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News
The
Integration Imperative is now available
online at Professional
Services Books' NEW online bookstore!
The
Integration Imperative reviews:
PMForum March 2010
SMPS'
"The Marketer" February 2010
"Recommended
reading for all marketers and professional managers
searching for a complete picture on the roadblocks
to sustainable firm growth." Grant Butler
PSF
Journal March 2010
Suzanne
Lowe will lead an April 21 MarketingProfs webinar
about how today's savvy professional service firms
are successfully integrating digital programs
into their marketing mix.
Legacy Business Practices Hurt Service Firms by Suzanne Lowe
"RainToday"
March 2010
Suzanne
will be a speaker at the
2010 Frontiers in Services Conference, considered
to be the world's leading annual conference on
service research.
June 10-13, 2010, Karlstad, Sweden
Suzanne
will be a featured panelist at the
Association for Accounting Marketing's 2010 Summit
June 22-25, 2010
Suzanne
will be a co-presenter at the
SMPS Annual Conference "Build Business" July
13-17, 2010
Suzanne was interviewed by Anna Farmery "The
Challenges of B2B Marketing" The Engaging
Brand Blog January 2010
Suzanne was featured in RainToday's podcast "Firms
Must Break Down Marketing and Business Development
Silos-An Interview with Suzanne Lowe" January
2010
New from the Expertise Marketplace™
Blog
Can professional service firms learn from Lady GaGa?
Substantive discussions about the future of law firms
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all the posts at the Expertise Marketplace blog
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"I'm reading your book, Integration
Imperative, during my daily commute. I just wanted
to tell you how energizing
it is to read ... very thought-provoking.
In the mornings, I'm entering the train tired
and groggy, and arriving in Penn Station energized
and ready to go. The reading also sparks
my mind into action-mode, and
I invariably create a to-do list while reading."
-- Andrew Weinberg CPSM, Senior Marketing and
Business Development Manager, Langan
Engineering & Environmental Services
"Love, Love, Love your newsletter!"
Tracy Crevar Warren, President
of The Crevar Group
Recent Issues
Giving
Marketers a Seat at the Table — and Getting a
Leg Up on the Marketplace March 2010
Connecting Marketing with the Needs of the Sales Teams February 2010
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The Marketplace Master™ is a monthly email publication
on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing,
LLC.
You can order
The Integration Imperative and Marketplace Masters from Barnes & Noble, Amazon,
our new online bookstore, your favorite online bookseller
or CEO-READ.
About
this month's issue
This April’s issue continues our exploration
of The
Skills Imperative. It features an excerpt about
Baker Donelson, a regional law firm,
and one
of the 100 largest in the United States. Baker
Donelson’s story (the full case study is featured
in The
Integration Imperative) is about how the firm
developed two new personal productivity programs to
help attorneys gain a sense of accountability and improve
their skills in marketing and business development.
The direct result was higher billings for attorneys
who participated in the programs.
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
Training
Attorneys to Market and Sell: Small Steps Equal Great
Gains
The majority of professional service firms
(PSFs) operate as privately held partnerships —
a highly attractive way to participate in running a
business. But partnerships also feature a double-edged
sword. Internal competition is keen, and trust can be
elusive. "Partnerships" don't always translate
into smooth personal feelings between a firm's professionals.
If people don't want to market and sell business together,
or for some reason can't, silos inevitably abound.
Baker Donelson’s story is a good fit
for The Integration Imperative because the
firm had the professional bravery to help its people
build their own new integration processes and grow their
competencies in marketing and selling. It also formalized
their accountabilities for doing so and tracked their
achievement of goals. This approach is a great example
of the results a professional firm can achieve when
it makes marketing and selling every person's job, even
allowing for the fact that each person has a different
role to fill.
It's
Personal: "Getting To Know You" Helps Break
Down Silos
From 2002 to 2007, through mergers and acquisitions,
Baker Donelson more than doubled in size. The skills
and experience needed to generate leads and grow revenues
varied widely among these newly incorporated professionals.
They simply didn't know each other well enough to market
and sell business together as effectively as they could.
