New Survey Results PSF Marketing/Business Development Integration – Does it Benefit Clients? See the results of our research. Are Marketing and Business Development Functions Stuck in a Rut? See the results of our research. How well do Marketing and Business Development work with other operations, like Finance, IT, HR, Legal and more? See the results of our research. Do PSF practitioners WANT to market and sell? See the results of our research.   News Ken Lizotte's new book prominently features Suzanne Lowe's ideas on successful business practices for professional service firms: The Expert's Edge: Become the Go-To Authority People Turn to Every Time (McGraw Hill 2008)   Podcast: The Silver Group's interview with Suzanne Lowe on differentiation and her upcoming book. January 2008. MP3 file Read a summary of Suzanne Lowe's upcoming book The Integration Imperative™. The One Piece of Advice You Can't Generate Leads Without, Rain Today, September 2007 (Awarded Marketing Sherpa's Best B2B Opt-in Email Campaign) New from the Expertise Marketplace™ Blog RainToday's Pricing Research How Well do PSF Marketing and BD Work with Other Functions? Rainmaker, Rainmaker, Make me Some Rain Marketing and business development stuck in a rut? See all the posts at the Expertise Marketplace blog Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed for regular updates. (Need RSS help?) Subscribe Did a colleague forward this newsletter? Sign up to receive your own copy. "What a great newsletter — about the only one I've ever found useful in the marketing space." — Marketing and Communications Director, New York investment firm Recent Issues Methods of Measuring Marketing ROI, April 2008 Five Questions for Wendy Horn on Reorganizing a Law Firm's Marketing Approach, March 2008 Five Questions for Jessica Reiter on Launching a Groundbreaking Branding Initiative, February 2008 You can order Marketplace Masters from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, your favorite online bookseller, or CEO-READ.

The Marketplace Master™ is a monthly email publication on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing, LLC.

About this month's issue

As I spend the next few months focusing my time and attention on researching and writing my upcoming book I thought I'd share some of the most popular Marketplace Master™ articles.

The article in this issue discusses what makes CMOs effective. It's based on my 2006 research on professional services marketing measurement. Some of the goals here will be discussed further in my upcoming book, The Integration Imperative™.

Speaking of my new book, I've wrapped up the fourth and final survey that is being used as research for it. Be sure to see the survey results for this and the three other surveys in the right sidebar of this newsletter.

Suzanne Lowe
President, Expertise Marketing
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win

P.S. Is your firm employing unique marketing and business development strategies or tactics? Are you marketing your firm differently? Let us know if you would like to be featured in a future issue.

Five Goals for Chief Marketing Officers of Professional Service Firms

Are Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) tuned into what really makes them effective?

While analyzing the data from the 2006 study on marketing effectiveness I conducted with Larry Bodine, I was struck by the way our study’s professionals and marketers ranked the importance of their firm’s strategic marketing goals. Their rankings reveal that many professional firms (at least our study’s 377 respondents!) have a too-limited view of what their CMOs’ goals could and should be. Professional Service Firms (PSFs) are still marketing in “survival” mode, and have not prioritized their CMOs’ goals toward astute growth.

Our research sought to help marketers learn about metrics to achieve greater effectiveness for their marketing strategies and tactics. In order to do so, we had to find how well aligned marketers’ initiatives are with their firms’ strategic marketing goals. We suspected that a lot of marketers are wasting time and resources measuring the wrong things. The results revealed that many marketers are not focusing on the goals that would increase their individual effectiveness, nor help their firms move ahead in the marketplace.

Indeed, I think professional firms should reconsider their traditional notion of their marketing function altogether by focusing on five stepwise goals that they should review annually. If growth is the ultimate goal, they should make it a priority.

Goal 1: Defining and identifying the most strategically important prospects/clients

Too many CMOs and their internal clients only know who the most strategic clients used to be, not who they should be now and in the future. There simply is not enough rigor and focus on this ever-changing group. Defining and identifying the most important “growth potential” clients should be the foundation goal for every CMO. Other strategic goals depend on this foundation and, in many cases, are simply useless until this one is met.

So what did our study reveal about this goal? Only 19% of the respondents ranked it as most important over the last three years. Perhaps these respondents think they already know who their most strategically important clients and prospects are. But in reality, we suspect, most firms haven’t truly assessed their most strategically appropriate clients and prospects. Admit it: even your firm says “yes” to too many potential clients that won’t be very profitable for the firm. Even your firm is vulnerable to serving shrinking segments of the marketplace and missing out on those that are expanding.

