about them – company by company, buyer by buyer – as possible.

  • Know the value of your services; you might want to charge $15k to $25k per year, but someone might not see the value enough to buy it for that much.

  • Be able to communicate that value one-to-many, such as in a website, and one-to-one, such as in sales conversations.

  • Be able to uncover need, craft solutions, and win business.

  • Understand who your real competition is for your services.

  • Stick with a program to implement your marketing and lead generation. (Most solo providers that I've met haven't been able to stick with anything long enough to make it work.)

In terms of lead generation tactics, there are many ways up the mountain, especially for solo practitioners. People want to know does cold calling work? What about PR? Should I speak and write to establish myself as a thought leader? How about direct mail and email? Search optimization for my website? Good ol' networking and referrals? The answers to those questions are...yes in general. And, for you specifically...it depends.

You need to figure out for yourself a) which tactics you are going to use and why, and b) how to get them done well. There's no simple, good answer or secret lead generation tactic that's going to work for everyone.

If you're interested in digging in more deeply and coming up with those answers for yourself, you can start with: this webinar on lead generation, this white paper on lead generation, and this research report on what's working in lead generation.

November 06, 2007
Marketing Strategy for Next Year

Most of the time, I take notes during conversations. Assuming I can read my own writing, my notes help me to remember salient points from conversations, and specific actions that I or other folks commit to taking. This morning, I reviewed all the notes I've taken in the past few months.

Service firm leaders seem to be tackling the issue of their companies' growth and marketing direction for next year (including trying to schedule strategy meetings around senior team members' client and leadership responsibilities).

Looking at my notes, some questions seem to be the perennial strategic questions leaders — at least the thoughtful ones — ask themselves every year. Some questions are more tactical and timely, reflecting the overall state of business in 2007. Here's a sample of the questions and comments, both strategic and tactical, that are on the minds of the business leaders I've spoken with recently:

  • Where are we "excellent," and where are we "less than excellent" in our service delivery?

  • Where is our most profitable business coming from, and how do we maximize profitable growth?

  • Everyone has an opinion on what we should do for our marketing, and if we did it all, it would cost us more money than we have. What should we focus on that will make a difference?

  • How much more business should we be yielding from current clients, and how much more can/should come from new clients?

  • The front end of our pipeline is the bottleneck. How do we generate more leads?

  • How do we win more big deals? (Conversely, some are asking how to reduce their reliance on too many big clients and diversify their base.)

  • I need to get my business to $X in revenue in order to become attractive as an acquisition. How do we get there?  

  • Hiring is tough right now? If we want to grow, how will I find and develop the people we need?

  • We've spent a lot of money on brand building, but we're not sure we're getting the best return for our energy and effort? What do we need to do to build the strongest brand we can?

  • We're known for one area, but have other great areas where we can help clients. How do we influence the thinking of prospects and clients that our services are broader than they think?

  • We've focused much more resources on overall business development and lead generation over the past few years but haven't gotten the results we'd hoped for, especially from our sales/business development staff (sometimes due to lack of performance, sometimes due to turnover). Why is this? And what can we do about it?

  • I've gotten web and Internet marketing advice that's all over the map in terms of what we should do and what it's going to cost to do it. What's the reality and where should we start?

What are the top growth and strategy questions on your mind for next year?

October 19, 2007
Giving the Store Away

I received the following question from a listener of our recent teleseminar Selling To Big Companies: How To Secure Your First Meeting (download available).

I have a question on free services as a hook. We have started an offering of free assessments and 40 free hours to work with any client's particular needs. We advertise this in our marketing e-mails and direct mail. In your experience, does this really sway a decision maker into thinking, "Well I can try this company and if does not work out, then we can both walk away, and it does not cost me anything."

Offering a service sample or an "entry service" can be a powerful marketing tool. After all, most firms would agree, "Once a company experiences our services and our people, they have a high degree of likelihood of continuing to work with us for the long-term."

