Professional Services Marketing Part 7

The impact of brand on lead generation is driven home to us every day in our work for clients. One of our primary services at Welesley Hils Group is to bring about new opportunities for clients through integrated marketing efforts, including cold cal ing. Our business developers love to work with clients whose names are known in the target industry. They get fewer rude responses, more people wil ing to transfer the cal , and at least the chance to engage the prospect long enough to elicit interest. And they love to work with clients that have engaged us with robust marketing tactics besides cold cal ing. There's often a huge difference in results after only six months of integrated marketing efforts because the brand becomes familiar to the target market. (See Figure 8.1.) Now, should you think brand is available only to the Accentures, McKinseys, and KPMGs of the world, we have clients consisting of 30, 15, and (as you read earlier) 2 professionals who have established brand in their target markets with their target buyers through their speaking, writing, content-rich web sites, direct mail, e-mail, and other marketing outreach. Each new client we work with reinforces this truth: Brand is a lead generation multiplier.

Brands generate premium fees. It may seem basic, but buyers are looking for services firms to do what they say they're going to do. If your brand and reputation (1) create a promise for what the buyer can expect from you, (2) support the belief that you deliver on your promises, (3) deliver a promise that has value to the market, and (4) position you as distinct from other offerings in the marketplace, you'l garner higher fees.

Take a look at the "Median Hourly Biling Rates" table from Welesley Hils Group and RainToday.com's series of Fee and Pricing Benchmark Reports. It's clear the firms that are wel -known in their target markets receive higher fees than firms that are not as wel -known in their target markets. This applies not only to earning higher fees, but also to getting more new client opportunities. Again from our fee and pricing studies, wel - known firms reported realizing higher fees per hour than those that were not brand leaders-in fact, sometimes as much as 50 percent higher.

MEDIAN HOURLY BILLING RATES REALIZED FOR THE HIGHEST-LEVEL PROFESSIONALS.

Brands help you beat compet.i.tion. If a buyer feels confident she's going to get top quality, high output, reduced risk, the best thinkers, or whatever your brand signifies, then she is almost always certain to value that over the lowest price. Without distinct criteria for buyers to evaluate what you wil do versus someone else, or a referral, or past experience, or some other previous indicator that what you say is, indeed, what they'l experience from you, price often becomes a central factor.

Brands facilitate repeat business. When buyers know what to expect from interactions with you, that you keep your promises and that you deliver at (and above) their expectations, they're less likely to switch or stop buying from you. Part of brand is the degree to which buyers prefer to purchase from you versus other options available to them.

Brands keep you compet.i.tive for top talent. In good economies and bad, services firms need to hire the best people they can possibly find.

Brands are often a force in attracting the best job candidates and getting them to accept positions at your company versus the others.

Brands increase the value of a company. As discussed throughout this book, brands help create premium fees, new business leads, strong sales, and quality staff hiring. These are long-term financial advantages that translate into higher market value and company valuation, especial y because of how long it takes to establish a brand from scratch. This point may interest only the owners of a business; but then again, the owners often hold the purse strings and the keys to success for brand and marketing initiatives.

How to Think about Service Brands At the beginning of this chapter we played a scenario about an internal debate in professional services firms about brand. We have seen or heard countless others. Ask 10 people in a professional services firm to define brand, and you're likely to get 10 different answers. Common language inside a firm about brand is elusive. Let's first, then, define and describe the important concepts.

A brand is the col ection of perceptions about your firm.

Among the many ways one could define brand, we like this one for a number of reasons.

First, by not defining brand as solely something in the minds of stakeholders in the market (e.g., decision makers, influencers, and referrals sources), this definition leaves room for the importance of the perception in the minds of your staff. In branding a product, the marketer worries about the packaging, taglines, and slogans that become the brand. A can of soda does not vary much from can to can. The soda can does not doubt its ability to deliver on its brand promise. In service firms, your brand is tested and delivered every day by each member of the firm. If there are doubts and confusion around what you stand for, it wil come through clearly in every interaction and weaken the impact of your brand. It is crucial that you promote your brand internal y as wel as external y.

Second, this definition focuses on client and market perceptions about you. Earlier we stated that brands facilitate repeat business. I can imagine someone thinking, "My logo and how my web site looks wil not factor one iota into repeat business." If you were thinking that, you're largely right. However, the perceptions about you in the minds of your buyers, which can be based on many factors, are exactly why they'd choose you to work with again versus someone else, versus doing the work internal y, or versus doing nothing at al .

