Truth and Lies in Professional Services Marketing

“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a

leg.”
- Abraham Lincoln
I can tell you more than you want to know about the inner workings of your nose. When I graduated
from college, one of my first marketing consulting assignments was to build a competitive matrix
comparing the 4 major prescription steroid nasal sprays.
One product had this advantage, and one product that. One was approved for children under 12,
12 and
one wasn’t. Ours
urs had the fewest side effects. “Fewer
ewer bloody noses” became quite the rallying cry
around the office. It became the product’s major selling point.
Mentors told me, “See, pinpointing

inpointing your unique position in the market vis-à-vis
vis vis the competition, and
devising messaging to highlight
ighlight the differences between you and the other guy,
guy are of utmost
importance.”
Then I started marketing

arketing professional services and I endeavored to apply
pply the same logic. Was one
firm of PhD organizational development consultants smarter and more passionate
passionate than the others?
other Did
this one mid-sized law firm outside of Dallas really have “a different way of doing business” and better
client service than any other law firm? Did the team at this accounting firm in Boston cause fewer
bloody noses than all the others?
And if they did, would simple marketing messages to these effects make a difference in how many
clients they all won. Something just did not compute. And it didn’t stop there.
I learned that the concept of differentiation in professional servi

services firms didn’t quite apply the same
way as it did in the widget world.
I saw firms attempt to apply the “immutable” laws of branding. They backfired.
I saw major business development training initiatives fail to produce the rainmakers and revenue firm
leadership hoped would materialize.
Over the years I’ve seen bad advice – lies if you will – delivered with complete confidence and
fanatical zeal to service firm marketers and leaders.
lead They say, “The tail is a leg!” and set service firm
marketing initiative
iative barking up all the wrong trees.
No matter your age or experience

experience,, it’s easy to look back and say, “If I only knew then what I know
now I might have done a few things differently.”
Our aim in Truth and Lies in Professional Services Marketing is to set the record straight in some core
areas – marketing strategy, lead generation, branding, differentiation, rainmaking – where
misconceptions and bad advice seem particularly widespread. Perhaps you’ll save some time, dollars,
and heartache by steering clear
lear of mistakes that have tripped up so many firm leaders and marketers.
If you have thoughts, comments, questions, or feedback, please feel free to email me at
mschultz@whillsgroup.com or call 508-626-9991
508 x205.
Best regards,
Mike Schultz
President
Wellesley Hills Group
© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 1

6 Keys to a Terrible Professional Services Marketing
Strategy
There must be a secret primer out there on how to build terrible marketing strategies for
professional services firms. Over the past two decades I’ve come across so many marketing
strategies that have failed for similar reasons, I figure everyone
everyone must be in the know and I
have simply been left out of the loop.
After much research to find the source, the secret codex still eludes me. So, I am compelled
to seize this moment for posterity and codify the process of building terrible marketing
strategies. Here goes:
1. Build the strategy from the top down
Q. In a ham and eggs breakfast, what’s the difference between the pig and the
chicken?
A. The chicken was compliant, but the pig was committed.
Nothing turns off partners, division leaders, and other leadership types more than
being handed a strategy and told to, “Make it happen.” Force feed the strategies
from on high and you’re likely to get compliance and not commitment. Practice
leaders may take the strategy and run with it, perhaps even put a bit of effort and
sweat into it, yet they can and frequently do walk away at the first sign of trouble.
Without going through the process of crafting the strategies and tactics themselves
themselves—
brainstorming possibilities, performing “what if” analyses, researching best practices,
and backtracking when suggested actions don’t seem like they’ll pan out—the
out team’s
dedication to implementation will be weak.
Once the tactics feel burdensome to implement, or at the first sign senior
management isn’t going to hold the team’s
team’s feet to the fire, implementation grinds to
a standstill. Nothing makes a terrible strategy more terrible than one doomed to be
ignored or, at best, tolerated by the team members responsible for making it a
success.
2. Don’t consult with expert tacticians
Equally as devastating as a top

top-down
down strategy is a strategy built without input from
experts familiar with the underlying marketing and business development tactics.
When you identify your specific tactics
tactics—even
even if the tactics are largely decent choices
for
or a successful marketing strategy—without
strategy without talking with people who have deep,
relevant experience, the actual outcome will likely differ from the one you envision.

For example, you might conduct a seminar or webinar and want to fill the room with
decision makers, but in reality you generate little or no attendance. Or, you manage
to generate some attendance, but then you do a poor job of delivering content that
will help you connect with potential clients. (Try a hard-sell
hard sell approach; most decision
makers really
ally despise that.) Then you can ruin your follow
follow-up
up by not doing it, doing
it too late, or doing it poorly.
Maybe you set out to support lead generation and client communication with a
website, but end up with a website that no one can find, no one can use,
us is hard on
the eyes, provides no value, is not client focused, and generally reflects poorly on
your company. You might then employ direct mail for lead generation and generate
no response—with
with no idea why, and no way to find out what didn’t work!
Leave out the tactical expertise and the terrible marketing outcomes you can achieve
are endless.
3. Look only at your own industry and competition
If you want your marketing strategy to never reach beyond average, make sure you
look only at your own industry and competition.
Let’s say your company is an accounting firm. Make sure you look only at what other
accounting firms are doing for growth. Ignore law, management consulting,
technology, and consumer products companies. This is a great way to miss out on all
the newest marketing trends, technologies, and possibilities. Plus, if you look only at
your own industry for inspiration you’ll never be a leader. Being late to the game is a
great component to a terrible marketing strategy.
Make sure that when you’re studying

studying the competition to see what they’re doing, you
look only at your direct competitors. Following the accounting example, let’s say
you’re in a 50-person
person accounting firm outside of New York City. Focus only on other
mid-size
size accounting firms. Don’t even
even think about considering what KPMG or PWC
are doing, and don’t worry much about what the 200-person
200 person firm might be up to.
They’re too big for you to care about, and you don’t want to get too many
inspirations from companies that have grown well or are larg
larger
er than you.
4. Don’t create an environment of fervent execution
Even if you allow your leaders to craft the company and practice area growth plans
and you have the tactical expertise to get things done, by fostering a culture where
marketing and business development
development are “second fiddle” you will stay in the land of
terrible marketing.

A great way to get started here is to set action steps and goals, and not hold people
accountable to them. Professional services cultures are often great at ”making nice”
and not wanting to stir things up when someone isn’t pulling their marketing and
business development weight.
You might think this is a tactical versus a strategic issue. It’s not. Company
strategists and leadership must make sure the environmental factors are a not in
place: Don’t set clear expectations or give feedback, don’t make tools and resources
available, and don’t put incentives and consequences in place to guide people’s
behavior. (Or, dear CIA disinformation operative in training, set incentives that will
guide the wrong behaviors. See what that does.)
To end up with the terrible strategy, it’s also requisite that leadership insure the
people tasked with executing do not have the skills and knowledge, are not
motivated to perform, and are not, indeed
indeed,, the right people for the job.
Execution must not be made a strategic priority by leadership—if

leadership if it’s not a priority,
your marketing strategy has a chance to be not only terrible, but tragic. It’s a
fantastically terrible and devious marketing strategy th
that
at has everything in place that
could allow it to succeed, and then just fails because no one gets it done. Brilliant!
5. Don’t plan for behavioral or organizational change
Professional services firms are products of the collective behaviors of the people
within
thin the firm. That’s a mouthful, but, in essence, it simply means we are what we
do. Marketing strategies are most powerful when they are bold, venture into
uncharted territory, are creative and new, and require lots of energy and enthusiasm
to implement well.
Thus, almost without exception, a marketing strategy’s success is contingent on

some level of change, be it evolutionary or revolutionary.
Regardless of what you set forth in your plan, if the strategists and leaders aren’t
bent on making behaviora
behaviorall and organizational change happen, you’ll end up with the
same thing you had last year and the year before. Doing nothing different than you
have done in the past is sometimes, all by itself, a terrible marketing strategy.
6. Form a marketing committee, then

the take them to Abilene
A family in Coleman, Texas was having a nice afternoon playing dominoes outside.
The father-in-law
law suggests, “Let’s take a trip to Abilene for dinner.” No one really
wants to go, but they don’t want to seem disagreeable so they hop in the non-air-
conditioned car and make the 2 hour trip to Abilene.

Five hours later the family gets back. They’re tired, sticky, cramped from the drive,
and recovering from the underwhelming cafeteria meal they had in Abilene. “Wasn’t
that a great trip,”” one of them dishonestly remarked. Mother-in-
Mother -law then says,
“Actually, I didn’t really want to go but you all seemed to. I didn’t want to spoil
everyone’s fun so I didn’t say anything.” Turns out no one wanted to go, even
father-in-law
law who suggested the ttrip,
rip, but they all hopped in the car and went to
1
Abilene anyway.
Service firms tend to employ smart people. Most like to involve themselves and
weigh in on important decisions, such as marketing strategy. Marketing committees
form. When these lovely decision-making
decisi making bodies get nice and big, two things
happen.
1. Innovative and interesting ideas get squashed before they can gain
momentum. With anything new or visionary, it’s difficult to get everyone to
agree and easy for people to say no and poke holes in idea
ideas. The tired, less
exciting ideas remain on the table.
It’s kind of like getting 20 people to agree on the same dinner to eat. So
many interesting possibilities get excluded for this reason or that. Everyone
ends up with macaroni and cheese and a side of iceberg lettuce posing as a
salad.
2. People begin to agree with watered

watered-down
down and uninspiring ideas because they
think other smart people agree with them so they must be OK, they’re sick of
the ongoing committee discussion, and actions eventually need to be taken.
They also know better ideas won’t make it very far, so they publicly swallow
the pill and declare “I agree. Let’s go!” Privately they think, “This is a terrible
idea, but I guess it’s where everyone wants to go.”
In other words, the committee decision

decision body decides to go to Abilene, and doesn’t
look back, sometimes until they’ve spent a year and a half on the trip.
What you’re hoping for here, if you want your terrible marketing strategy to come
out in full force, is to encourage pluralistic ignoranc
ignorance,
e, that lovely phenomena that
occurs when several people in a group disagree with the norm of the group, but
don’t say anything because they think everyone else agrees. Since no one says
anything even when they disagree, even if everyone has second thoughts,thought the room
stays silent and the trips to Abilene get spot numero
numero uno on the priority list.
Even marketing strategies that could be good can become terrible marketing strategies if
you set your mind to it. If you’re willing to do what you must to keep innovative
inno ideas off
the table, let other companies exploit opportunities in the market faster than you do, and
structure your organization to stifle frank discussion, commitment, and execution, you’ll be
able to come up with the best terrible marketing strategies
strategies on the block.
1
Inspired by The Abilene Paradox and other Meditations on Management by Jerry Harvey.