One Wellesley Hills Group client, when they have an initial business development call with a new prospect, sets a team of people on a two week research engagement to deliver primary data and analysis during the initial call. Prospects are impressed as a matter of course. Our client's average sales are in the six and seven figures, so as a business strategy, the serious staff time investment is well worth the return.

That being said, here are a few thoughts for you:

  • Offering hours isn't particularly appealing. Indeed, folks like Ron Baker at Verasage would argue you're making a pretty big mistake even using "hours" as something you sell.
  • Consider offering a particular service – regardless of the time commitment – as your initial strategy. Then you can build marketing and business development campaigns around that service. "We'll study your ABC strategy/situation/problem and give you our complimentary 123 Strategy Assessment."

  • Make sure you deliver strong value in the service. It can't be pitchy or a thinly veiled sales tactic. It has to be good. Many folks, when they read this, might say, "Duh! Of course we'll deliver high quality." Still, I've often observed providers falling into the trap of making their front-end services (free or paid) too salesy or not meaty enough.
  • Target carefully. Some prospects might be worth the effort, and some not. Plus, make it exclusive and it becomes more desirable.

  • Don't be surprised when fewer people than you think take you up on the service. You might think, "This is great. It's worth tens of thousands of dollars. We may get flooded with people taking us up on it!" Yet, it doesn't often happen. Many buyers are leery of free service tests and/or don't want to feel obligated to buy something even if the service test is appealing.

  • Don't let your prospect think that your services have little value. Make sure they understand that a five figure service offered for free is still worth five figures.

    It's tough enough transitioning from free work to paid work. You don't want free offers that portray your expertise as any less than it's actually worth. 
  • Consider packaging a strong initial service and charging for it versus delivering it for free.

September 05, 2007
Why More Service Leaders Don't Blog

The virtues of business blogging are well established. (Google the topic. You should find plenty.) So why won’t more service business leaders blog?

  • Blog posts take sustained energy to write.

  • Blogging takes marketing support (such as online linking, keyword optimization, technology, etc.) to get the full effect.

  • Blogging takes time to take hold.

  • Leaders still don’t understand (much as you might tell them) why they should blog.

  • The blogger has to have something to say.

  • The blogger has to have the boldness to actually say it.

  • Legal departments have to get out of the way.

  • Service business decision making takes too much time. Setting up the focus of the blog, who the bloggers will be, and what the topics the bloggers should post about would take forever at most firms.

  • The decision to spend brain time blogging means that brain time won’t be spent on something else that someone else is advocating for. Leaders often hear the following request, “Boss, we need your time to focus more on <insert strategy here>.” There's only so much time.

  • Service firm marketing strategy is generally behind the rest of the business world. Blogging is still too new.

All of these: tall orders to overcome.

August 04, 2007
What to Expect from PR

Few leaders in consulting and professional services would dispute the general merits of generating strong publicity through traditional and online media, and utilizing said publicity and press coverage throughout all your marketing efforts.

I research, write, and speak about service business marketing topics fairly often, and I have the advantage of knowing the details of dozens of service firms' marketing strategies, tactics and results. Still, when it comes to the details of PR's future effect, I don't have a crystal ball. I often get some permutation of the following question from firms new to PR:

Assuming I engage PR as a major marketing strategy for my firm, what kind of results can I expect in terms of new business leads, brand improvement, press coverage, blog posts, and search engine placement improvement from each PR push and from my PR over the long-term?

Asking that question is akin to an entrepreneur asking:

Assuming I write a really good business plan and then get the business started, how fast will I get customers? How much margin will I make? How long will it take to reach $10 million revenue?

You just can't know in advance.

PR can pick up steam quickly and then fizzle. PR can take six months to get off the ground then gain steam steadily over the years. One campaign might generate zero coverage and the next one can land you in the Wall Street Journal.

And you can land a story in the Wall Street Journal and get zero business leads. Then you get a mention in a small trade publication and get two major sales as a result.

