Recent 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. Speeches Kennedy Information’s Fall Executive Search Summit, Post-Summit Forum II, Princeton Club, New York, NY. Oct 22, 2008 The Boston Club, Lead Generation and Sales: Growing your Business in Uncertain Times, Boston, MA. Oct. 23, 2008 RainToday webinar, Marketing and Selling: 3 Internal Structures for Having Everyone in Your Firm Do Both, Dec. 11, 2008 Marketing Partner Forum 2009, Taking Your Program into the 21st Century: Lessons from Top Marketers at Non-Legal Professional Service Firms -- Moderator: Suzanne Lowe, Jan 29, 2009 News SMPS Connections featured this newsletter as a "Tool of the Week," September 2008 The View from the Other Side: B2B Marketing Practices from Other Industries, ITSMA, June 2008. Adapting to a Downturn, Suzanne Lowe and Ford Harding, The Council of Public Relations Firms. May 2008. Read a summary of Suzanne Lowe's upcoming book The Integration Imperative™. New from the Expertise Marketplace™ Blog STILL the only verified link between marketing measurement and effectiveness Taking baby steps toward better serving clients In praise of building marketing and selling skills 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. "I LOVE your newsletter. I think it’s the best one I get. Full of real content and yet not too long. Kudos!" Diane Schmalensee, Facilitator and President of Schmalensee Partners Recent Issues Cross Markets Aren't So Different, August 2008 The State of Cross-Selling in Professional Service Firms, July 2008 Mastering Professional Service Firm Account Management, June 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

September. The first draft of my upcoming book The Integration Imperative™ is done and I’m sending it off to my editor for a high-level refinement.

One of the themes I’ll address in the book relates to a significant culture issue: setting expectations. For this and the next three months, I’ll address the expectations professional service executives have for their marketing experts, and the expectations those marketing experts themselves can shape about their functions. I discuss their roles, perceived ROI and the impact of the “influence” factor.

After you read it I’d welcome your thoughts on the expectations your own firm has set for the marketing function.

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

Expectations for Marketing Experts - Roles, ROI and Influence

What role should marketing experts play in professional service firms? Many firms -- and their CMOs -- limit the role to marketing communications. But others have figured out that Marketing can play a much larger and more strategic role in setting the direction of the firm. It all boils down to what is expected.

Unrealistic Expectations

I recently heard from two global professional service firms about their desire to rebuild their marketing function. They've begun the process well: selecting and interviewing a well-rounded group of senior leaders and influencers in order to determine what these internal clients want and need.

In both cases I was asked to provide some guidance after this step has been completed. However, I'm concerned about what appear to be potential potholes along their pathway to an effective marketing function. These potholes are all about unrealistic expectations.

Internal clients said they are skeptical of getting a good ROI from their investment in marketing. This, despite their inexperience in defining what they mean by "good ROI" and what they mean by "investment." (In these cases, their idea of "investment" was limited to a particular out-of-pocket dollar amount or budget percentage, and didn't include their own time and effort.)

On the flip side, in their interviews, the marketing leaders provided no guidance as to what might be an appropriate ROI and expected time-, effort- and talent-investment on the part of the revenue-generators.

One can argue that the listening phase is not the time to set expectations. It's only to gather input and to understand needs. This is a valid point, but ends up being problematic, given the way these particular interviews were positioned (as most internal interviews of their kind are). In this case, the desires expressed through "listening" become unrealistic expectations.

What IS Marketing?

When asked what they want from a marketing function, these fee-earners said, in essence, "build favorable awareness about the firm and its services." They think that marketing communications (a.k.a promotion, publicity, visibility, or the amorphous term "messaging") is where the biggest bang for their marketing investment lies.

I challenge that notion. This is like allowing the tail to wag the dog.

In both these cases, the marketing teams' listening exercises are in danger of boxing everyone into an outmoded idea: that marketing's only purview should be to promote the firm, and not to lead (and provide results in) other crucial functional areas. Marketing teams can also lead efforts in:

• identifying optimal clients through market research,
• managing competitor intelligence,
• retaining clients through loyalty and relationship management programs,
• being involved in services innovation,
• and more.

Narrow Definition of Marketing

The problem is two-sided: On one side, many professional and business-to-business service practitioners have a limited understanding of what a full-fledged marketing function could look like.

Most of these people started their practices with an almost instinctual knowledge of their clients, competitors, service offerings and marketplace. As soon as they could off-load promotional activities, they did so. In most cases, therefore, marketing has been home-grown (even for these large companies), and is considered a support function. Talk about expectations!

An Expertise Gap

On the other side, part of the expectations problem is the way marketers themselves are viewed. Many marketers don't appear to possess expertise in strategic areas besides marketing communications. How about skills in qualitative and quantitative market research and analysis? How about an understanding of corporate strategy? How about economics? Emerging markets? Service portfolio management?

The Role of Partner

Finally, all too often, both sides don't insist on a robust evaluation phase that includes a review of the investments the firm has agreed to make in the first place. Marketers marginalize themselves by not setting up their own performance parameters or acting like they are true partners in the firms' competitive success.

It's as if the revenue-generators have said: "We told you what we wanted, don't bother us anymore. Just perform what we originally asked for." This leaves no room for improvement or an appropriate evolution of the marketing function.

The result is that no one is happy because everyone failed to define expectations appropriately before embarking on new marketing initiatives. And we all know the next step: "That didn't work the last time we tried it, so let's not try it (or a variation of it) again ....."

The Role of Influencer

I’ve noticed that when firms hire an experienced marketing person, it’s often a “Big Name” hire from a well-known, large firm. What's really happening is the beginning of the influence game. These Big Names are perceived to have political savvy that can move all-too-intractable firm leaders, many of whom need a heavy hitter to convince them that investing in marketing is the right thing to do.

My question: besides their tenure in marketing and previous big-name firm experience, do these Big Name Marketers have any formal credentials in what they are really being hired to do, which is arguably closer to politics than marketing? Or do they just have an instinct and talent for sniffing out internal influencers, or a special flare at relationship building?

There's something wondrous about professional firms intentionally hiring who they perceive to be seasoned experts to influence the positive direction of marketing. If done well, we can assume that Ms. Big Name's already-in-place team will have a better working environment for marketing -- and will enjoy the rewards of getting a kick-#$% marketing program underway.

But is the power of influence trumping the other substantive qualities of a successful marketing leader?

More than Marcom

When firms hire big guns from the outside I wonder if everybody really acknowledges that their goal is to hire an Influencer. Are they forgetting that a marketer should also be a Partner, and that she should have skills beyond influence and marcom? Do they understand how to interpret the ROI of what she does, and does she know how to demonstrate it?

Setting expectations for the role of Marketing is more complicated than it appears. It requires a lot of honesty and trust. But the rewards of a strategic partner in the Marketing group make it well worth it.

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