Third, you can look at perceptions in the minds of staff, buyers, influencers, referral sources, and the market at large from a number of important business perspectives. Influencers may recommend you or your firm; and the market at large may be important to you for investor confidence, ability to attract talent, and other factors. As long as you know what's important for your firm, the definition is easy to unpack.

"I think that many professional service firms, including law firms, too often think of brand as visual and verbal one-way communication. To me, brand is primarily behavioral.

The visual reinforces the position of the firm as a player in a particular market, and that is a good thing. Some firms, however, spend more time and energy on the visual and less on the behavioral. They focus more on giving out information about firm capabilities and expertise rather than on listening to their clients and prospects and responding to what they hear.

"Firms should be less concerned with broad name recognition and more concerned about communicating with core clients and targets. Their messages should say: 'This is what it's like to work with us.' The firm then is able to concentrate on reinforcing and rewarding lawyer and staff behaviors that align with the messages."

-Kevin McMurdo, Chief Marketing Officer, Perkins Coie For example, is there a perception at al about you in the market? You might have a great logo and color scheme, but like a tree fal ing in the forest, if no one sees your logo, do you real y have a brand? According to our definition, no: You'd don't have brand recognition or awareness.

(What you have is a corporate ident.i.ty platform.) Some of the other perspectives that can form the colection of perspectives that a client might have about a firm include recognition, articulation of capabilities, top-of-mind awareness, preference, and viewpoint.

CLIENT PERSPECTIVES ABOUT FIRMS.

A brand can have a significant impact on your ability to grow the firm, and a brand itself is simply the col ection of perceptions in the minds of buyers and influencers. That stil leaves a number of questions unanswered, such as: * How do I figure out what my brand strategy should be?

* What do I real y need to know about differentiation?

* Where and when do graphic design, logos, taglines, and key messages fit in the brand equation?

* How do I go from crafting my brand ident.i.ty and key messages to actual y getting known in my target markets? If I have limited budget and resources, how do I do it in a way that gets me the most bang for my buck?

* What are the truths about brand that fit for my professional service business?

We'l answer these questions in the folowing chapters.

9.

Three Elements of Well-Crafted Brand Messaging My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

-Ernest Hemingway We are a unique, dynamic, flexible firm that efficiently and effectively meets your needs. We have helped many Fortune 500 and emerging companies in your industry to increase their revenue, employee satisfaction, cost structure, cash flow, profitability, and, most important, shareholder value.

Work with us, and you'l be amazed at our intense client service levels and unyielding dedication to client satisfaction. Indeed, we don't just offer services; we offer solutions, real solutions, becoming a trusted advisor to our clients, helping them make the most difficult and important business decisions.

We've al read descriptions like this, or something close to it, describing professional services firms of al types. While the firms that offer these services may indeed be fabulous, and these messages may actual y be true, marketing copy like this comes across at best as cliche.

Exaggeration, you say? A quick Google search yielded the folowing web site copy about a professional services firm: From smal business to large corporations [company name] has the people, tools, and experience to meet your organization's needs.

Since 1998 [company name] has provided [service type] for business. By forming long-term relations.h.i.+ps with our clients, we provide them with time-efficient, cost-effective solutions that provide results. [Company name] has now expanded, with a wide range of services meeting today's business needs.

While this copy is al too common and most unfortunate, we understand its origins. It is the result of decades of being steered away from sel ing service features and being steered toward sel ing benefits and (dare we say) solutions. It's also an offshoot of client and market research gone awry.

Just as a brand is the colection of perceptions, this kind of marketing copy comes from a colection of misconceptions of what you're supposed to do to articulate a services brand's strength.

Firms can do a much better job to communicate value and resonate with buyers, differentiate their firms, and build marketplace credibility by understanding what drives buyers' decision making about choosing and working with a professional services firm.

What Buyers Want to Know While no two buyers are exactly alike, and every buying situation has its own dynamics, buyers of professional services are typical y asking the same questions and weighing the same factors every time they search for and engage outside help. The core buyer questions are: * What service providers do I know of that can solve this problem (or help me achieve this goal)?

* Do I have any predisposition to buy from one company/provider over another?