As I mention in The Professional Services Guide to Online PR available on RainToday.com, the success of PR ultimately depends on a number of factors, including: 

  • How interesting your content and stories are to media, prospects, and buyers
  • How well you implement each PR tactic (and avoiding mistakes large and small that can derail all your efforts)
  • How intensely and rigorously you implement each tactic with both financial and human resources
  • How long you keep at it
  • Relationships you have (or your PR team has) with media and bloggers
  • The strength of the rest of your marketing (e.g. your blog, your enewsletters, your general marketing outreach, etc.) 
  • The strength of your brand (e.g. a publication is more likely to publish a study from Harvard Business School than from Jimbob’s Community College)

Assuming you score well on most points above, you should be in good shape and PR (whether you use a PR firm or not) will work well for you over the long-term. Just don't expect that you can know, in advance, how it's all going to pan out.  You've just got to take the leap of faith and wait for the story to unfold.

April 23, 2007
Service Businesses Turn to Web 2.0 - Not

Ask service business leaders what Web 2.0 is, and you're likely to get answers ranging from the next generation of Internet technologies to the sequel to E.B. White's classic Charlotte's Web.

Except for a handful of large, innovative services firms and marketing companies selling Web 2.0 technologies, I see very few professional service businesses embracing Web 2.0 in any meaningful way. For all of you who aren't paying attention to Web 2.0, or for those that still think the World Wide Web is ancillary to your core business operations, take heed: Web 2.0 isn't going away. (Or, at least won't go away until someone decides it's time for Web 3.0, Web p, or something else.)

This month's BtoB Magazine has a solid article on Web 2.0. In it, they describe Web 2.0 as follows:

In practice, Web 2.0 features include blogs, podcasts, shared news social networking, wikis and other technology-based capabilities that allow users—businesses or individuals—to connect with and learn from each other.

In my experience, I see service businesses falling into 2 categories when it comes to Web 2.0: Either they embrace it or they don't.

Some drink the punch and use the web extremely well to market their businesses. I think Forrester Research does a good job of this. I especially like Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's blog. Then again, it's their business to understand this stuff. There are also a number of independent consultants doing a great job of this. Visit David Maister's site to see a consultant who truly gets it when it comes to using the web the right way for a service firm.

Yet, I'm hard pressed to find examples of accounting, consulting, engineering, law, and other professional services firms who aren't fumbling all over themselves when it comes to using websites, web technology, and the Internet in general to their advantage.

More often than not I see:

  • Overall lack of Internet strategy
  • Outdated websites that either focus too much on graphic design as the be-all end-all on the web, or, on the other hand, look horrible
  • Poorly written, inconsistently delivered e-newsletters that provide little value or worthwhile thinking
  • Weak use of intellectual capital vehicles such as articles, white papers, webinars, and seminars
  • Little or lip-service attention to search engine optimization
  • Little attention to response mechanisms or conversion actions (i.e. getting visitors to engage contact with you in meaningful ways)
  • Ill-conceived, ill-managed, and abandoned blogs

The web can be such a powerful way to connect with the world as well as generate leads and build brand. It's an advantage waiting to happen. To make any headway on the web, like everything else, takes passion, time, money, and the true interest of the leadership.

I see a lack of commitment for all four at most firms. Why do you think that is?

Know of any service businesses you think get it right on the Web?

April 03, 2007
3 Keys to Higher Sales at Lower Costs

It's not hard to find a professional services expert who will say, "Repeat business is your most profitable business. To generate more repeat business, focus more people, energy, and effort on satisfying the specific needs of your best clients."

Still, few companies actively pursue instituting major changes at their firms to focus said efforts on said important clients. So it's worth making the case once again. This time, the case is made by recent McKinsey research on building a top consumer goods sales force.

Consumer goods sales forces? Not just the right fit, you say? I assure you, it is. Read on.

In a recent McKinsey research brief authors Jeremy K. Allen, Sherian S. Ebrahim, and Gregory C. Kelly report 3 key practices that top top consumer goods companies employed (as measured by top market share growth, by revenue, relative to their peers in the same category) when reorganizing their sales forces.