On Service Branding, Differentiation, and Market Share
To maximize profit, managers have pursued the Holy Grail of becoming number one or two
in their industries. Recently, however, new measures of service industries like software and
banking suggest that customer loyalty is a more important determinant of profit.
- James Heskett, et. al., Putting the Service-Profit

Service Chain to Work,, Harvard Business Review
Product companies seek to become marketmarket-share

share leaders. To do this, they look to launch
and manage a portfolio of differentiated products that have specific features most appealing
to a specific target audience for a rreasonable
easonable (but as high as possible) price.
According to the famous and widely accepted PIMS (Profit Impact of Marketing Strategies)
study, profit increases with market share. So, of course, product companies (and sometimes
those that are marketing professional
professional services) seek market share as a core strategic
objective.
The jackpot situation for a product company is to:
1. Uncover an unmet market need for a product within their capability to develop and
market
2. Make that product unique or as much as possible unlike products currently available
in the market
3. Launch the product with a strong marketing and branding campaign, supported by
market research, that shapes the 'personality' and appeal of the product so it can
gain market share as quickly and aggressively
aggressiv as possible
4. Develop the product to be difficult to imitate and also difficult to imitate quickly, thus
keeping their hold on this profitable market for as long as possible
This is the widely accepted model of product marketing taught in many business schools
and advocated by many management and marketing consulting firms. Thus, when
presented with a new business plan or product offering, we classically trained business
business-
types are programmed to ask questions such as:
 How large is the market?
 What will make your offering unique?
 How will you communicate your marketplace differentiation?
 What are the barriers to entry?

 What will prevent other firms from copying you and rendering your product a
commodity, thus erasing any market differentiation you might
m ight enjoy, pressuring your
prices, and squeezing your profits?
Unfortunately, the business model and the questions above do not usually apply to
professional service firms. Thus, what many of us know and learned from respected
business thinkers about market
ket research, launching new services, branding, and
differentiation can become an Achilles heel if applied to our service firms.
How can following such (seemingly) solid business thinking hurt us? Consider the following
scenario - a business consultant trained
trained in classical 'business and marketing strategy' tries
to help a would-be
be entrepreneur to start a business that will succeed financially and grow.
Here is how their conversation might develop:
Consultant: Nice to meet you. I am looking forward to disc

discussing
ussing your potential new
business venture. What kind of business are you thinking of starting?
Entrepreneur: Glad to meet you, too. I'm a lawyer (or accountant or consultant or engineer
- this story applies to all) and have been for twenty years at well known law firms and want
to make a go of it with a few other partners of mine. I'm going to start my own law firm in
Boston.
Consultant: Great. I'm going to ask you a few questions to help you evaluate the viability
and potential of your new business and help you with your marketing strategy. Ready?
Entrepreneur: As I'm new to professional services marketing, I'm looking forward to it. Fire
away.
Consultant: What's the size of the market?
Entrepreneur: I have no idea, don't plan to find out, and probably

probably won't because it's not
really important. Suffice it to say, there's enough business for me to start a firm and grow
it.
Consultant: OK. Well, do you know what amount of market share you plan to grab for your
firm?
Entrepreneur: Not a clue, but I'm guessing

guessing it will be, for some years at least, less than 1%.
Consultant: Very well. Are there other companies serving this market?
Entrepreneur: Yes, and for the most part, they serve it quite well.
Consultant: How will the services you offer be unique and d

differentiated?
ifferentiated?

Entrepreneur: They won't. I'll offer pretty much the same core professional services as
other firms. I'll focus on my specialties and those of my several partners who will be
starting with me: intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions,
acquisitions, and insurance law.
Consultant: I see. What kind of market research will you undertake so you can position your
firm and professional services in the right way against the competition?
Entrepreneur: No market research. We'll not be focusing outwardly on market opinions to

help us determine what people are 'looking for' in a firm. If we try to be anything but
ourselves, we'll come off as insincere and we don't want to do that. What we do in the daily
course of working will shout louder than what we say, anyway. We'll simply be ourselves,
try to communicate that in our marketing materials and brand message, and then dedicate
ourselves to living up to our service promises consistently.
Consultant: So you won't be using any market research to shape your brand
br image and
professional services branding strategy?
Entrepreneur: Nobody likes a politician who surveys their constituency and then develops
policies because one idea or another is popular at the time. People want sincerity and
conviction from their elected
ected officials, not vacillation. The same is true of professional
service providers like lawyers. We may, however, survey our clients formally to make sure
they're satisfied with the services they receive from us and, based on the survey results,
tweak how w we operate to best serve them.
Consultant: Can you undercut your competition in terms of price to steal market share?
Entrepreneur: No, and we wouldn't want to. Our services are high-quality,
high quality, our people are
high-quality,
quality, and you get what you pay for. IIt's
t's likely we'll charge high fees.
Consultant: If your business works and you generate a certain amount of market share,
what will prevent other firms from offering services similar to yours and trying to steal your
clients?
Entrepreneur: Nothing will prevent

prevent other firms from offering such services or trying to steal
our clients. What we will do to keep them as clients is to retain our best employees so we
do great work, manage our expenses appropriately, and strive to meet and exceed client
expectations every day.
Consultant: Good luck. (They'll never make it.)
The consultant above probably would not feel very positive about the prospects for this new
business. Every core business question she was taught to ask was not only not answered
the way she expected,
cted, it was contradicted. Surely this person's new law firm can't succeed.

Yet consider the following from the prospective client's point of view:
 Do you really want a lawyer that is too 'different' than all the other lawyers, or do
you just want a really
lly good one that's experienced, honest, trustworthy, and
consistent?
 Do you really want to work with the lowest price (cheapest) lawyer?
 Do you really want to work with a law firm that changes their firm's personality and
message depending upon market trend
t surveys?
 Even if you're a good--sized

sized business, do you need to work with the largest law firm
in the city, or just a team of competent lawyers at a firm that can reliably do the
work you need to get done?
So, when you consider both your business strategy

strategy and your professional services
marketing strategy, consider that what you may have learned (and what your advisers
learned) in business school may not always apply.
THE TRUTH: Firms that understand the special dynamics of professional services
businesses,
esses, and how their businesses differ from many other types of companies, make
smarter overall decisions on how to grow their businesses.

Git R Done: Executing Your Lead Generation Plan
Question: On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being "always" and 5 being "never", how often do you stick
to project schedules and keep commitments you make to clients?
I'm guessing that most of you would give yourself a 1 (or a 2). Of course you make
commitments and keep them. What kind of professional
professional would you be if you didn't? (I don't
know about you, but many a service provider has made commitments to me and not kept
them. A topic for another time...)
Next question: On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being "not challenging at all" and 5 being "extremely
challenging”, how challenging is it for you to implement your lead generation plans that you
put in place at your own company (even when all of the stakeholders at the company agree
on the plan)?
Here at the Wellesley Hills Group and RainToday.com, we asked over 800 leaders at
professional service businesses the same question as a part of our upcoming research
report, What’s Working in Lead Generation.
Generation I was perusing the preliminary results (they're
not completely in yet), and 76% of the respondents said they found implementing their
own lead generation plans "somewhat" to "extremely challenging" even when they agree
internally on the plans.
Since service providers by and large deliver on commitments they make to clients, I believe
service providers can, in general, execute. Yet when it comes to sustained lead generation,
as Larry the Cable Guy might say, service
se businesses just don't Git R Done. Service
providers keep commitments they make with clients. They just don't keep commitments
they make with themselves.
ves. The question is, "Why?"
In Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done,

Done Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan suggest
that the keys to execution at companies are based partially on a number of "Essential
Behaviors" of leaders. I couldn't help but think o
off how these leader behaviors influence the
(in)ability of service businesses to execute on their own marketing and lead generation
plans.
Behavior 1: Know your people

peop and your business - "Leaders have to live in their business.
In companies that don't execute,
ecute, the leaders are usually out of touch with the day to day
realities."
In most service businesses, leaders are in touch with the daily realities…of their client
projects and their internal staffing. What they're often out of touch with is 1) how the
competitive landscape of their
eir own industries has changed; 2) how the buying cycle at client
c
businesses has changed; and 3) how their own marketing and lead generation activities
need to change if they want to grow and stay competitive.