* What is the business impact of solving this problem?

* What is the risk of failing to solve this problem?

* How difficult is it to find providers who purport to solve my particular problem?

* How difficult is it to find providers who can solve this problem wel ?

* What are the different options I have for solving this problem?

* What are the differences among the various options I have for solving this problem?

* How deeply do I believe (or how skeptical am I) that the service providers who say they can solve this problem can actual y solve it?

* Do I believe any of the possible providers wil be a better fit for my organization?

* What resources wil my firm and I need to commit-in time, energy, and money-to solve this problem?

* How comfortable am I, personal y and professional y, with the delivery teams of the possible providers?

The questions boil down to: "How comfortable am I with your expertise, your interpersonal skils, and your dedication to my success; and do I believe that you can actual y do the work wel ?" The answers a buyer comes up with for these questions are in large part the result of substantial interaction between you and a prospective client, and less the result of marketing.

Your brand, however, can have a substantial impact in five areas: 1. Whether you get into the discussion at al when a buyer has a need.

2. A buyer's predisposition to want to buy from you as opposed to using other options to solve the problem.

3. A buyer's desire to solve the problems that you can help the buyer solve.

4. The ease of your winning the business during your business development process.

5. Expectations of the behaviors of your team in the business development process.

Figure 9.1 Marketing Execution The first task, then, is building the foundation upon which you can establish the strongest brand possible for you and your firm.

Al buyers must go through similar stages before they become your client (Figure 9.1 and below.).

* Stage 1. Awareness * Stage 2. Interest * Stage 3. Purchase Intent * Stage 4. Pipeline Opportunity Awareness can manifest itself in a number of ways, and it's more than just "getting your name out there," as many people like to say. You need the market to know that you exist as wel as that a particular service or solution exists. As Johnny Carson was wont to say, "I didn't know you could do that!" If buyers don't know they can solve a particular problem or don't know they can solve it in a new or novel way, you won't get any chances to sel anything.

Perhaps your service is not a new concept to the market, but it is new service for you. If people don't know you solve a particular problem, they won't come to you when the problem arises. Obviously, people who don't know that something exists (a company or something inside that company) won't even have the chance to be buyers. Awareness is a precondition for purchase.

While a buyer might be aware that you exist, and, as we stated, awareness is a precondition for purchase, they may have no interest in what you do or interest in solving any of the problems you solve. First, they might not even know what you do; thus, of course, they're not interested in buying anything from you yet. They're probably not curious about your company and probably not curious about your services and definitely not curious about the results you've gotten for others.

a.s.sume now you've got them paying attention-awareness AND interest. A buyer might say, "Interesting enough. I'l check them out. Okay, now that I know that Acme Consulting exists, I see they do this kind of service for these kinds of companies in this situation. But unfortunately for them, I don't want or need to solve this problem or get help in this area right now."

This buyer has awareness and interest, but no purchase intent. The question then becomes, "Why don't you want or need what I do?" Perhaps the buyer is satisfied with his current provider. Maybe you solve a particular problem, and the buyer does not perceive that problem to be an issue for him. If it is an issue on the buyer's radar screen, it might not be important enough to solve. Maybe the buyer has a problem and understands that you say you solve it, but he doesn't real y believe you. The reasons go on, the point being that buyers are not going to buy something unless they put it on their to-do list to take action.

Let's now a.s.sume that the buyer intends to solve a particular problem and knows you exist and that you communicate that you solve that particular problem. Next you need to convert the buyer into your pipeline, or, as we say in the marketing business, generate the buyer as a lead.

Unlike products or simple transactional services, buyers don't usualy walk into a retail store and go from purchase intent to purchase without some kind of substantial interaction with you. It's your marketing and business development outreach in conjunction with your brand that go to work for you in translating a buyer's purchase intent into a genuine pipeline opportunity.

To create awareness, interest, purchase intent, and pipeline opportunity, you need two major components of your brand in place: Positioning. With corporate ident.i.ty, there is power in a name, a logo, and a symbol. Your brand ident.i.ty serves as the foundation of the rest of the messaging and positioning with which you communicate to the market and as a launch point for delivering key messages. With positioning messages, you communicate such things as who you serve (industries, geographic areas, functional areas, levels in the organization); the problems you solve; the methods you use to solve those problems; and what it's like to work with you as a firm. Positioning serves as wel in a comparative role: setting forth who you are and what you do against other options available to the market to solve similar problems. Taglines, brand promise statements, one-page descriptions, and your home page on your web site are al examples of what you can use to deliver your positioning to the market.