Best Practice 1:

First, the top sales organizations concentrated more resources on a smaller – and more thoughtfully selected – pool of retailers than the typical manufacturer did. They served half as many customers through key account teams, on average, than other manufacturers – yet appointed a third more people to each team. Indeed, in our experience, the largest US consumer goods makers commonly rely on just 10 to 15 customers for 50% to 80% of their sales, depending on their mix of categories.

While it may seem a bit obvious (kudos to McKinsey for discovering the Pareto Principle), it doesn't mean it's any less true. Top companies, especially consulting and professional service businesses, focus more of their resources on the most important subset of their client bases.

Best Practice 2:

The second way top consumer good manufacturers excelled was in organizing their key-account teams along cross-functional lines so that they could better serve the retailers, whose demands on manufacturers, we find, increasingly extend into areas such has customized packaging, shopper marketing...and even product development.

The sales force winners' teams were more likely than those of other manufacturers to include not only sales personnel but also experts in category management, customer marketing, finance, and supply chain operations.

If this were a study of service businesses, it might read something like this. "The second way top consulting and professional service business excelled was in organizing their client times along cross functional lines. For example, an accounting firm – instead of just having a partner or business developer and tax experts on the team – assigned an M&A expert, a growth and profitability expert, and an industry expert to the team from the outset.

"This helped the accounting firm meet the increasing demand from clients not only to help them file their taxes, but to compete in their industries and realize the most profit and overall value from their companies."

In other words, the top consumer goods companies assigned more people who could actually add value to the customers' businesses, and that made a difference for the customers...which made a difference for the manufacturers as well.

Best Practice 3:

Third, the sales force winners actively customized their services to meet the needs of the individual retailers – in part by collaborating more intensively with key accounts than the other manufacturers did. The winners not only called on key retailers more often but also said they had taken greater pains to send their most talented sales and customer service employees to work with these clients. (Emphasis added.)

Need I say more? (I will, of course.) The consumer goods companies that delivered the most frequent contact and the highest quality teams were more successful than those that didn't.

Still think we in consulting and professional services have nothing to learn from the top consumer goods companies?

Let's assume you waved your magic wand and:

  1. Identified your top accounts and assigned more people and resources to them
  2. Organized your key account teams across cross functional lines so that you could deliver higher value to your clients (even before they request it)
  3. Collaborated more intensively with top accounts while also assigning your top resources to each high-value account

If you did all three, what would happen to your service business?

February 15, 2007
How Important Is Targeting

Cleaning up prospecting lists. Deciding one-by-one which companies out of these 30...300....3,000 we should target for lead generation. Finding out the names and the titles of the specific decision makers that would be the most likely buyers of our services...

"I just don't have time to do things like this!"

Or

"Boring."

Or

"Just buy a list. Someone sells the right list for us, right?"

Or

"This menial work is beneath me. I should do more important things."

There are many excuses for why people don't spend the time and the diligence targeting possible buyers for their services one-by-one.

Let's look at the excuses (and, yes, they are excuses) listed here, starting with the top two:

I just don't have the time for this and boring. I've worked with many services firms over the years. When it comes to marketing,  senior people at the firm meet again...and again...and again to talk about the website graphic design, or the new logo, or the new brochure colors. They go through 12 design round edits when they should have gone through three. Edits from the firm leaders come in volumes in terms of their mark-ups and commentary (didn't they have anything better to do all weekend?), and they meet endlessly debating the final renditions. Design processes have a way of spiraling out of control.

I can't remember the last time I heard partners and marketers complaining about the endless meetings talking about honing more closely into their specific targets. Doesn't happen.

In terms of the list part being boring, so it is. I don't know about your job, but not everything in my job compares to an afternoon extravaganza of Playstation III, my old friends, and a bucket of hot wings. Yet, the important tasks seem to get done.