A lot of service business leaders feel pressure – from their competitors, their shrinking
revenue and margins, from internal staff, from increasing commoditization in
their industry – to "do more marketing and lead generation." Unfortunately, they too often
take the easy ways out:
 Throwing money at advertising and graphic design
 "Redoing" their websites just for the sake of changing the look
 Delegating billable staff who are currently not-so-billable

not billable to drum up some business
 A host of other "maybe if I do this the problem will go away" tactics
Those service business leaders that get in touch with what they need to do for lead
generation (and, thankfully, there seem to be more and more of them) that will actually
help them grow their revenue are making serious headway.
headway. Still, there are too many service
firms that aren't executing because they're out of touch with the reality of what they need
to do for lead generation and why they need to do it. Thus the lukewarm efforts at
executing their own plans.
Behavior 2: Insist
ist on realism - “Realism is the heart of execution, but many organizations
are full of people who are trying to avoid or shade reality”.
Guard 1: “What?! A swallow, carryin' a coconut?!"
Arthur: “It could grip it by the husk!"
Guard 1: “It's not a question

stion of where he grips it, it's a simple question of weight ratios! A
five-ounce
ounce bird could not carry a one
one-pound coconut!"
As this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail continues, the guard proceeds to tell
Arthur that to maintain air speed velocit
velocity,
y, a swallow has to beat its wings 43 times per
second.
Arthur's response: “I'm not interested.”
Service business leaders who are interested in realistic marketing and lead generation
activities, budgets, and implementation plans get them done. When I work w with clients to
help them build their plans, I'm often presented with the plan from the last year...and the
year before...and the year before. The company leaders describe them as "aggressive"
when, in reality, they're castles in the air. No sufficient budget. Ill conceived staffing.
Unrealistic timeframes.

Behavior 3: Set clear goals and priorities –“Leaders
“Leaders who execute focus on very few clear
priorities that everyone can grasp.”
One of the reasons many marketing and lead generation plans are not implemented is that
they have too many priorities. When plans have too many priorities, they have no
priorities.
In terms of goal setting, one company might plan to spend $350k to "get our name out
there" in advertising (a weak goal with little ROI). Ano
Another
ther might be, "we'll hire a big-gun
big
business developer and after they ramp up for a quarter they'll sell $2 million in new
business" (sounds great...not happening...castle in the air).
Behavior 4: Follow through –“Clear,

– simple goals don't mean much if nobody takes them
seriously. The failure to follow through is widespread in business, and a major cause of poor
execution.”
"But I got billable and couldn't do that."
"Well, I didn't make those calls because I got busy." (Note: this is what people will say
when they don't make business development calls. It's often an excuse.)
excuse
"Sorry, I just didn't do that. On to other things."
"Because I got caught up in all the leaders' requests for help with proposals, I didn't get the
white paper project done."
Iff you want people to take your marketing and lead generation plans seriously, there have
to be both incentives for taking action and consequences for not taking action.
 People in organizations take on the behavioral traits of the leaders. If the leaders
take
ake anything, lead generation included, seriously, then the rest of the team will.
Leaders at service companies take new thinking and new ideas seriously. They take
client projects and client service seriously. They take selling deals that are in their
pipelines
elines seriously. Note to leaders: take lead generation seriously. Marketing and
a
lead generation is often the red-headed
headed step child, pining for, but not getting, the
attention they need.
 If you want people to follow plans and hit goals, put some teeth in the consequences
for not delivering. When it comes time to tell people which way the bus is going, let
them know that they’re either on the bus or they’re not. When team members don't
deliver on their part of a client project assignment, they get unpleasant
unpleasa visits from
management pretty quickly. Can you say the same when it comes to following
through on your lead generation commitments?

Behavior 5: Reward the doers – “If you want people to produce specific results, you reward
them accordingly”
Simple as
s it might sound, the flipside of the previous po
point
int is rewarding people who Git R
Done. You'll find treatise after treatise on how to reward successful and productive staff
members. Find them. Read them. Reward loudly.
If you do, the rewards for your business

business will be energy, passion, and growth. If not, well,
there's always next year.
THE TRUTH: All too often, 12 months later rolls around and the firm has barely tackled
their own to do list, has experienced 3 starts and stops, and what they’ve gotten do
done isn’t
up to par. But the firms that execute and execute well reap the benefits.

Generating Leads, Brand,
Brand, Relationships, and Trust at the
Same Time
Relationships. Trust. Delivery of superb value. These are core ingredien

ingredients of a successful
service firm. Talk to 100 service firm marketers and leaders, and they'll all tell you (and
most of them believe it, even if they're wrong) that their firm is in the top of their industry
in each of these categories.
Why, then, do service

ce firms typically do such a poor job of bringing relationships, trust, and
value into their marketing mixes?
I live in Boston and I read the Boston Business Journal. For better or worse, law firms,
accounting firms, consulting firms, and professional se services
rvices firms of all types are flocking to
the print media to improve their "name recognition" and get their message out. Of course,
since they all believe that they're at the top of the food chain when it comes to
relationships, trust, and value, they shar
share
e this in their advertising copy.
The copy usually reads something like this:
"For over 143 years, the firm of Flugelhorn, Ocarina, Nyckelharpa and Zither has provided
innovative business advisory solutions to the Boston area entrepreneurs and business
leaders.
eaders. Our efficient and effective solutions stem from our deep knowledge of our areas of
expertise, our customers' businesses, and our dedication to exceptional customer service.
You don't need services, you need solutions! And not just any solutions, solutions that
deliver value. We focus on delivering a unique level of value to our client base. You deserve
the best, and we are the best. In today's competitive environment, you can trust FONZ to
help you succeed."
Pretty sharp copy, if you ask me. They covered core topics that make them such a great
service firm and they communicate it all so well. The FONZ is cool! Right?
Clearly this is bad marketing all around, but it doesn't come from a bad place. It's just weak
execution of good intent.
Win Friends
ends and Influence People
Let's assume for the moment (even though I have not conducted a friendship satisfaction
and loyalty survey) that I have some good and genuine friendships – friendships that have
grown over time with people I trust, that I like to interact with, and that I expect to interact
with over the long-term.
term. Hopefully, they feel the same way about me. We have good
relationships.

Fast forward to now. I'm at a party. Since I'm always looking to make new friends, I
consider this party a good opportunity for friendship development. When I meet people, I
give them my friendship elevator pitch (which is quite polished, I might add).
In my pitch I let them know that I'm looking for long-term

long term friendships built on trust,
reliability, and mutual benefit.
enefit. I note for their convenience that my friendship activities tend
to focus on martial arts, fly fishing, golf, traveling, and a number of other areas they might
find of interest.
Strangely enough, I don't seem to get too many friends with this appr
approach.
oach.
Do It, Don't Say It
A consulting firm executive once told me that he needed to get his prospects and customers
to perceive that his firm was credible and distinctive. I believe that a lot of service firm
executives have this same thought, so they ende nd up writing ads that say, “I'm credible and
distinctive.” Or “I'm trustworthy.” Or “I'm innovative yet solid.”
If service firms want their clients and prospects to believe that they're credible and
distinctive, they need to demonstrate that they are cr credible
edible and distinctive. Simply
communicating it is not only not enough, it can create the wrong impression. (When I see
ads like this, I think to myself, “If they're this self
self-centered,
centered, and this bad at marketing, how
good are they really at their core serv
services?”)
How can you demonstrate your value to them, you ask?
1. Understand your value. Unlike what many marketing consultants say, this value
doesn't need to be unique. It just needs to be genuine, distinctive, and valuable to
them. You don't need to be th
the
e only person to have innovative financial consulting
processes, yours just need to be worthwhile in specific situations to specific clients
who might need them.
2. Make the value tangible. The value a client eventually realizes from you might be
your efficient
ent and effective solutions that helped them grow their revenue and
strengthen their business. But I don't know what that means or what to do with it.
Instead, communicate that your innovative approach to financial restructuring has
successfully freed up over
over $2.2 billion dollars of capital tied up in businesses.
3. Make the process and outcomes tangible. Along with making your value
tangible, clients want to know what you are going to do, how you are going to do it,
and what outcomes they can expect. It's easier
ea sier to lead the prospect down the path
you want them to go when you show them the path and destination itself.

4. Don't market the relationship. If you go directly to, “Let's get married, have 8
kids, and retire to a nice condo in Boca,” you're not likely
likely to get too many takers on
your offer. The saying, “coming on like gangbusters” comes to mind. You have a
number of hoops to jump through before you have the right to state that your firm is
the firm to be trusted with a prospect's most challenging legal needs (or whatever
those needs may be).
5. Create experiences with you. Instead of marketing the whole relationship, start
by dating. At first, the experience might be that you make an offer to them to read
your white paper. Perhaps you offer that they attend
attend your seminar. Maybe you have
a business meeting to discuss a particular topic of interest to them.
6. Offer value in the experiences. If you have a white paper, a seminar, a meeting
with a client, or whatever offers you choose to make to clients, don't mamake them
thinly veiled sales pitches. The best selling you can do is actually providing value –
starting right with your marketing copy – to clients. First impressions go a long way,
and if a prospective client decides to invest even five minutes in reading something
you wrote, make it a worthwhile five minutes.
If, after the five minutes, all you did was try to sell to them, their first impression will
be “these people aren't worth my time.” And that's not the right impress to make
when time with you is what
w you're selling.
Brand by Doing, Not by Telling
Back to the beginning of our article, why don't all of these ads touting firms'
“trustworthiness” offer something of direct and immediate value? Where's the white paper?
Where's the seminar? Where's the
the webinar? Where's something, anything, that you can
offer them that might actually be worthwhile right now?
From a marketing perspective, not only will these value

value-based
based offers create a perception in
the mind of the prospect that you are a source of value;
value; they'll create leads for you. If you
write an ad and put it in your local business journal without a call to action, a bunch of
people will see your ad and then do nothing. Add in a white paper, event, or something else
of value and you get the chance to start a conversation with these people that can lead
directly to new business.
Much of professional service firm marketing these days is so focused on creating “brand”
that they miss the point of what a brand really is - a reputation for quality and value
v built
one by one with clients. So instead of branding by telling people that you're trustworthy and
valuable, start being trustworthy and valuable and demonstrating
demonstrating that to potential clients.
Do that, and building the brand you so desire will take care
car of itself.
And with the same money you're spending to build the brand, you can generate leads,
relationships, and trust at the same time.
THE TRUTH: They work better if you put them all together.

