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The Marketplace Master™ is a monthly email publication
on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing,
LLC.
About
this month's issue
Since publishing my book, The
Integration Imperative: Erasing Marketing and Business
Development Silos - Once and for All - in Professional
Service Firms, in mid-2009, this newsletter
has featured several excerpts from the book, and a few
of its eleven case studies. This month and in February,
I’ll finish showcasing stories about the Process
Imperative. Then, starting in March, I’ll move
on to the Skills and Support Imperatives.
This issue features Moss
Adams,  the largest regional accounting
firm in the western United States. It developed new
marketing and business development integration tools
that accelerated the process by which practitioners
connected marketing to selling and selling to client
service. These frameworks and new cultural norms are
driving strong revenue gains, even in a difficult economy.
Suzanne
Lowe
President, Expertise Marketing
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional
Service Firms Compete to Win
Author, The Integration Imperative: Erasing
Marketing and Business Development Silos - Once and
for All - in Professional Service Firms
Reconnecting
Marketing and Business Development with the Business
Founded in 1913, Moss
Adams’s staff of more than 2,000 (including
more than 240 partners) operates from 20 locations in
Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Its 2007 revenues were more than $315 million. In mid-2006,
a group of Moss Adams’s office managing partners
and industry group leaders gathered in Phoenix for the
firm’s annual leadership meeting. Moss Adams chairman
Rick Anderson said:
“We have never proven that we can grow
this firm in flat economic cycles. Historically, when
the economy expanded, we expanded. When the marketplace
hit a downturn, we went flat. I want to change that.
We are pretty good at marketing, but we need to get
a lot better. We are pretty good at service, too,
but we must get better.”
Attending that meeting was Scott Jensen, who
had just joined Moss Adams as its first-ever director
of sales. Jensen believed Moss Adams's marketing was
in many instances disassociated from the firm's overall
business processes. Jensen related to me the gist of
what he said to his new colleagues that day:
“Our people are tempted to have us drum
up a lot of marketing initiatives, especially, when
they see our competitors aggressively launching
huge rebranding campaigns. But we have to be very
cautious. For marketing to be really good, it's
got to be tied to the business."
Redefining
the Way a Professional Service Firm Links Its Marketing
and Selling Activities
The firm had just come off of a record year
for revenue. Moss Adams's accountants had learned to rely
on a broad variety of marketing initiatives that they
hoped would start the phone ringing with qualified prospective
clients. Instead, Jensen wanted to see Moss Adams accountants
and business consultants demonstrating their personal
involvement in initiating and building client relationships.
The executive team was prepared for a long change management
slog.
But serendipity stepped in to help speed things
up dramatically. It happened quite by chance during
a meeting in the firm's Spokane office. Accompanied
by Moss Adams training leader, Heather Kean, Jensen
listened as one of the partners expressed a desire for
sales presentation training. Jensen thought this was
too limiting, and he marched up to a white board to
sketch out his vision of what was more appropriate.
What emerged was a rough draft of the Moss Adams Marketing
and Business Development Continuum.
A second visual, now called the Moss Adams
Marketing and Sales Process, also emerged by sheer chance.
In March 2007, Jensen met with the Moss Adams IT group
about the firm's efforts to acquire and implement a
new client relationship management system. Jensen wanted
this new CRM system to be built not only around marketing
and sales, but also around eventually accommodating
how the firm serves its clients. Once again, Jensen
jumped up to draw on a white board. Like before, this
visual emerged from Jensen's brain about 80 percent
complete.
Marketing, depicted below on the left, is in
charge of initiating and leading broad tactical vehicles
to fill the firm's revenue generation pipeline. In the
middle is a series of left-to-right boxes, with go/no
go decision checkpoints. Along its bottom, the graphic
below depicts how marketing tactics help move qualified
leads through the firm’s marketing and sales process,
and how these tactics help broaden and deepen relationships,
from prospect to client to repeat client.
Building
New Norms About How to Market and Sell
Despite the enthusiasm and clarity generated
from his work, Jensen knew he would not be able to rely
on beautifully formatted process charts or new internal
communications to make his vision come to life. He knew
he had to connect marketing and selling to the ultimate
prize: service to clients. Jensen explained:
“When we market effectively and sell
correctly, we establish the basis for serving passionately.
Because now our clients know what they believe about
us from marketing, and what they expect of us from
selling. From there, it should be easy to fulfill
those expectations during the service process.”
In order to guide his colleagues’ understanding
of these concepts and their embrace of them, Jensen
built a cultural change program around four key elements.
The first element was training, carried out in a nontraditional
way. In September 2006, the firm’s leadership
chose 25 younger generation employees who identified
with the new vision. The one-day program was then followed
by five one-hour phone sessions among classmates and
Jensen over the succeeding 10 weeks. During these calls,
Jensen coached participants to apply his new techniques
with prospects and clients.
Jensen introduced a second set of training
programs in October 2006, and followed that with four
more sessions in 2007. With each iteration, he broadened
the circle of lead adopters and influencers. By the
fall 2008, he had added a negotiations course.
The second element of Moss Adams’s cultural
change program was the introduction of sales tools such
as the "pre-call planning form." This guide
helps Moss Adams’saccountants and business consultants
understand the purpose of their meeting, the client’s
preferred communication style, imperatives, and needs.
It also lays out some questions for them to address
face-to-face with clients. Participants are required
to conclude their training sessions with a completed
pre-call planning form.
The third element of Jensen's behavioral change
program was called the Pipeline, which targets group
accountability. The Pipeline is a forward-looking plan
that helps Moss Adams professionals identify target
companies to pursue and then better prepare to build
business with those targets.
It took Jensen about six months—well
into 2007—to achieve real lift-off for this significant
cultural change. Along the way, he fueled the firm’s
desired behavioral change by employing the fourth element
of the program: celebration. Jensen highlighted simple
changes—those small individual steps that demonstrated
how Moss Adams people were adopting his new approach
and the favorable results.
Change
Requires Commitment
Some internal challenges were related to some
of the more arcane norms identifiable with privately
owned professional service firms. In particular, Jensen
tended to carry himself with the authority and collegiality
that most accountants and business consultants expect
from equity owner peers. But Jensen was not a Moss Adams
partner, and he understood that he had to go the extra
mile to prove his professional worthiness.
A second cultural barrier was associated with
many professionals’ unwillingness to change, especially
if they are well paid and fairly comfortable with the
way their firm does business. (Of course, this cultural
barrier does not exist in Moss Adams alone.) To vault
this hurdle, Jensen relied on the enthusiastic backing
of Moss Adams chairman, Rick Anderson, its president,
Chris Schmidt and the firm's other top managers.
Interestingly, "graduates" of the
sales training program became the go-to guides for professionals
who had not yet received the instruction. They began
serving as internal ambassadors for the new norm.
“Culture is a long term proposition and
our early results are encouraging,” Jensen concluded.
“Revenue continues to grow even in this slowing
economy. Our pipeline is strong, with more than 2000
identified significant pursuits.”
Anderson added, “In the end, it is not
one man, but one firm that makes the difference. We
now have the training, the tools, the accountability
and we are seeing the performance.”
Write
me to share your experiences about how your company
is reconnecting marketing and business development
with the business.
Take our
new, confidential, web-based
assessment tests to instantly diagnose your firm’s
structural and cultural barriers to marketing effectiveness.
You can also access our perennially popular professional
service firm differentiation assessment test for
instant feedback on whether your firm is doing differentiation
right.
© 2009 Expertise
Marketing, LLC All Rights Reserved
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Suzanne was interviewed by Anna Farmery 
