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. Speeches Kennedy Information’s Fall Executive Search Summit, Post-Summit Forum II, Princeton Club, New York, NY. Oct 22, 2008 The Boston Club, Lead Generation and Sales: Growing your Business in Uncertain Times, Boston, MA. Oct. 23, 2008 RainToday webinar, Marketing & Selling Is Everyone's Job: How to Create a Culture of Growth at Your Firm, Dec. 11, 2008 Marketing Partner Forum 2009, Taking Your Program into the 21st Century: Lessons from Top Marketers at Non-Legal Professional Service Firms -- Moderator: Suzanne Lowe, Jan 29, 2009 News SMPS Connections featured this newsletter as a "Tool of the Week," September 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. Read a summary of Suzanne Lowe's upcoming book The Integration Imperative™. New from the Expertise Marketplace™ Blog STILL the only verified link between marketing measurement and effectiveness Taking baby steps toward better serving clients In praise of building marketing and selling skills 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. "I LOVE your newsletter. I think it’s the best one I get. Full of real content and yet not too long. Kudos!" Diane Schmalensee, Facilitator and President of Schmalensee Partners Recent Issues Expectations for Marketing Experts - Roles, ROI and Influence, September 2008 Cross Markets Aren't So Different, August 2008 The State of Cross-Selling in Professional Service Firms, July 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

Last month’s article on expectations for marketing experts was the first in a series of articles I’ll present on the topic. As you review this month’s issue, consider the global financial crisis. The business landscape as we know it may be forever altered. How will this affect the way your firm markets and develops business?

How will those changes affect your firm’s expectations of you? And how will those changes affect your expectations of yourself?

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

P.S. After the last issue I heard from Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, a law firm strategy consultant and the former Editor-in-Chief of the American Bar Association's magazine, Law Practice. She wrote a thought-provoking blog post on creativity in law firms – you may want to check it out. And Jane Gertler of SpectorGroup asked if my new book The Integration Imperative™ will delve into more detail on the subject. The answer is a resounding yes!

Expectations for Marketing Experts - Getting Closer to Clients

In my lexicon, "getting closer to clients" means marketing leaders helping professional- and B2B service firms learn more about the clients and targeted prospects than the revenue-generating practitioners already know. Yes, this may be a hurdle marketers must overcome, especially because most PSFs and B2Bs are such precedent-oriented enterprises.

Michelle Golden crystallizes the feelings of many private-firm marketers when she talks about "the stifling power of partners [who are] obsessed with bathing in the same bathwater as all their competitors and fellow association members." But Michelle’s no whiner, and neither are the people I would label "marketing experts." These leaders find a way, within their firms’ constraints of tradition and risk aversion, to get closer to the firm's clients. In economically uncertain times, it’s more important than ever.

Use Client Research for a Competitive Edge

A marketing expert knows that a potent avenue to competitive success (both for the firm and the marketer him- or herself) is to own more nuanced and actionable knowledge about the clients than the competitors do. If firm fee-earning practitioners are worried about competitors, a marketing expert can make the case that client research will help them gain a competitive edge. (If they aren’t concerned about rivals, the marketing expert makes the case that they should at least be aware of potential encroachment.)

For example, research can uncover the ways decision-makers are influenced in their buying decisions. What attracts them toward us, and repels them? How are their buying criteria shifting from one year to the next? What do our clients find distinctly valuable about us versus our competitors? Exactly what makes one client more attractive to our firm than another (it's often not about revenues)?

But especially in expenditure-sensitive times, client research can be a tough sell. Too many of today's staff-side marketing team members and functional leaders don't have a working knowledge of market research and analysis techniques, not to mention the ability to cost-justify the ROI on client research, (which can be very positive). (Note: ROI was the subject of last month’s newsletter on expectations.)

Without research, analysis and finance skills, fee-earning practitioners can easily push marketers away from successfully implementing astute ideas like client research. It’s easy for them to justify marginalizing their marketers, and they can continue to believe their marketers are not experts beyond the tactical steps they are currently managing. Also, this challenge may be exacerbated if the marketers are perceived as outsiders. (Well, they haven’t grown up within our professions of law, engineering, management consulting, and the like.)

Changing the Expectations of the Marketing Function

I gave a speech last year to a professional association on the topic of "The Evolution of the CMO." I was half-way through my points about how marketers need to step up their skills in quantitative analytics (and qualitative, too, but I wasn't there yet), when an audience member raised her hand and said (I paraphrase),"I don't want to do more work -- I already have enough to do!"

I replied that I believe marketers need not to do more but instead need to evolve their roles in a new and different direction. She replied (this time no paraphrase), "I told my boss, when he hired me eight months ago, that I would not do any math. He agreed, so I won't do any quantitative stuff."

I was -- and am still -- astonished at her remark. I wasn't the only one; others came up to me after my presentation to exclaim their amazement at her claim -- and how it will ultimately limit her career as a "marketing expert."

Certainly she could gain market research and analysis skills by going to classes or executive education conferences on how to conduct and analyze client research or mined data from a contacts database. Or she could have hired an expert and learned by watching. And certainly her firm’s executive managers should support her as she gains critical skills to benefit them in the future.

I'm convinced her firm will, sooner rather than later, get beaten by competitors. With a CMO who is that stubbornly blind about what it takes to get closer to clients -- regardless of the question about math skills, how can they win?

Changing the Expectations Balance: A "Must-Have" for Marketing Expertise

Having new and competitively advantaged capabilities changes the expertise equation. Market research and quantitative and qualitative analysis skills are a must-have in order to understand professional and B2B service buyers and "consumers."

They are also a must-have in order to make gains on becoming an unquestioned marketing expert.

Where are your marketing capabilities weaker than they should be – especially if you want to advance your career? What are you doing to make your own skill gains, so your firm can make marketplace gains? How are you making sure your executive managers support you toward achieving these mutually-beneficial goals?

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

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

© 2008 Expertise Marketing, LLC All Rights Reserved