LAWS OF BRANDING: IMMUTABLE
IMMUTABLE OR REFUTABLE?
If [a law] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another,
then I say, break the law.
- Henry David Thoreau
Many branding maxims tossed about in the marketing world, maxims accepted as
unquestionable gospel
spel and law, simply are not valid. At least they are not valid for everyone
and every business.
When I read a piece of business advice that confidently declares, “Always do this,” or “This
is true 100% of the time,” or even “You should…,” the warning lights
lights go off. The Grand
Poobahs of branding are particularly prone to heading down this all-or-
all nothing path. So, I
thought I would throw in my two cents and add to the list of branding absolutes:
1. Always seek to understand the underlying dynamics of your own industry and
company before making decisions on how to brand your business.
2. Never forget that, in the right situations, laws are meant for breaking.
Consider the following commonly held branding beliefs that may be meant for breaking,
especially if you work in a service or technology industry.
Maxim #1: Differentiation
To build a strong brand, service companies must implement their brand with hard hard-hitting
positioning strategies that differ significantly from competitors. In fact, most powerful
differentiation
ntiation strategies are directly opposite from those of primary competitors.
- Terrill and Middlebrooks, Market Leadership Strategies for Services Companies
Terrill and Middlebrooks believe so strongly in this extreme differentiation theory that they
refer to it as oppositioning.. Think about the following types of companies:
 CPA firms
 Law firms
 Financial advisory firms
 IT consultants
 Strategy consultants
Of the companies in these fields, what are their positioning strategies? Additionally, which
are directly opposite of the other? Do you really even care?

I pride myself on knowing a thing or two about service industries. I live in Boston. To test
my own assumption, I reviewed the Boston Business Journal Book of Lists top 25 accounting
firms in the city.
I cannot tell you the positioning strategies of any one of them. Sure, some are known to
have strong practices in certain industries, for example, education, non
non-profit, and biotech.
However, I would hardly call having a competent industry presence a “hardhard-hitting
positioning strategy that differs sig
significantly from a competitor's.”
And yet, as undifferentiated as they may be (though I am sure some of them would argue
otherwise), they seem to be quite successful.
<Note to reader: See next article

article for more on differentiation in professional services.>
Maxim #2: Category
The most effective, most productive, most useful aspect of branding is creating a new
category. In other words, narrowing the focus to nothing and starting something totally
new.. That's the way to become the first brand in a new category and ultimately the leading
brand in a rapidly growing new segment of the market.
- Ries and Ries, “Law of the Category,” 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
Imagine this conversation:
IRS: Ms. Jones.. This is the IRS calling. I have a question about the tax return you filed.
Ms. Jones: Yes?
IRS: Well, we don't understand them. The forms you sent in are unfamiliar to us. We also
do not understand what you submitted.
Ms. Jones: Oh, I'm not surprised. You see, I used a new category of CPA firm this year.
Do you really want a new category of:
 CPA to do your business taxes
 Lawyer when you need to win a case
 IT consultant when it just needs to be done right
 Plumber when all you want is a promptly returned phone call
Or do you just want a reliable, consistent, high

high-quality job done?

Maxim #3: First Mover Advantage
There's one critical thing to know about position: Whoever grabs a position first pretty much
owns it forever. Position is in the minds
minds of the collective market. Reality hardly counts.
- T. Scott Gross, Microbranding
Branding guru after branding guru echoes this ‘first mover advantage' maxim.
I ask you, who grabbed the position first, and now owns high-quality
high quality investment advice in
Boston?
John Hancock • Citigroup • Brown Brothers Harriman • Fidelity Investments • Charles

Schwab • TD Waterhouse • TD Banknorth • Citizens Bank • RBC Dain Rauscher •
Wainwright Bank • Eastern Bank • Sovereign Bank • Prudential Financial • Legg Mason •
Merrill Lynch • Morgan Stanley • Paine Webber • Bank of America • Boston Private •
Fiduciary Trust International • Edward Jones • A.G. Edwards • Bear Stearns • Dozens of
smaller banks • Hundreds of CFPs, CPAs, and insurance firms • Hundreds of others
(Once again I show my New England roots—go

roots Sox.)
Does it matter who was there first?
Maxim #4: Word Ownership
If you want to build a brand, you must focus your branding efforts on owning a word in the
prospect's mind. A word that nobody else owns.
- Ries and
d Ries, “Law of the Word,” 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
In industries where there are only a limited amount of players because of the nature of the
industry (e.g. there are only so many car manufacturers) it is possible to own a word. Who
owns safety? Volvo,
lvo, of course.
In service industries it's different. There are typically an over-abundance

over abundance of providers of all
sizes, and few generic words one can own:
Achievement • Balance • Control • Creativity • Fame • Independence • Influence •

Integrity • Loyalty • Performance • Pleasure • Power • Prestige • Respect • Recognition •
Service • Solution • Tradition • Wealth • Wisdom
Sometimes service firms use specific words that focus on need areas or hot buttons. Among
CPA firms these words might be:
Audit • Advisor • Cash Management • Compliance • Estate Planning • Forensic Accounting •

Internal Controls • International Tax • Sarbanes • Small Business • Valuation

In your area, who owns any of these terms? Can't think of any firms? Or maybe you just
think of a number of CPA firms that play in these fields. Even if you could own a word in a
service industry, I suggest that it should be a side
side-benefit
benefit of winning and satisfying clients,
not a goal in and of itself.
Maxim #5: Being Number 1 in Revenue or Market Share

Sh
At all costs you should avoid being second in your category.

- Ries and Ries, 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
Your company doesn't belong in any market

market where it cannot be the best.
- Phillip Kotler, Marketing Management
What CEO heads into his board m meeting

eeting and says, “Next year our big audacious goal is to
become number 16 in our market!” You simply would not hear it. Being ‘number one' is a
natural strategic target to set and it certainly sounds good. However, in service and
technology businesses, beingng number one is usually neither a feasible nor a desirable goal
to set. Revenue and market share are not necessarily the answer to greater success and
higher profits.
Service and technology industries, from accounting to software to consulting, should focus
fo
on customer loyalty if they want greater revenue and profit growth. Publication after
publication (however not branding publications!) by well respected authors and academics,
such as James Heskett in Putting the Service-Profit
Service Chain to Work (Harvard BBusiness
Review), and Fred Reicheld in books like Loyalty Rules! echo this mantra. However, the
messages of these books are not making enough of an impact on the hearts and minds of
the advertising and marketing community.
The idea here is not to make the argument for customer and employee loyalty over market
share or revenue leadership. I merely want to point out that not everyone agrees with the
branding gurus on the “being number one” law – one of the most taken-for-granted
taken laws of
branding that businesss people blindly follow.
Differentiate…own a word...be number one…be first…create a category…the list goes on.

These guiding principles are easy to remember (good job in branding, branding gurus) and
easy to latch on to.
Take care, however, that you act

act only on the guiding principles that will do the most justice
to your business and the people that comprise it. In the end, it is up to you to know which
laws apply to you, and which laws are meant for breaking.
THE TRUTH: Become a contentious objector.

The Myth of Being Different
One is the loneliest number.

- Three Dog Night
I got a bad grade on my final paper in Entrepreneurship class in graduate school. The
professor said, "The business you're proposing to launch...it's not diff
different.
erent. Other people do
it. While the plan seems well
well-thought-out,
out, due to the simple truth that this business has
been largely done before, and there doesn't seem to be anything truly unique about it, I
wouldn't advise launching the business."
busin (So long, stellar GPA...)
Being different and unique seems to be highly regarded by folks that think about, write
about, and teach business.
Professors Terrell and Middlebrooks of the Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of

Management and University of Chicago Gr Graduate
aduate School of Business, respectively, say it
well:
Service companies need to dare to be different. To find a leadership position in the

market…and then to lead. The key strategy is to be different from competitors…They break
free from “be better,” internally
rnally oriented initiatives to “be different,” externally oriented
strategies. Being different is grounded in providing customers with unique value that they
cannot get from any other competitor.1
They then cite McKinsey as their first example of a "different"

rent" business.
The need for being different is so well accepted, it’s considered simplistic to even make the
case for it. Why make a case for something everyone already knows? Many conversations
on being different thus center more on how to be different and how radically to be different.
(Terrell and Middlebrooks go as far as to say you should position yourself so far opposite
competitors that they coin the nifty term oppositioning to describe it.)
That we need to be different at all…accepted without further

f thought.
I disagree. Put some further thought in it. Most everything I’ve read and heard about being
different and unique is wrong and I suspect the same is true for you.
On Unique Selling Propositions
Among the favorite platitudes of the high p

priests
riests of business is that every business—nay,
business
every person—must
must have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). A USP can be defined as doing
or saying something about yourself or company that is unlike what anyone else does or
offers. In other words, unique…one of a kind.