Just buy a list. Someone sells the right list for us, right? Every once in a while a list broker or association has just the right list for you. Typically, they don't. When it comes to list compilers (e.g. D&B and InfoUSA), in my experience, the data isn't clean enough for decent lead generation without a lot of scrubbing of the lists. The mythical "perfect list" is usually just that: a myth.

This menial work is beneath me. I should do more important things. Leaders at services firms spend plenty of time on graphic design processes. Design plays an important role in marketing success, but the time leaders spend on design silliness is disproportionate to the success that good design can bring.

So how much time should you spend on targeting? In our upcoming Future of Lead Generation for Professional Services benchmark research report (to be released in late February, 2007), we asked 726 leaders in professional service businesses a number of questions about their lead generation practices.

Among the questions were these two:

1) Do you consider your company's overall ability to generate leads to be Excellent, Good, Fair, or Poor?

2) When it comes to lead generation, does your firm know:

- The general profile of your target companies?

- The titles of decision makers at your target companies?

- The specific names of the organizations that are your best targets?

- The names of specific decision makers for your service areas at your best target companies?



Click on the graphic and compare how much the self-reported excellent-at-lead-generation companies know about their targets versus the self-reported poor-at-lead-generation companies.

How much time does your company spend on targeting? How would you answer these last 4 questions? Is this menial work still beneath you?

January 24, 2007
Boring Post - Big Opportunity

Imagine if this were possible:

  • You have all the relevant data and details about your clients and top prospects in your database, and the data is constantly updated and clean so you can trust it.

  • You just completed major research on trends in your industry. You write a white paper summarizing the trends. To get the white paper noticed, you run a marketing campaign via email or direct mail to the people in your database to download this white paper.

  • You run these campaigns directly out of your database. The database is your control center.

  • While you might send 500 or 5,000 emails or direct mail pieces, all of them have a unique URL landing page that the person can visit to download their copy of your white paper.

  • When the clients and prospects visit their unique URL landing page, their contact information is pre-filled out on the web response form, and the form itself is customized to their company and industry.

  • They download the white paper. An automatic process sets up a task in your database for the 'owner' of that client or prospect to follow up within a set period of time. The designated person at your firm is notified by an email that they have follow-ups to make.

  • When the designated person logs into the database to follow up, they can quickly scan a dossier of relevant company news, information about the contact, and any other relevant information about your company's dealings with that person or company.

  • A manager at your company can log onto a management dashboard to see how many white papers were downloaded, how the team is doing with follow-ups (and who may not be doing theirs), and what downloads have turned into real pipeline opportunities, new clients, and repeat business.

  • As prospects become clients, critical data is stored (such as contracts), created (such as project plans and team assignments), and managed (such as time tracking, project tracking, expenses, and client satisfaction data) in one centralized, easy-to-view place.

  • This information synchronizes seamlessly with all of your accounting information.

  • This system is available anywhere you can get Internet access.

Imagine if this were all possible and in reach of the typical professional services firm...

This is all basic functionality of Salesforce.com. Many professional services firms use Salesforce.com or one of the many other available database technologies such as Netsuite, Saleslogix, SugarCRM, Oracle (formerly Siebel), RightNow, Microsoft Dynamics, Epicor, Deltek, and a host of others.

Most professional services firms own one of these systems, or something much like it.

Most professional services firms take zero advantage of any of the database marketing and enterprise customer relationship management these technologies can help them run.

As I read this blog post over, I’m thinking you might be thinking, “What a boring blog post. No edgy point. No new-and-fresh research. No splashy creative idea.” Sorry.

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What content and messages will truly interest our clients and prospects in a continued and deep conversation with us?
  • How can we get the most clients and prospects to engage us in these conversations?
  • How can we use our marketing smarts and available technologies to facilitate this process?
  • How should we get this all done?

The best companies that I see that first ask these questions, and then answer them well, end up running marketing much like what I describe in this blog post. At services firms, I haven’t seen much of it yet.

What does that mean? Opportunity for you to get ahead…if you can get it done.