Goal 2: Acquiring the most strategically important prospects/clients

Study participants ranked this goal second most important of five strategic marketing goals in the last three years. This goal has been the traditional purview of professional service marketers, and it encompasses numerous critically important initiatives: differentiation, positioning and branding; client value-added events; advertising; direct mail; publishing; speaking engagements and numerous communications tactics.

This goal is also highly important for business developers: arranging business development appointments with prospects and clients; responding to RFPs; presenting proposals and other acquisition activities.

Of course professional service firms need to acquire clients! But considering our respondents’ high ranking of this goal, I wonder how many of them are stuck in continuous “acquisition mode.”

Goal 3: Retaining the most strategically important prospects/clients

Respondents deemed this to be their most important goal. Given the economic environment in the United States in the last three years (following a difficult recessionary period), it’s no surprise that professional firms would focus heavily in this arena. And professional firms should be applauded for recognizing that retaining profitable relationships is one of the most critical springboards to real growth. (For a more in-depth discussion and new research about the path to true growth, take a look at Fred Reichheld’s book The Ultimate Question)

CMOs have excelled at the tactical marketing aspects of helping their firms retain clients. Using CRM applications and internal communication networks, they have done much to strengthen their firms’ infrastructure to manage client relationships. But much of professional marketers’ work toward this goal has been based on their historically strong focus on communications. As their role becomes more strategic, marketers will have to work hand in hand with business developers and practice leaders to manage key client accounts.

Goal 4: Increasing the firm’s amount of revenues with its most strategically important current clients

Astonishingly, respondents ranked this goal the least important of the five strategic marketing goals. What!? Do these firms not need to grow their books of business with strategically important clients? Is retention enough? This finding strongly implies that CMOs and senior marketers are not leading their professional colleagues to embrace one of the basic rules of marketplace leadership: grow your revenues with the best clients, and your competitors won’t. It involves a keen focus on deepening the ties with loyal clients.

The olden days’ marketer would simply communicate more to the current stable of clients. Now, CMOs can lead the charge by guiding their firms to develop innovative solutions that meet their clients’ emerging needs.

Goal 5: Increasing the perceived value of the firm to all audiences (including suppliers and employees)

If you want to see evidence of the evolution of the professional services marketing, take a look at the findings on this goal, which encompasses most firms’ public relations and media relations activities, as well as internal marketing tactics. Respondents indicated a serious split in their perception of what’s important and what’s not. 40% of our respondents ranked this goal as their last among the five, yet more than 22% rank this same goal as their first among the five. None of the other four strategic marketing goals featured this amount of disagreement.

This finding reveals that there is a distinct subset of professional service firms whose main marketing goal is still largely “communications” or “image” and whose marketing orientation has not yet matured to more tangible, client-focused, and measurable priorities. If a firm has not yet identified its most strategic clients (and worked to acquire, retain and grow business with them), any efforts to increase its image may be directed at the wrong audience!

Getting Realigned

As senior marketers shift their goals to be more strategic, they may find the need to educate non-marketing professionals about what it really takes to grow a professional service firm in today’s competitive environment. Especially in firms where the marketing function has focused mainly on communications, there may be some resistance. In most cases, resistance is more passive than overt, and responds to “internal marketing.” The findings of our study provide great data for marketers to overcome internal barriers to realigning their firm’s strategic marketing goals, and simultaneously increasing their own professional effectiveness as marketers.

What the Future Holds

The role of the Chief Marketing Officer, a title almost unheard of ten years ago, will continue to expand in the next ten years. Marketing is evolving from an art into a science – and for professional service firms, it’s about time. The sooner professional service marketers can lay claim to “owning” and leading the stepwise goals outlined here, the sooner they can begin to increase their own effectiveness and that of their firms.

Your feedback is important to us. Please contact us with your comments and questions.

Call for interview subjects: Do you know of a professional service firm that is taking steps to integrate its marketing and business development functions and would be willing to be interviewed for Suzanne’s upcoming book, The Integration Imperative™? If so, please direct them to our page on The Integration Imperative™ for more information.

Take the confidential, web-based Marketplace Masters professional service firm differentiation assessment test for instant feedback on whether your firm is doing differentiation right.

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