I deliver about 40 speeches and presentations per year. During presentations, I frequently
ask the members of the audience to take a few minutes to deliver their elevator pitches:
they use a minute or so to describe themselves to the CEO of the company they would like
to win as a client.
When they’re done, I ask folks to raise their hands if their partner delivered a fabulous
elevator pitch. Many hands go up. When I ask what was so great about them I typically
hear things like: they were cl
clear
ear about what they do, what difference they make for their
clients, and which industries they serve. Often I hear of stories told that brought their
companies to life.
I then ask who has heard of the concept of a USP, and who has been told at least once in
their business lives that they need to have one. Most hands go up. I then ask whose
elevator pitch partner said something unique. Usually no hands go up, but here and there a
bold person or two jump into the fray. In the end, good as their elevator pitch
pit partner’s
delivery might have been, most people back off their stance that their partner was unique.
The Unique and Different Label
Too often in elevator pitches, and in marketing messages in general, professional services
firms ill advisedly label themselves
hemselves as unique and different. A quick Google search for
“unique consulting firm” (with the quotes, so it would get results that only had these words
in a string), yielded close to 4,000 sites. Here’s one from the first page:
[Firm Name] is a rather unique

nique consulting firm…Our target audience is composed of those
firms that seek quality rather than quantity and price. Our company specializes on small and
mid size businesses, but we are looking for clients that are less worried about prices, than
exclusive
ve services and results that they will receive. Thus, a price conscious client is not
really suited for our firm; our services are of high quality and slightly higher priced, but the
customer service and end results are virtually almost exceeding the client’s
clien expectation.
(Author’s note: I tried to find more professional sounding copy including the term “unique
consulting firm” but it was all pretty much like this. Can’t make this stuff up, folks.)
Once a firm labels itself as unique, it begs the question from the reader: “Is it really unique
[or, as in the case of the firm above, “rather unique”] while, at the same time, ‘virtually
almost exceeding the client’s expectation'?” Ugh.
Should the answer be no, and by and large it is, the firm loses credibilit
credibility. More than
anything, they sound like they’ve read in some marketing or sales textbook that they have
to have a Unique Selling Proposition. Thus they use words to that effect.
Many admit later just how amateurish their USPs sound, and sometimes acknowledge
acknowle that
they thought it sounded amateurish before they launched their unique-
unique -speak publicly. Firm
leaders tend to have good common sense radar, but seem to check common sense at the
door when it comes to self-designated
designated uniqueness.

Some firms seem to take the quest for being different literally, creating a spate of “we’re
different” messages. Consider a top Boston law firm
firm with the following message:
At [Firm Name], we practice law differently. While our attorneys agree that results drive our
business, building
ilding relationships with our clients and providing value-added
value added service
serv is the key
to our success.
This firm might be amazingly good, and from what I know of their reputation they are.
However results driving business, building relationships, and providi
providing
ng value is pretty par
for the course from both firm goals and marketing copy standpoints.
What Clients Really Want
Much as they might hear otherwise, being different isn’t much of a factor in winning or
keeping clients. Often times, the “we’re differen
different”
t” message affects them negatively.
Consider
nsider the following scenario: your
your tooth hurts and your dentist is out of town. You need
an oral surgeon and you need one fast, so you ask a few trusted close friends, Trip and
Beverly, if they know anyone.
Referral #1: Close friend Trip suggest Dr. Phlox.
He says that his aunt Deanna needed oral surgery and went to Dr. Phlox. Phlox has been in
the town next door for 20 years and has a very busy oral surgery practice. Word on the
street is that he’s pretty solid. When
When aunt Deanna went in, the doctor took the time to
explain the surgery and what was going to happen, and took the time to answer all the
questions that Deanna had.
The surgery went fine (for all they knew) and Deanna hasn’t had any problems since. He’s a
little more expensive than average, but Deanna says he’s very booked and established so
it’s understandable.
Referral #2: Close friend Beverly suggests Dr. McCoy.
Supposedly McCoy is well known throughout the nation as a cutting edge oral surgeon,
often
ften going where no other oral surgeon has gone before. He has a unique blend of people
at his office, process for oral surgery, and tooth technology that he has pioneered. His
results, says his brochure and website, are 22% better than all other oral surgeons,
surg which is
how he justifies his very high prices.
His uncle Pavel went to McCoy and all went well with the surgery (for all he knew), though
uncle Pavel only met McCoy for about 30 seconds as he was so busy.

At a gut level, even with uncle Pavel’
Pavel’ss satisfaction, few people would choose referral #2.
This is because many of the dynamics of how clients buy business to business professional
services are similar to how people choose dentists:
 Should failure happen,

n, the consequences are painful.
 You don’t
on’t need the world’s greatest outcome. You just need a very good outcome.
 Since you can’t sample a service like you might sample a piece of gum, you have to
rely on reputation, experience, and expertise as proxies for expected results.
 Price is a factor,, but you’d rather not skimp when the outcome is important. (Side
note: if I told you that Dr. McCoy’s innovations have enabled him to charge less than
half of what other oral surgeons charge, would you have been more interested in
buying his services, or less?)
Innovation in the sense that the doctor does something different than others, or is somehow
unique, by and large won’t tip the scales of purchase preference in the favor of the
innovator.
So what is it that clients are, indeed, looking for? In my experience and research such as
Wellesley Hills Group and RainToday.com's benchmark report, How Clients Buy, Buy most
buyers want to tell service providers the following:
 Reliability. Do what you say you are going to do, and be on time about it. (This is
firstt because it's so important. If only the service providers I've worked with in my
life were better at keeping their commitments...)
 Accessibility. Be there when I need you.
 Impact. Help me buy the most helpful and impactful services from you, and help me
m
translate your services into success for my business in my industry.
 Fit. Be a good fit for the specific needs that I have. If you're not the best fit, help me
find a provider that is. Don't shoehorn your service into something that, in the end,
won't meet my needs as well as something else.
 Importance. Make me feel like we are, as a client, important to you and your tea
team.
 Service. Deliver great service as well as great services.
 Prudence. Be careful and do your homework before you suggest a course o

of action
for me.
 Research. Stay on top of the developments and trends in your industry and in mine.

 Listening. Understand my business, my team, and my clients so you can come up
with ideas relevant to me.
 Teaching. Help me understand what you’re doing

doing.. I might not be an expert in your
area, but I’m pretty bright and I make the decisions here. Help me understand
what's new in your area of expertise so I can apply that knowledge in my business.
 Business Management. Run an efficient operation and constantly

constan improve so I
don't pay for your inefficiency.
 Relationship Management. Be pleasant and fair, and work with me through

communication or other breakdowns on your end or mine. In essence, treat me like
a person.
Different situations warrant different mixes

m ixes and degrees of the above. For example, with
many necessary-type type services like Sarbanes-Oxley
Sarbanes Oxley compliance, efficiency is important as
well as expertise. On the other hand, buyers looking to hire product innovation consultants
will likely be less concerned
ed about efficiency, and more concerned about the creativity and
innovative thinking of your team.
Regardless of the mix of what’s most important to your buyers, you probably won’t see
many of them inserting this into the list of client wants: Different and Unique. Be one of a
kind, offering something that no one else in the market offers.
So be different: stop listening to the continuous pleas from consultants, marketers, and
textbooks to be different…one of a kind…a shining beacon of newness in a sea of same-old
same-old.
Focus instead on actually delivering the value to the market that you say you deliver
(which, in and of itself, can be uncommon if not unique), and find ways to create a
conversation with buyers around that message. Not only is it be
better
tter marketing, it’s less
lonely than being unique.
1
Terrell and Middlebrooks, Market Leadership Strategies for Service Companies. © 2000 McGraw Hill.
Pg 31.
THE TRUTH: Trying to be unique and different can do more harm than good if you’re not
careful.

PAPAYAWHIP, PEACHPUFF, OR PERU: GRAPHIC DESIGN
ADVICE THAT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE
Dither n:: A state of indecisive agitation: Company management was in a dither about the
new round of graphic designs. Everybody had strong opinio
opinions
ns on what they liked and didn't
like.
Dilatory adj:: Tending to postpone or delay: The graphic design process had a dilatory effect
on our ability to do anything in marketing besides work on designs. Could this drag out any
longer?
Delusion n (Psychiatry): A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence,

especially as a symptom of mental illness: The team seemed under the delusion that
choosing between possible brochure trim colors of papaywhip, peachpuff, or peru* would
make any difference in marketing results.
* Three actual colors. Who knew?
The Long and Winding Road
When many people think of marketing, they think of ads, logos, taglines, brochures, and
(nowadays) websites. It's understandable. Ads and brochures are what we see everyday,
everyda
and we all have opinions of what we like and don't like.
So when we build new websites, brochures, and logos for our organizations, we scrutinize
them with fanatical zeal. Everyone is going to see them and form an opinion about us based
on them. They must
ust look…they will look…perfect! (Even if the process of doing so kills us.)
This intense graphic design scrutiny is especially true in service organizations. Why?
 Aggressive, proactive marketing is new to many service industries. Up until a few

years ago,
o, marketing was done by answering the phone when it rang.
 Besides answering the phone, service firms have always put great sto
stock in very nice
brochures. Thus, much of the marketing attention was focused on them.
 Service businesses are run by experts in their field. They are not typically schooled
or focused in the more mundane parts of marketing such as new lead generation and
retention of existing revenue.
 The people who deliver the services tend to associate themselves personally with any
ad or graphic
c design that depicts their service. Thus, they identify the quality of the
marketing piece as a reflection of the quality of their own work.

 Service firms are filled with smart people. They all have opinions and, indeed, would
consider it a failing if th
they
ey didn't add intelligent constructive criticism to everything.
Graphic design is simply an easy target.
As a result, when a service business decides it's going to “really do some marketing”
everyone gets overly caught up in the graphic design process.
Pathology of Design Monomania
The same pathology happens over and over. It goes something like this:
 Marketing initiative is kicked off with vigor and enthusiasm
 New design of something

something—branding, brochures or website—becomes
becomes a central
component of the marketing
arketing effort
 Large group of ‘stakeholders' becomes part of the design review team
 The process takes forever
 People lose energy as the process drags on
 Nobody focuses on the “let’s get new customers” part of marketing with the same
vigor they do when
en choosing website trim colors
The purpose of marketing—the the end prize—should

prize never be anything but the following:
attract
ttract and retain profitable customers. All too often we see companies getting so caught up
in the visible and sexy part of the marketing process
process (design, copy), they forget about the
important-but-mundane
mundane part (lead and revenue generation).
Graphic Design Advice that Could Save Your Life
Here are five pieces of advice that could save your marketing initiatives from the graphic
design pit of despair.
1. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize: Is it possible that you should disregard this article
and pour over your designs and copy for months, all the way down to the last
comma, pixel, and Pantone color? Sure—if
Sure if you're about to spend tens of millions on
an
n advertising campaign that will create hundreds of millions of impressions.
You can be sure that companies executing campaigns this large are also doing the
following: extensive market research, testing each ad for customer response,
researching each market,
rket, and many other steps before the launch. And they're
prepared to turn on a dime if they find new creative that will work better to help
them win the prize: attracting and retaining profitable customers.

