Recent Survey Results PSF Marketing/Business Development Integration – Does it Benefit Clients? See the results of our research. Are Marketing and Business Development Functions Stuck in a Rut? See the results of our research. How well do Marketing and Business Development work with other operations, like Finance, IT, HR, Legal and more? See the results of our research. Do PSF practitioners WANT to market and sell? See the results of our research.   News Ken Lizotte's new book prominently features Suzanne Lowe's ideas on successful business practices for professional service firms: The Expert's Edge: Become the Go-To Authority People Turn to Every Time (McGraw Hill 2008)   The View from the Other Side: B2B Marketing Practices from Other Industries, ITSMA, June 2008. Adapting to a Downturn, Suzanne Lowe and Ford Harding, The Council of Public Relations Firms. May 2008. Podcast: The Silver Group's interview with Suzanne Lowe on differentiation and her upcoming book. January 2008. MP3 file Read a summary of Suzanne Lowe's upcoming book The Integration Imperative™. The One Piece of Advice You Can't Generate Leads Without, Rain Today, September 2007 (Awarded Marketing Sherpa's Best B2B Opt-in Email Campaign) New from the Expertise Marketplace™ Blog Does integrating professional services Marketing and Biz Dev Benefit CLIENTS? RainToday's Pricing Research How Well do PSF Marketing and BD Work with Other Functions? Rainmaker, Rainmaker, Make me Some Rain Marketing and business development stuck in a rut? See all the posts at the Expertise Marketplace blog Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed for regular updates. (Need RSS help?) Subscribe Did a colleague forward this newsletter? Sign up to receive your own copy. "What a great newsletter — about the only one I've ever found useful in the marketing space." — Marketing and Communications Director, New York investment firm Recent Issues Five Goals for CMOs, May 2008 Methods of Measuring Marketing ROI, April 2008 Five Questions for Wendy Horn on Reorganizing a Law Firm's Marketing Approach, March 2008 You can order Marketplace Masters from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, your favorite online bookseller, or CEO-READ.

The Marketplace Master™ is a monthly email publication on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing, LLC.

About this month's issue

As I spend the next few months focusing my time and attention on researching and writing my upcoming book I thought I'd share some of the most popular Marketplace Master™ articles.

This newsletter article, originally published in June 2005, features a topic that embodies one of the key underlying themes of my upcoming book, The Integration Imperative™. The content of this issue encourages professional services leaders to think more holistically about the client, the client's needs, and their firm’s value proposition.

Suzanne Lowe
President, Expertise Marketing
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win

P.S. Is your firm employing unique marketing and business development strategies or tactics? Are you marketing your firm differently? Let us know if you would like to be featured in a future issue.

Mastering Professional Service Firm Account Management

Often misunderstood, account management is an activity that, when done right, can be integral part of the way you market, manage – and grow – your firm.

The May 2005 issue of The Marketplace Master gives several examples of how firms misunderstand account management. These firms aren’t necessarily doing anything wrong; it’s just that they aren’t doing enough that is right. And they may be labeling activities “account management,” when in fact they are not.

Because account management is destined to become increasingly integral to the way a firm manages and markets itself, it’s important to understand not only what it means, but how doing it right can make a difference in a professional service firm’s success in retaining clients and growing value-added relationships.

Sallie Sherman, co-author of The Seven Keys to Managing Strategic Accounts (McGraw- Hill, 2003) defines account management as “a systematic process for managing key interactions and relationships with critical accounts.” Account management is more than one or two personal relationships; it’s about the whole account. “Most people think it’s about smoothing,” says Sherman. “Actually, account management is about aligning the people and the structure of each organization so that you can create value.”

The structure, or infrastructure, includes how an account plan is done, how the group is organized, how people are compensated, how profits are developed to make sure the information gets deep within the organization, and how you set up measurements.

Sherman points out that there is much confusion between strategic account management and key account selling. While key account selling may be part of strategic account management, they are not the same thing. Key account selling programs are not as likely as account management programs to involve a broad, cross-functional team. Other major differences are that key account selling programs have shorter planning horizons, measure success by revenue rather than profits, and focus more on competition than the account’s business challenges. The Seven Keys to Managing Strategic Accounts includes a detailed comparison chart of the two kinds of programs.

Taking Account Management Farther

After conducting research with hundreds of professional service firms, we’ve identified several focus areas that can help firms take account management farther.

Think deep thoughts – No, we’re not suggesting meditation, not that it would hurt! We’re talking about thinking more strategically about account planning and client relationship management.

Unbelievably, there are many firms that have no idea who their best clients are. Just last week I heard about a law firm that, to this day, has never compiled a firm-wide list of its highest revenue clients. Although “revenue” may be an overly simplistic measure to evaluate the value of these clients to the firm (sometimes the biggest clients are not the best clients!), this law firm does its equity owners a disservice by not thinking astutely enough about the relative importance of its client relationships. Too many firms rush to serve clients equally, without first mapping out the criteria for identifying their ideal clients. Instead, they should plan and invest in clients that support the strategic goals of the firm.

Strike a balance –Think about both the internal and external perspectives of account planning and client relationship management. The best account planning occurs when considering the external context of the marketplace. For example, how are your firm’s chosen market segments growing and how does that affect your firm? How does your competition influence your firm, and how will decisions your firm makes influence the competition?

Balance this external focus with an internal account planning perspective: by asking how your firm’s culture will influence its account management. Will your people take the steps needed in order to manage accounts effectively (and beyond lip service)? Will you reward them properly to attend to client relationships successfully (and utilizing the firm’s processes and protocols in order to do so)? Should there be training? Internal processes that support account management?

Inform – By doing an account planning exercise first, your firm will be better informed about managing its relationship with clients. It’s not simply a matter of communicating between your firm’s team members and the client’s key team members; it’s having a more sophisticated understanding and mapping of the client’s business issues, opportunities and goals, and the relative value your firm brings in addressing those issues.

Use technology wisely – there is no shortage of software applications to help firms manage their client relationships. But no application is a substitute for a relationship management strategy – only human brains can do that. Let the software illuminate your strategy, not drive it.

To maximize a well-designed, well-executed strategic account management program, Sherman also recommends that firms:

• Create a plan with a cross-functional team. Use the ideas of others on the team to co-create greater value for the client.
  
  
• Clearly communicate the plan both internally and externally.
  
  
• Be able to quantify and articulate the value you create and provide. Naturally, as Sherman points out, it’s easier to quantify value if the work is tangible. Some clients don’t have the accounting infrastructure to allow you to capture the value, so you need to explore different ways to quantify it.

Use Account Management for a Competitive Advantage

Effective account management requires a more competitively astute “deep dive” into the inner workings of a client. Professional service firms will find that it requires organizational collaboration, visionary leadership, planning, resource investment, communication and measurement. The potential payoff – being more competitive and realizing your firm’s own strategic goals –makes it a must-do toward achieving marketplace mastery.

Your feedback is important to us. Please contact us with your comments and questions.

Call for interview subjects: Do you know of a professional service firm that is taking steps to integrate its marketing and business development functions and would be willing to be interviewed for Suzanne’s upcoming book, The Integration Imperative™? If so, please direct them to our page on The Integration Imperative™ for more information.

Take the confidential, web-based Marketplace Masters professional service firm differentiation assessment test for instant feedback on whether your firm is doing differentiation right.

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