Persuading Your Team to Focus on Marketing

If you are part of a professional services firm, you may find that some of your team members are reluctant to turn their attention to marketing. They may even feel marketing is somehow undignified and not something they ought to be concerned with. This may be because they think of marketing in terms of mass marketing. ‘Marketing' has overtones of ad campaigns designed to sell more T-shirts, soft drinks, or refrigerators.

You would be right in thinking that this kind of hard sell marketing is not suited for a professional services firm. You deal with clients or patients, not customers. They are looking for the right individual(s) to place their trust in for help with decisions on issues that will have an impact on their well-being. They are likely to be scared off by a hard sell.

Consultation with clients providing professional services has revealed the same concerns about appropriate marketing for a service enterprise that we have encountered in our own firm. This article will focus on an approach taken towards marketing in a service type organization that can provide desirable results.

Marketing covers many bases

Providers of professional services often choose not to vigorously pursue clients. They prefer having a patient or client come to them and then focus on building solid relationships based on a consistently high level of service. Even though they do not always recognize this as marketing, it is marketing. Marketing covers any activity that maintains or builds existing client relationships or wins new clients. All of your dealings with clients have marketing implications.

It is, therefore, important to analyze your business practices from a marketing perspective and make sure that they promote rather than hinder your business. Persuading your team members to concentrate on marketing involves getting them to focus on all the activities they currently carry out. You need to persuade them that these activities are all related and that the business will benefit if they assess what they do from a marketing perspective.

All marketing decisions should feed down from a strategic analysis of a business's strengths and weaknesses, its industry and demographic focus, and its short and long-term goals. For example, you may be a law firm that finds it increasingly profitable to deal in certain specialized areas of the law. This is a marketing decision.

Marketing involves setting goals, devising ways of reaching those goals, and setting out milestones and assessment criteria to measure progress. It also involves getting your team to work as a cohesive unit, dedicated to a common set of goals and communicating a common message to your clients or patients. Your “customers” should get a consistent message about your policies and areas of expertise, regardless of who they talk to in your company.

This means working to common standards and finding ways to pass on knowledge and information within the business. For example, if a client rings up with an urgent inquiry and you are not available to deal with it, there should be a system in place that allows for someone else to cover for you.

It's all about branding

Unless your business is built entirely on the personality and capabilities of one individual, your firm needs to project an image of itself as a single entity. Selling professional services is certainly not the same as selling tomato soup. But, like a maker of tomato soup, you need to have an identifiable brand that will set you apart from competitors. Consensus on company policies, procedures, and service delivery will help consolidate and reinforce your brand in the minds of your clients. It will make you more memorable.

Your publications should also be consistent with your overall strategy. If your company has outstanding expertise in one area, make sure that your firm publications reflect this. For example, your business cards might carry not only your company logo, but also a one-sentence description of the key quality you offer to clients.

Every “customer” interaction has a marketing angle. Your clients and patients should feel they have gained something every time they make contact with you. So you should go out of your way to make life easier for them.

This trend to make life easier should flow into all areas of marketing your firm. For instance, individuals make judgments about a firm when looking at their website. They will make a snap evaluation based on its look and feel. A website needs to look professional and be easy to navigate. Its content needs to be in plain English to avoid a feeling of frustration or bewilderment with your company.

You could use emails and newsletters to notify clients of changes to government regulations and economic or industry conditions. Depending on the kind of business you run, you might send out updates on occupational health and safety obligations, mutual fund plans, employment regulations, or taxation requirements, or notify patients of new diagnostic techniques or research results on illnesses.

Your website or newsletter might carry updates and analyses on financial market changes. You could help clients with record keeping by sending out alerts on deadlines for certain documentation requirements.

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