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Becoming More Market Driven: How Are Professional Service Firms Getting Closer to their Clients?

January 2001

Research Question: Perpetual competition, continued consolidation and increasingly sophisticated buyers have compelled professional service firms to seek new approaches to increase their external focus. What strategies and tactics are firms using to become more sensitive to the marketplace and to get closer to clients? How effective do they say they’ve been?

Summary: This authoritative report features responses from more than 500 firms in nearly a dozen professional service firm “industries,” including law, consulting (healthcare, human resources, management, information technology and a variety of consulting specialties), general contracting, and architecture & engineering. These firms told us their most- and least-frequently used methods to get closer to clients. The study results suggest that the methods firms use fall into five different “cultural” groups – groups that serve as predictors of firms’ success at becoming more sensitive to clients. Additionally, the findings reveal a gap between firms’ rating of their own effectiveness at getting closer to clients and methods they think will yield success. The report details these findings and others, and wraps with our conclusions that there are four critical approaches that professional service firms should implement in order to get closer to their clients before competitors do.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Key Findings
Finding I – Frequently Used Methods
Finding II – Five Cultural Groups
Finding III – Predictors of Success
Finding IV – Effectiveness Gap
Finding V – Market Research Budget
Finding VI – Data Mining
Our Conclusions
Professional Service Industry Comparisons
How Do Firms Implement “Get Close To Clients” Activities?
Appendix

Format: Over one-hundred-thirty-five pages featuring more than 50 charts and tables, and hundreds of verbatim quotes from firms that describe their own approaches in getting closer to clients. Presented as slides in an Adobe PDF file.