Figure 9.2 Value Proposition Delivery Substantiation. Through substantiation, you take who you are and what you say that you do (positioning) and give the market the sense that what you're saying is genuine and defensible. Substantiation can be delivered in one of two ways: deep dive messaging and personal interaction.

Seminars, speeches, webinars, teleseminars, podcasts, on-demand Internet presentations, white papers, books, articles, research reports, and case studies are al examples of deep dive messaging. With deep dive messaging, you give clients and prospects the ability to dive deeply into who you are without you personal y interacting with them. These approaches al ow them to draw conclusions on whether you seem to be a good fit for their needs.

"A message to firms of every size: Every one of your prospects and recruits looks at your web site. Guaranteed. If they're serious about hiring or joining you, they'll really look at your web site. We designed our current web site as a repository of detailed, specific information so that people could find the information most valuable to their particular search. Now, it needs to be more interactive and supportive of targeted communications with new, more narrow markets."

-Kevin McMurdo, Chief Marketing Officer, Perkins Coie Personal interactions such as face-to-face discussions (sales conversations), telephone discussions, two-way e-mail exchanges, and, of course, the actual delivery of services are the most powerful way to relay to the market that you can, and do, live up to the promises you make in your brand messaging.

Taken al together, think of your positioning and substantiation as the vehicles through which you deliver your value proposition to the market.

a.s.sume, if you wil , that prospects read and see every piece of positioning and substantiation marketing material and intel ectual capital you offer.

And, of course, they see it al packaged consistently with your brand ident.i.ty (logos, colors, etc.). They can now answer the question, "Given the col ection of my deep perceptions of this company, how much do I want or need what they do, and how strong are my preferences for engaging them in discussions to help me compared to other options?" In other words, in total, buyers now have the foundation to evaluate the extent of your likely value to them.

VALUE PROPOSITION DEFINED.

A value proposition is the col ection of reasons why a company or individual wil benefit from working with a firm. Value propositions can be delivered through a number of marketing vehicles, from company names and taglines to brand promise statements and corporate overviews to deep and detailed interaction with your intel ectual capital and people.

When it comes to positioning and substantiation, you should also note: As you move down the list of ways value propositions are delivered, the delivery vehicles increase substantialy in breadth and depth. Your logo, name, and color palette wil begin to communicate your overal value proposition; but they often do so subtly, perhaps only implying and reflecting key messages that support how people benefit from working with you. Core attributes of your company may be embedded in your logo, but they may not be readily apparent to the viewer. What is important is that they are imbued with meaning from which you can hang the rest of your value proposition messaging. Your one-pager or corporate overview wil list what you do and for whom, as wel as the outcomes you can achieve; but it does not give much context as to how you get it done, how it has worked in the past, and how buyers can evaluate if it is right for them. Your white papers, case studies, research, and speeches wil provide the deeper meaning and context. But from positioning to deep dive messaging, the messages must cascade consistently.

While they are not mutualy exclusive, positioning and substantiation messages lend themselves to different outcomes. Your name and logo can be used to generate awareness. Indeed, awareness marketing without a name and logo would be useless (with a few historical exceptions).

However much they are necessary for awareness, names and logos aren't typical y very powerful in generating interest for your services.

Messages geared toward positioning your services serve as a foundation for generating interest in your services. Yet, by themselves, they're not the most effective for generating actual pipeline opportunities.

Let's say 1,000 people at an industry conference attended by decision makers in your industry receive your one-pager in their kit of conference materials. After reading it they say, "Good to know. If I need this kind of help, I have someone I can cal ." In terms of pipeline opportunities, even though you have 1,000 one-pagers in the kit of conference materials, you might get zero inquiries. However, give a speech to the same audience and fol ow up afterward to see if people want to discuss the topic more deeply, and you can have dozens of new business opportunities in your pipeline.

Foundation of Developing Your Value Proposition Messaging Now that you understand the ways to deliver value proposition messages to your desired market, you wil need to build the right subset of messages to communicate it. Before you can build your value proposition messaging, you need to answer this question: What knowledge do we need in order to build the strongest value proposition messaging we can build?