2. Collaborate with Care: Most design processes have too many people involved. In
the name of collaboration, companies make the design process muddled and painful.
Balance the benefits of collaboration with the knowledge that too many cooks make
for bad soup.
3. Apply Ockham's Razor: 12th century philosopher her William of Ockham is famous for
a statement known as Ockham's Razor: Plurality should not be posited without
necessity. In other words, unless proven otherwise, less is more. Apply this to your
creative process by asking yourself questions like:
 Do we need 8 people here when, in the end, the design will be just as good (if
not better) with 3 people involved, and we will get finished two months earlier?
 Do we need another round of design edits in order to help us attract and retain
profitable customers,
customers or can we stop now and move on?
 Do we need more design features such as Flash on our websites and a 6 color
processes for our brochures when it won't make a difference to our customers?
Applying Ockham's Razor to the design process will help you save ttime
ime and money and
prevent a good deal of heartache.
4. Don't Rewire the Network Yourself: Let's say you are a sales person and your
company is re-planning
planning its technology infrastructure. Would you tell the
technologists where to put the wires? Whether to use fiber optics or something else?
Whether version 6.3 of one software package is more robust than version 3.2 of
another? You'd be laughed out of the room. If the technologists don't do a good job
of listening to your business needs and implementing technology
technology that will help serve
those needs, get new technology people. Don't try to fix it yourself.
If you are not a designer, ask questions like “We're going to use this at a trade show.
Will this help us attract attention and generate leads? How so?” instead of questions
like “Don't you think a hunter green would be better?” In the end, if you don't think
your designers are doing a good job, get new designers. Don't try to be one of them.
5. Stop the Insanity: If you find yourself spiraling into design process despair, stand
up and say—with
with Susan Powter vigor—“Stop
vigor “Stop the insanity!” Either that, or
appropriately but clearly engage a discussion about what matters most: getting more
revenue. If the current discussion is either overkill or distracting you from that goal,
go
put an end to it. Do what you must to save yourself and your company from wasting
time and energy on discussions that won't make a difference in results.
Dither n:: A state of indecisive agitation: We don't dither about design. We run the process
well, have the right people and skill sets on the team, and make decisions that help
leverage graphic design to grow our revenue.

Dilatory adj:: Tending to postpone or delay: Others tried to slow us down by distracting us
from our marketing goals and focusing totoo
o much on superfluous discussions. Their dilatory
tactics won't work on us!
Delusion n (Psychiatry): A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence,

especially as a symptom of mental illness: I drank the punch and no longer operate under
the
he delusion that marketing equals graphic design. Marketing equals growing our revenue.
Graphic design is a great tool in the process, but not the process itself.
The definitions are the same, but you have the power to change how you use them in a
sentence.
THE TRUTH: Six weeks turns into six months (or more) of an often very painful process.
Unless, of course, you follow the advice below and, as they say, stop the insanity.

Don’t Worry about Your Competition (Let Them Worry
about You)
What, Me Worry?
- Alfred E. Newman
Who are your closest competitors? How are you going to beat your competition? What
makes you better than your competition? What are the differentiating factors between you
and your competition?
You get asked these types

ypes of questions all the time from your prospects, your clients, and
your internal staff. Don't overdo trying to answer them.
Reading service firm business plans and talking to service business leaders about becoming
more competitive are a part of what I do every week. Invariably, I find that the people who
run services firms waste a lot of time and effort worrying about, and angling against, other
firms that provide similar services. Usually it's just not worth your time and focus.
Below you'll find fourr common mistakes that service firm leaders make and five tips on how
to save time, money and heartache when thinking about the dreaded competition.
Mistake #1: Beaten-to-Death

Death Research
Some service firm business and marketing plans list and describe pa page
ge after page of
information about their competition. “Over the past three months, we were able to
successfully locate 77 other negotiation consulting firms. Detailed descriptions follow, along
with our unique positioning against each one…”
My Reaction: What a waste of three months of someone's time. Most people would laugh at
an accountant who confidently stated, “I have discovered that there are 142 other
accounting firms in the state and can confirm that 131 of them offer a number of services
similar to
o ours.” Yet somehow this information shows up in service firm marketing plan after
marketing plan as if it were a necessary component.
Mistake #2: Market and Service Offering Reluctance
Many service firms are reluctant to offer a new service that compli
compliments
ments their current
services because a competitor already offers it. “You see, we can't launch an intellectual
property law practice. At least five other firms offer that in our market, and I learned in
business school that first movers have an advantage. If you're not #1 or #2 you shouldn't
launch into the market.”
My Reaction:: Law firms, consulting firms, IT firms, financial services, and other professional
services are not Coke and Pepsi. The market dynamics just don't work like this.

Mistake #3: Cliché
iché Competitive Differentiation
We at ABC Tax and Consulting Services are the number 1 provider in our market. Our
biggest differentiator is our people who take a strategic look at our clients' businesses and
blend people, process, and technology to create
create efficient and effective solutions for our
clients' most pressing strategic needs. We're more than tax services, we're strategic
business advisorss with the experience you need.
My Reaction: Copy like this takes a lot of space and says nothing except, "I
" have nothing
real to say, so I'll use some meaningless marketing speak."
Mistake #4: Unique Methodology
We have a unique methodology that allows us to deliver projects more efficiently and with
greater ongoing success. There are 5 major steps: discovery,
discov ery, design, development,
implementation,
plementation, and measurement.
My Reaction:: Sure, it's unique – there's just one process like this – but everyone uses it or
something similar.
Misconceptions like these hinder service business growth and success because they limit the
thinking of the people who run firms and practices.
What should you do about these misguided views of your competition?
Tip #1: Forget Your Marketing Textbook
Your marketing textbooks will tell you to:
 Be the first mover in a market. You'll have an advantage over later entrants.
 Be number one or two in a market. No one else can make enough profit.
 Have a Unique Selling P

Proposition
roposition that other firms can't easily duplicate.
 Be amazingly different from other firms in your space. Differentiation

Differenti is key.
I ask you, who grabbed the position first, and now owns, high-quality
high quality investment advice in
Boston?
John Hancock • Citigroup • Brown Brothers Harriman • Fidelity Investments • Charles

Schwab • TD Waterhouse • TD Banknorth • Citizens Bank • RBC Dain Rauscher •
Wainwright Bank • Eastern Bank • Sovereign Bank • Prudential Financial • Legg Mason •
Merrill Lynch • Morgan Stanley • Paine Webber • Bank of America • Boston Private •
Fiduciary Trust International • Edward Jones • A.G. Edwards • Bear Stearns • Dozens of
smaller banks • Hundreds of CFPs, CPAs, and insurance firms • Hundreds of others

Does it matter who was there first?
Do you think people in a 6 person law firm can't make big money? They can, and they can
do it in a market where there
e are 200 person law firms that deliver the similar services to
similar kinds of clients.
Are their services really different from each other? Do you want a “different” kind of dentist
fixing your teeth, or do you just want a good one?
Marketing textbooks s (and many business books and consultants) focus on Proctor and
Gamble, Whole Foods, U.S. Steel, and Coke vs. Pepsi. We identify with them all, and they're
quite interesting. But the strategies they espouse can't usually help the 35 person
consulting firm grow to 50 people. More often they get in the way.
Tip #2: Don't Worry About Crowded Markets
I couldn't tell you how many Italian restaurants are in New York's little Italy, or how many
steak houses there are in Chicago, there are simply too many to count.
cou nt. But, I am pretty
confident that there is not a booming row of authentic French bistros in Peru, Maine.
If you're a human resource consultant, and there are a multitude of human resource
consultants that do what you do in the market where you do it, it it simply means there's a
market for it. If you look for a space to “create a market” and “be the first mover” there's a
good chance nobody's there because nobody's buying.
In the micro-economic
economic technical sense, the Coke
Coke vs. Pepsi market dynamic is “oligopoly”,
“oligo
while service
ice firm markets are “monopolistic competition”. In oligopoly, you have a few top
players with all the clout, market share, and profits, and everyone else struggling to
survive. This doesn't happen in monopolistic competition. There are 88 pizza restaurants in
the Yellow Pages in Miami, FL. The 89th can make it, too, if the pizza's good.
Enter a crowded market where there's lots of business to be had, and lots of clients with
needs, and (assuming your pizza is
i any good) there's a good chancece you can thrive. Open a
French bistro in Peru, Maine…good luck selling foie gras.
Tip #3: Change the Question from Competition to Clients
Let's say you're interviewing someone for a job at your firm. It's perfectly reasonable for
them to ask you, “Whatt differentiates you from your competition?” Same thing goes with
your clients and prospects. You may feel the need to answer
answer—comparing
comparing yourself both
categorically to your competition and then against specific competition. And on and on
about your competition.
You don't want the conversation to linger on about competition. The more you talk about
them, the more you validate that your client, prospect, or staff member should be
comparing you to them.

