Speeches 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 ACEC’s 2009 Annual Convention and Legislative Summit, The Integration Imperative: Erasing Marketing and Business Development Silos—Once and For All—In Professional Service Firms. April 27, 2008 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 (These recent posts are a series on marketing and selling process improvement). I'm Processing - Part 4 I'm Processing - Part 3 I'm Processing - Part 2 I'm Processing - Part 1 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 - Assigning and Managing Resources, December 2008 Expectations for Marketing Experts - Thought Leadership, November 2008 Expectations for Marketing Experts - Geting Closer to Clients, October 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

Happy New Year! During 2009, the Marketplace Master™ articles will feature discussions related to my upcoming book, The Integration Imperative.

The gist of the book is this: because of a number of structural and cultural silos, most professional- and B2B service firms’ marketing and selling functions are not optimally integrated. Their marketing and selling “disconnects” prevent them from competitive effectiveness, impede their financial success and hinder them from delivering optimal client service. I think these structural and cultural silos are entirely fixable.

What’s more, I think clients inevitably prefer to engage with professional service providers that demonstrate excellence in marketing and selling their services. But effective marketing and business development integration will require PSF executive managers to harness their people differently than they have before, ensuring that everyone contributes toward the organization’s overall marketing and selling success.

This article briefly outlines professional- and business-to-business firms’ cultural barriers to optimal marketing and business development integration. Please see the request for your feedback at the end.

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

Cultural Challenges to Marketing and Business Development Integration

Tradition, historical standards, and "the way we do things" are considered by many to be nearly immovable obstacles. What is it about those cultural norms that are so systemic, so "hardwired," that we barely know how to address them? What’s their effect on a professional firm’s marketing and business development integration, and what can executive managers do about them?

Let's take a look at six in particular.

Cultural Challenge #1: Cultures of Distrust

When it comes to marketing and selling, the issue of accountability looms large. If not handled well, unevenly assigned accountability can create a debilitating environment of distrust. And worse, some firms very quietly allow their people to avoid marketing and selling.

Toxic levels of distrust also occur when shared accountability for marketing and business development is denied to those who seek it, such as when revenue-generating practitioners expressly exclude marketers and business developers from marketing or selling meetings or collaborating on related projects.

Cultural Challenge #2: Feeling Marginalized

Distrust leads to marginalization. But marginalization also stems from a structural arrangement: when privately-owned firms offer no possibility of equity ownership to their non revenue-generating marketing and business development professionals.

The sentiment is, “Marketers don’t generate revenues, so why should we offer them (or anyone else in a cost-center!) a piece of equity ownership?” This outmoded precedent, exacerbated by today’s current economic conditions, only further stokes the sense of marginalization felt by those denied entry into “the club.”

And it’s further fueled by old fashioned cultural norms, including under-resourcing marketing and business development support, poorly-defining or holding unrealistic expectations for marketers and business developers to achieve, and maintaining the historical organizational love-hate relationship that has traditionally existed regarding business development (aka selling) in most professional firms.

Cultural Challenge #3: Short-Term Thinking

Recessions, globalization, rapid technological change and other large marketplace shifts pose a riveting challenge for PSFs and B2Bs. Yet most professional firms’ executive managers have not yet envisioned the critical cultural shifts that will be required in order to compete more effectively in the long term.

It’s not all bad. Tightening the budget forces everyone, including marketers and business developers, to seek ways to increase their functions’ effectiveness.

But when the economy is up and revenues are flowing, how well equipped have executive managers been to insist on reinvestment and preparation for the next downturn? And now that the economy is stumbling, how aggressively are they working to erase the marketing and business development silos in their enterprises and proactively pursue integration and expanded go-to-market effectiveness? Their firms’ very survival depends on it.

Cultural Challenge #4: The “Immaturity” of Marketing and Business Development Functions

PSFs haven’t always had marketing and business development, so these functions are still somewhat immature. Even today, it’s not uncommon to hear about a professional firm hiring its first ever marketing coordinator or business development professional.

This “immaturity” actually feeds into the patchwork quilt of definitions, organization structures, and reporting relationships of marketing and business development. There’s no industry standard yet.

It’s no one’s fault, then, that functional disconnects exist, or that their effects seep out into professional firms’ cultures. But "our youthful profession" won’t serve as a potent excuse to not push for more effectiveness, and for integration. And it will be up to PSF and B2B executive managers -- within and across sectors -- to erase the silos that are created by an immature field.

Cultural Challenge #5: Unrealistic Expectations, Demand for Talent and High Turnover

The “immaturity” of marketing and business development feeds directly into a fifth cultural barrier to optimal integration. It’s the cycle of unrealistic expectations, demand for talent and high turnover. The elements of this complex cycle create enormous cultural obstacles to marketing and business development effectiveness in professional firms.

Considering the fragmented landscape for access to knowledge, credentials and best practices, highly skilled professional service marketers and business developers are few and far between. Simultaneously, PSFs’ and B2Bs’ demand for experienced marketers and business developers is rising. What do you get when demand is high and experienced supply is low? Unrealistic expectations, among practitioners and executives in a professional firm, and among marketers and business developers too. Inevitably, the result is a revolving door. And the cultural ramifications can be toxic.

Cultural Challenge #6: Shifting Leadership Demands

This cultural challenge centers around the very definition of leadership in a professional environment, and how one manages a business built on the intellectual capital of high-achieving equals.

In the professional firm of yesteryear, “leadership” definitely did not connote “management.” Decisions were made by collegial consensus. Today, the concept of “leadership” in a professional firm faces seismic shifts. Professional firm leaders are being required to make enterprise-oriented decisions that have unavoidable competitive consequences. They are being asked to set the strategic direction that will represent a compelling-enough call to action to motivate professionals.

Professional firm leaders will need to drive their organizations’ evolving expectations of the management function. With more shifts surely ahead in the hyper-competitive PSF and B2B marketplace, executive managers will be expected to introduce and reinforce new norms about what management is supposed to do for a professional enterprise. They'll be expected to deliver results they've never had to deliver before.

Time to Get Your Cultural House in Order

There are, I'm sure, other cultural underpinnings to the problems of marketing and business development silos.

But illuminating the landscape of these cultural integration hurdles is precisely what can help PSF and B2B executive managers overcome them.

A PSF and B2B executive manager has a new mandate: to don the mantle of Chief Cultural Influencer and to apply the principles of organizational behavior, change management, business management, and perhaps political strategy to enact the enterprise’s cultural transformation toward marketing and business development integration.

Write me to share your own anecdotes and examples of how cultural barriers impede your firm from optimal marketing and selling. Ask your own questions about how to erase these silos! We’ll feature your stories and questions in upcoming issues.

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

© 2009 Expertise Marketing, LLC All Rights Reserved