But Baker Donelson’s executive committee members
believed they faced an additional challenge. The firm's
most senior attorneys—even as talented as they
were—weren't as productive in marketing and selling
as they should have been. “Many of our most experienced
attorneys had gotten set in their ways and were not
experiencing the same growth in their books of business
as they had experienced in years past,” commented
Jerry Stauffer, the firm’s chief operating officer.
In 2006, the firm’s new director of client development,
Tea Hoffmann (now chief business development officer),
went to COO Jerry Stauffer to suggest an initiative
to enable Baker Donelson attorneys to work together
more effectively to market and sell. She asked Stauffer for funds to take the firm's senior
attorneys through her customized version of the FranklinCovey
"7 Habits™" and "FOCUS™"
programs. Stauffer’s goal was to help selected
attorneys develop more business with existing clients.
But Hoffmann knew the outcome of participating in a
FranklinCovey program could even be more deeply personal.
Stauffer and Hoffmann developed a six-month program
called "20 Over 40," and geared
it toward
senior-level attorneys aged 40 and older. "We thought
we would start with only one group of 20," said
Hoffmann. “The response was overwhelming. We ended
up creating four groups of about 20 each.” The program began in October 2006. Each participant
was asked to develop two professional goals and one
personal goal in conjunction with a randomly selected
“accountability buddy.” The goals were then
shared with the rest of the group. Each goal had to
include a fully developed plan of execution and designated
timelines. The initial “focus retreats” were conducted
off-site at state parks so distractions would be minimal.
The training was intense. Attorneys revealed many of
their personal aspirations to the entire group, and
in most cases many of them were meeting in person for
the first time. Once participants had returned to their respective
cities, progress was measured monthly. Participants
had to not only work toward their goals, but also read
at least two books during the course of the program
and present a “book report” to their respective
groups. In addition, they had to attend monthly training
and refocusing classes and receive personal coaching
from Hoffmann on how to keep on track.
Small
Steps Equal Great Gains
In their six months of participating in the
program, this inaugural group of 20 Over 40 members
increased their revenue productivity by nearly $3 million
compared with the same six months of the previous year. Also, marketers and business developers gained a better
understanding of the business world in which their professionals
operated. The lawyers learned how to better support
the firm’s marketing initiatives. And they gained
a greater appreciation of the value provided by their
nonrevenue-generating marketing and business development
staff. For example, while most of these talented lawyers knew
of the firm’s competitive analysis abilities,
many had gotten lazy about researching their existing
clients and prospects. One program session featured
the firm’s competitive analysis manager, who did
a report on one client or referral of each participant.
Working with their accountability buddies, participants
were asked to look for one “unexplored”
opportunity and develop a plan to explore that opportunity.
The firm's marketing department also received
public kudos in December 2006 when it was recognized
in "The
Second Annual Marketing the Law Firm 50: The Top Law
Firms in Marketing and Communications" for creating
and implementing its two attorney training programs.
At the conclusion of the program, each person received
a trophy—a leather baby shoe. The small leather
shoe signified not only the small steps that each person
had taken, but also the small steps they would continue
to take over time. “The program greatly exceeded my expectations,”
said Stauffer. “Not only did more of our lawyers
participate than I expected, but the level of genuine
enthusiasm and deepening of personal relationships was
something truly unique.”
Growing
a Professional Service Firm . . . Together, One Step
at a Time
Even after the program ended, and even though
they worked out of 15 different office locations, the
first group of attorneys continued to meet and interact
with each other to cross-market and cross-sell. On a
daily basis, they help each other set goals. Their shared
accountability continues. Hoffmann and her team also learned, the hard way, not
to facilitate so many groups concurrently. Indeed, even
though the initiative was clearly a success, she felt
it could be even more so if she concentrates next on
a smaller group. Another lesson learned: the firm decided
to run its 20 Over 40 program every other year instead
of annually. According to Hoffmann, “Conducting
the program every other year enables our entire department
to give each activity the appropriate amount of energy
without overtaxing its resources.” Last but not least, Hoffmann was gratified that the
program did not need to be high glitz. Attorneys were
quite satisfied to meet off-site at state parks, for
example, rather than high-priced conference venues.
In fact, this decision likely enhanced the program's
uniqueness and stimulated an unexpected sense of informal
camaraderie.
Write
me to share your experiences about how your company
is training professionals to market and sell.
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.
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Marketing, LLC All Rights Reserved
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