Instead, like a good sales person, take control of the questioning and you will take control
of the conversation. For example, you might answer, “Well, we have a very robust research
division that keeps us on the cutting edge of the ABC field and, to my knowledge, the
competition doesn't. In fact, they quote our
our research to make their points, but in the end of
the day, we're the leaders, not them.
Importantly, I don't know what they do with our research. I know what we do, however,
and how it makes our clients' lives better. Here's a specific example from your industry…
How might this fit with what you're doing?”
Tip #4: Drop the Clichés
When you do answer the question, “What makes you different?” don't answer, “our
people…process and technology….efficient and effective….we're the best…we're
unique…cutting edge…push
ge…push the envelope…go the extra mile…client
mile…client-centered…etc.”
centered…etc.”
If you do, you'll simply be helping people win their game of buzzword bingo. (Don't believe
me, Google “buzzword bingo” and see what comes up first.)
Have something real to say.
Tip #5: Overcome

ome Your Greatest Competitor – Client Indifference
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, realize that for most product companies, the
competition is another product company. For most service businesses, the stiffest
competition is the indifference of your
your client to do anything, do more, or the desire of your
client to “just do it with in-house
house resources.”
In How Clients Buy: The Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing and Selling
from the Client Perspective, 40% of 200 buyers of consulting and
d professional services
encountered service providers that did not understand their needs. 32% of said that the
service providers did not convince them of the value they would receive from the service
provider.
You have to convince the buyer of the value your services will bring to the table regardless
of how you stack up with some competitor. So worry less about who your competitor is, and
worry more about the value you offer to the client. You'll win more deals in the process, and
beat the competition without
thout even giving them a second thought.
THE TRUTH: Many firms overdo it. Don’t get caught in the react
react-to-everyone
everyone-else trap.

Cold Calling Works: You Just Do It Wrong
Brrrr... I've just been cold calling and boy could I use some hot chicken soup!
Just those two words together – Cold Calling – put many people far away from warm and
happy. Given that it's so much fun for so many people, and that I have heard a number of
times recently that the last nail has been banged into the cold calling coffin, why is cold
calling still even on our radar screens?
Because it works.
It doesn't work, you say? Well, in one sense I agree with you: there are a million ways to do
it wrong and fail. Fail at something enough, and it's easy to dismiss the
t he whole tactic. (No
matter how many times I try, I just can't hit a Jonathan Papelbon fastball. Swinging a bat at
a baseball must not work!)
Before we get into how to make cold calling work, let's first establish that it does work. Of
30 possible marketingng tactics for services firms, one rose to the top as the most effective in
the research report Increasing Marketing Effectiveness at Professional Firms conducted by
Expertise Marketing and LawMarketing.com in 2006. 2006. The top most effective tactic – the
tactic
ic above all other tactics – was "arranging business development appointments with
clients and prospects." When I last checked, the best way to arrange a business
development appointment was neither telegram nor skywriting.
Meanwhile, case study after ca

case
se study confirms that cold calling can work. For example,
I've seen cold calling work as a major part of a lead generation approach, yielding 6 clients
in 6 months (a major acceleration of client additions), and increasing the pipeline by
fivefold, for Deep
ep Customer Connections,
Connections, a management consulting firm in the insurance
industry.
Making Ten Million Dollars
Many anti-cold-calling
calling folks say, "There are so many powerful ways to build your client
base, why even bother trying cold calling? You can give speeches. Publish articles and
books. Work your network: it's more extensive than you probably think."
To paraphrase a famous business person (Comedian Steve Martin):
 Question:: What's the secret to making ten million dollars?
 Answer:: First, start with nine million dollars.
Well, some people don't write very well, they don't have extensive networks, and speaking
isn't their bag. Some people can't wait a year for a lead to materialize out of their writing or
their network! If you can employ these tactics,
tactics, great. It's like starting with nine million. But
regardless of whether you start with nine million or no million, cold calling still works.

What's In It For Me (WIIFM)
Let's assume you're a Chief Strategy Officer at an $800 million dollar manufacturing firm in
Ohio. Someone calls you and says, "My name is John Smith and I'm a change management
consultant. Do you need change? Let's meet." Even if you're headed to the vending
machine, your immediate change needs probably won't include John Smith.
But let's
's say John calls and says, "My name is John Smith. The reason I'm calling is because
my firm, the ABC Consulting Group, has just recently conducted a major benchmark study
on how manufacturing businesses – including Competitor tor 1 and Competitor 2 of yours – in
the Midwest are succeeding with their labor unions in the face of global outsourcing. There
are 3 practices that are working across the board and a few that fail most everyplace. If
you're interested, we'd be happy to come by and take you through the results."
If this topic is on your mind, you might risk a ½ hour to hear the results. Or you might have
some questions right then and there. Either way, if I'm John, I've presented my cold
"introduction" of myself and my firm to your company in a way that delivers value to you.
Will everyone take me up on this meeting? Of course not. But if my target list is well
segmented and clean, a number of prospects will. When I get in front of them, the topic of
conversation will be my recent
recen research, work, and expertise – not a "get to know you and
sell you" meeting.
A conversation about recent research is just one of many potential value propositions for
the meeting. You might not want to present research because it might not be the best entry
for you. But if you're
ou're worth your salt as a professional services provider, a conversation with
you should be able to offer something of strong value. (If you can't figure out how you can
deliver value in a conversation, find a new line of work.)
Regardless of the meetingg premise, I have to handle the conversation well to get the best
result from this meeting, but the ball is definitely in my court as to what happens from here
on out.
How the Numbers Work
Answer the following question: If you get 10 meetings with 10 company

com pany leaders who have
the right title, are in the right organization, and have the right criteria for being a good
prospect for you, and you stay in touch with them fairly regularly in a meaningful way after
the meeting, how many would become clients of yours yours in some capacity over the next year
or two?
The most common answers I get for this question are "two or three" or "eight or nine". Let's
assume you're more modest, and the answer is two.
Next question: What does a bread-and-butter

bread client represent to you in terms of revenue
over the course of a year? It could be $7k, $70k, $170k, $700k, or anything. Let's assume
it's $70k.

So, for the cost of setting up 10 meetings with prospects, whatever that cost is, the
immediate return on your investment is $140k.
$140k. This, of course, doesn't take into account
long term ROI factors such as repeat business and increased referrals.
The fallacy, in many cases, is that most service providers aren't as good at closing as they
think they are, and they don't continue to stay
stay in touch with the prospect regularly and
meaningfully after they meet with them. But these factors don't have anything to do with
cold calling. They have to do with your ongoing marketing, and the resources you devote to
follow up. The cold calling part works fine for what it's supposed to do: make an
introduction with a prospective client that can lead to a good relationship. How you choose
to develop that relationship is a different matter.
Have Someone Else Call for

or You
Maybe your practice is busy and

and you just don't have time to call. Or maybe your practice
isn't busy, and you need to invest in generating leads. Either way, you can have someone
else make the calls for you.
Even the busiest of professionals have time to meet with a CEO of a company who could be
a great client for them. So you go on the meetings. What you don't have to do is make the
actual calls. Reread the WIIFM section of this article above. In the beginning, you must
work to craft the lead generation process. You must be involved in targeting the right
prospects, providing the strongest value proposition, and working with your telephone
business developers to represent you clearly, strongly, and fairly. Then, let them go to
work. Cold calling itself is not something that you, personally,
personally, need to get good at.
I could make more points that demonstrate how cold calling can work for professional
service businesses, and on how to make cold calling itself work better. But for some of you
who doubt the process, it still wouldn't be enough,
enough, and that's fine. It's been said that people
make decisions with their hearts and justify them with their heads. People don't want to
make cold calls, and some don't want to be associated with the method. So they figure out
how to justify not employing co
cold
ld calling, or why other things work better.
If you don't want to make cold calls, don't. But cold calling does work. Most people just do it
wrong.
THE TRUTH: See article title…

Crafting a Rainmaking Firm: A Window into Sales
Performance
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. A hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.
hole
- Harry Belafonte
The 1,000 mile journey to developing a culture of rainmaking starts with the first step. My
advice to firms looking to create a culture of business development: make sure the bucket
doesn't have any holes or it won't hold water.
Time and again we see firms doing a certain percent of what they need to do to help the
professionals in their firm develop business – but rarely 100%. If you're only
onl doing 70% of
what you need to do, you don't get 70% results; you get much less. Like patching a leak in
the bottom of a boat, if you don't patch it 100%, it still takes on water.
So if your firm is looking to create a team of rainmakers, make sure you address the gamut
of management topics you need to address in order to give yourself a fighting chance of
success. If you don't, you may find yourself expending 90% of the effort – almost there –
but still falling short of your business development goals.
Here are six areas – three controlled by the organization, three brought to the table by the
individual rainmaker (but can be influenced by the firm) – you should address in order to
build a rainmaking firm.
Organizational Influences:
1. Expectations and Coaching

oaching
2. Tools and Resources
3. Consequences and Incentives
Individual Influences:
4. Skills and Knowledge

5. Fit and Assignment
6. Motivation and Preferences
Window into Sales Performance
(Adapted from Binder-Riha

Riha Associates The Six Boxes™ with language used with permission)

1. Expectations and Coaching: The Gallup Organization – fond of polling – has asked
thousands of people across companies to answer this question, “Do I know what is
expected of me at work?” On average, 40% off those polled don't. If you think that's
high, you should see how many would
would-bebe rainmakers know (or rather don't know)
what's expected of them by their firms regarding business development.
In our experience, not many know what to do. Sometimes they might
migh know their
revenue goal, but not what they need to do every day to achieve it. Some know they
are “expected to network”, “expected to make calls” or "expected
" expected to spend 15% of
their time on business development', but rarely do they know what they need to do
at 9am…11am…or all day Tuesday.
What happens without clear expectations and coaching?

coaching Inconsistency.
Inconsistency
- Inconsistent business development activities across all professionals with business
development responsibilities
- Inconsistent business development
dev effort levels
- Inconsistent persistence
- Inconsistent improvement (due to lack of coaching)
- Inconsistent results
2. Tools and Resources: When it comes to business development, rainmakers need

the right resources to be able to find and win new
new clients. Sometimes they need
more time to do it, sometimes an expense account. Maybe they know they're
supposed to develop business, but nobody's built them a list of appropriate
businesses and managers to target.
It is possible they do not have the right

right marketing or sales collateral materials to
help them sell. One rainmaker may need to bring a technical guru along to represent
a specific expertise of the firm…but that technical guru can't afford to lose the
billable time.
Whatever the need, rainmakers

rainmakers need the right level of resources in order to find and
win new clients.
What happens without the right resource levels?

levels Frustration.
- Ready to call but don't have the names
- Ready to present but don't have materials
- Ready to visit the client, b
but
ut don't have the budget or time to go
3. Consequences and Incentives: It's strange; some service firm leaders rush to add
incentive compensation to inspire professionals to sell while others vehemently resist
compensation adjustments. Incentive compensation,
compensation, built correctly, can significantly
influence rainmakers to find more new clients.

On the other hand, incentive compensation, while necessary, is not sufficient. Even
those service firm leaders that do institute incentive compensation plans rarely stat
state
(or if they do state, act on) any negative consequences of not hitting client
development goals.
What happens without the right consequences and incentives

incentives? Status quo
- No incentive compensation…why should I sell? I need to bill anyway.
- No consequences
nces for not selling…well, I guess I'll try but what's the worst that will
happen if I don't succeed? They are not going to do anything about it.
4. Skills and Knowledge: Have you ever been on a business development meeting
with a newbie running the sh
show
ow and with you just sitting back along for the ride?
How does the newbie seem? Confident in her abilities? Comfortable that she'll win
the new client?
And how does she fare running that first meeting? Does she talk the right amount?
Ask the right questions?
ons? Follow the well-worn
well protocols of first-time
time business
discussions? How's her body language…confident and relaxed?
Rainmakers need skills and knowledge in order to find and win clients. With the right
skills, they can walk the client through the new business
business development process with
savvy, ease, and confidence. With the right knowledge, they can ask the right
questions and craft the right service set for the client.
What happens without skills and knowledge?

knowledge Anxiety.
- Do I really have to pick up th
that
at phone and say something to someone I don't
know?
- I'm not going in there…you can't make me go in there…
- There's no way I know what to do or say to actually bring in a new client like you
do.
(Unfortunately, many professionals won't admit any

any of these feelings and so they
never deal with their anxieties and move their careers forward.)
5. Fit and Assignment: Ever see someone fail in a business development role when
almost anyone (but the hiring manager) could have predicted that this person was wa
not the right fit for the job? Sometimes there are different business development
roles that people have to play: one person is the technical expert, one is the lead
developer, and one is the bigbig-time
time closer. Whatever the case, you need the right
people in the right business development roles.
For example, you may have selected someone in your firm who is going to be a great
rainmaker: ready for strong relationships, ready to bring the solid new clients into
the firm. But don't assign them to the cold ccalling:
alling: they simply shouldn't (and often
won't) succeed at it…it's not the right fit.

What happens without the right fit and assignment?
assignment Chronic underachievement.
underachievement
- How do they expect me to sell to engineers? I'm not an engineer?
- 20 years in the business
siness and now they expect me to make cold calls? I don't think
so.
- All ready for my first day in business development! What do you mean my territory
is Aroostook County, Maine?
6. Motivation and Preferences: Let's say you take care of the other five f influences
noted in this article. Expectations clear. Resources available. Compensation set.
Skills in place. Right people – right jobs. All of this is great, and necessary, but you
still need rainmakers with the fire in the belly. You need people with focus and drive
to be successful in business development. If they're not motivated to build a
practice, there's little a firm can do to light the fire of focus and drive.
What happens without

hout motivation and preferences? Mediocrity.
- 9 AM already…time to start working. 5 PM already…time to go home!
- Look at all the money I can make! Too bad I don't care about money.
- They've trained me…they're paying me…they told me what to do. Unfortunately, I
just don't want to. It's not for me.
If you're looking
oking to build a culture of rainmaking, make sure you attend to all of the factors
that affect business development performance. Miss one of these factors for any reason:
inattention, lack of time, unwillingness to invest, political difficulties, and you'll
you'l severely
limit your success.
Fortunately for you, it's the rare services firm that does focus on the entire Window into
Sales Performance. If you are the one that goes the extra mile – and does indeed plug all
the holes that will eventually sink the boat
bo – better get ready to hire more billable
professionals. The tide's going to come in, you'll be in ship-shape,
ship shape, and you'll need more
people to get all the new client work done.
THE TRUTH: Developing selling skills is a common priority at professional services

se firms.
And it is a key to business development…one of six. Skills training by itself isn’t the answer.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
John Doerr, President, Wellesley Hills Group
John Doerr’s twenty-five

twenty five year career in professional services has included
senior
enior executive management, business development and marketing,
business process re-engineering
re engineering and product development experience. He
has worked in organizations ranging in size and scope from a publishing
firm, to an international organization located in Europe with partners in
the Middle East and North Africa. John's experience also includes a
successful start-up
start up organization, as well as a large multi-national
multi
organization with offices throughout the world.
Mike Schultz, President, Wellesley Hills Group
Mike Schultz is world-renowned

world renowned as a consultant and expert in services
marketing and rainmaking. His practice focuses on strategy for service and
technology businesses in the areas of branding, marketing, lead
generation, and sales performance. Along witwith
h his client practice and
management responsibilities, Mike is the Publisher of RainToday.com, the
premier online source for insight, advice, and tools for growing a service
business. Mike has led RainToday.com from a startup to the leading online
magazine focused on marketing and selling for professional services.
Robert Croston, Vice President and Principal Consultant, Wellesley Hills Group
Bob's twenty plus year career in marketing, brand management,

advertising, and sales management includes diverse experience in
financial services, higher education, consumer goods, and professional
services. Bob is well published and particularly skilled at strategic
planning and brand development; having crafted campaigns and
positioning platforms for noteworthy brbrands
ands such as General Motors,
Fidelity Investments, Bank of America, Harvard Business School, BEA
Systems, Nellie Mae, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

About Wellesley Hills Group
Wellesley Hills Group is a management consulting, marketing, and lead generation firm
dedicated to helping professional services companies generate leads and increase revenue,
prices, and profits. Wellesley Hills Group helps client in three core areas:
 Strategy and Brand Development:

Development Service firms are often at a loss for h how to
grow. They don’t know what strategies or tactics will work, and when they do, they
often don’t know how to make them most effective. We understand the distinct
challenges of growing, branding, and managing a service business. Our core strategy
and brand
and development services include helping our clients develop strategies for
growth, craft marketing and business development plans, and research their clients
and their markets.
 Marketing and Lead Generation:

Generation Lead generation for business to business
services
ices is different than most other industries. We understand the unique dynamics
of service businesses and know what tactics will be most effective to help you
generate the leads, the revenue, the relationships, and the brand you need to grow.
Our core services
ices include helping our clients generate and nurture leads with our
Services in Demand program,
program craft and execute brands and core marketing
messages, build and execute website and Internet marketing strategies, and become
thought leaders through thought leadership
leadership development, marketing, and PR.
 Sales Training and Performance Improvement

Improvement: Making the transition from
service provider to Rainmaker, balancing your responsibility between delivering
services and selling services, and creating a culture of business
business development at your
service firm are all challenging tasks. We work with leaders, professionals, business
developers, and marketers to help you create a business development culture while
giving you and your team the sales skills and tools you need to succeed. Professional
services firms turn to our Rainmaker Development ProgramSM to help their
professionals develop the skills and get the coaching and support they need to
become leaders in new business and client development.
Wellesley Hills Group is committed to providing the freshest insight, research, and ideas to
professional services leaders, business developers and marketers through publishing
articles, white papers, the Services Insider Blog and Newsletter, and research. The
Wellesley Hills Group
up publishes RainToday.com, the premier site for marketing and sales for
professional services.
To learn more about Wellesley Hills Group visit http://www.whillsgroup.com.

http://www.whillsgroup.com

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“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?

Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a

Mentors told me, “See, pinpointing

Then I started marketing

I learned that the concept of differentiation in professional servi

No matter your age or experience

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 1

1. Build the strategy from the top down

A. The chicken was compliant, but the pig was committed.

2. Don’t consult with expert tacticians

Equally as devastating as a top

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 4

3. Look only at your own industry and competition

Make sure that when you’re studying

4. Don’t create an environment of fervent execution

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 5

Execution must not be made a strategic priority by leadership—if

5. Don’t plan for behavioral or organizational change

Thus, almost without exception, a marketing strategy’s success is contingent on

6. Form a marketing committee, then

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 6

2. People begin to agree with watered

In other words, the committee decision

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 7

- James Heskett, et. al., Putting the Service-Profit

Product companies seek to become marketmarket-share

The jackpot situation for a product company is to:

 How large is the market?

 What will make your offering unique?

 How will you communicate your marketplace differentiation?

 What are the barriers to entry?

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 9

Consultant: Nice to meet you. I am looking forward to disc

Consultant: What's the size of the market?

Entrepreneur: I have no idea, don't plan to find out, and probably

Entrepreneur: Not a clue, but I'm guessing

Consultant: How will the services you offer be unique and d

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 10

Entrepreneur: No market research. We'll not be focusing outwardly on market opinions to

Entrepreneur: Nothing will prevent

Consultant: Good luck. (They'll never make it.)

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 11

 Even if you're a good--sized

So, when you consider both your business strategy

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 12

In Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done,

Behavior 1: Know your people

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 14

 Throwing money at advertising and graphic design

 Delegating billable staff who are currently not-so-billable

 A host of other "maybe if I do this the problem will go away" tactics

Guard 1: “What?! A swallow, carryin' a coconut?!"

Arthur: “It could grip it by the husk!"

Guard 1: “It's not a question

Arthur's response: “I'm not interested.”

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 15

Behavior 4: Follow through –“Clear,

"But I got billable and couldn't do that."

"Sorry, I just didn't do that. On to other things."

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 16

If you do, the rewards for your business

© 2008 Wellesley Hills Group 17

Relationships. Trust. Delivery of superb value. These are core ingredien