The strength of your value proposition is a three-legged stool, the legs being resonance, differentiation, and ability to substantiate. (See Figure 9.3.) Figure 9.3 Value Proposition Strength and Delivery Resonance Earlier in this chapter, we posed a number of questions that buyers ask themselves. Two of those questions were, "What is the business impact of solving this problem?" and "What is the risk of failing to solve this problem?" One could argue that these two questions form the essence of the buying decision. As complex as many consultants and pract.i.tioners try to make these concepts, this is one of those very rare cases where it is actual y possible to boil everything down to a one-syl able word: need.

A powerful but simple concept, need itself can further be broken down into two major components: performance resonance and emotional resonance.

Performance resonance Performance resonance is a buyer's perception of the need to solve a particular problem or to engage a particular solution because of the impact that solving the problem wil have on the business. For example, a decision maker might say, "Last year, 100 employees whom we didn't want to leave left our hospital, costing us $100,000 in replacement expense and lost productivity per person. In other words, $10 mil ion walked out the door last year." If that decision maker comes across a message from a firm that says, "We have helped our clients in health care inst.i.tutions reduce unwanted turnover by an average of 20 percent within one year, and we can do it for you," she could see that for her that would equal a drop in unwanted turnover by 20 people, saving the company $2 mil ion.

While they're closely related, don't confuse performance resonance with return on investment (ROI). As you can imagine, the message of lowering turnover by 20 percent and saving $2 mil ion wil likely resonate with our buyer as something to investigate. Whether she'l get a return on investment depends on what she'l have to spend in time, energy, and money to achieve the desired results. If the engagement wil cost $200,000, the ROI wil seem pretty good. If it wil cost $1.5 mil ion, not so much.

While $2 milion in savings would seem large by many businesspeople's standards, that's not always the case. One decision maker, when presented with a way to save $10 mil ion by one of our clients, said, "I see that you can save me the $10 mil ion, but right now I'm solving $50 mil ion problems." What resonates with one buyer won't necessarily resonate with another.

Emotional resonance Emotional resonance is a buyer's col ection of feelings toward a particular problem, a particular solution, or a particular company.

Mike Schultz: More years ago than I prefer to count, I was working at a company that had recently made the decision to go public. Curious young manager that I was, I asked the CFO of the company why he chose a particular big-five firm (at the time there were five) to handle the preparations for our public offering.

He said to me, "Come down to my office and I'l show you." When we got there, he walked me through a decision grid he had created for the president and board of directors. After he was done, he said, "Clearly, this firm was the most qualified, best firm for us to take us public." After hearing his argument, I couldn't agree with him more. This firm was head and shoulders better for us. Then he said, "Close the door." (I did.) "Do you want to know the real reason I picked them?"

"It wasn't what you showed me?" I asked.

"Nope. I picked them because . . . I liked them better." He went on, "Three of the five had the experience, the people, and the resources to do a great job taking us public. But I'm the one who wil have to work with these people for 18 hours a day for a year straight, and I simply had the best connection with the folks at the firm I chose."

It's been said that buyers buy with their hearts (emotion) and justify it with their heads (performance). This kind of statement is often a.s.sociated with consumer buying, not business buying. While the contexts might be different, it's just as true with business buyers that emotions and feelings influence their decision making and budget al ocations.

Differentiation Few topics in services marketing are more misunderstood than differentiation. With differentiation, as with many topics treated in this book, the simple explanation is the best. Differentiation is the combination of the overal existence of (or lack of) distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of one thing when compared to another thing and the perception of the availability of subst.i.tutes. That's it.

As we discuss in Chapter 13, much of the literature available about differentiation misleads marketers of professional services, suggesting that they need to tout a message of being unique, that they should position themselves as opposite as possible to the other options available in the market.

One il-conceived school of thought goes as far as suggesting that firms approach differentiation not from the perspective of positioning but of oppositioning, a term they coined to connote that firms should position their messages as radical y different from the other available options. (For more on how to think about differentiation for your firm, see Chapter 13, "On Being Unique and Other Bad Marketing Advice.") Ability to Substantiate You can deliver messages to the market about the impact and the difference you can make for clients (resonance) and your differentiation. But you won't get very far if the buyer doesn't believe you. One of the reasons those in marketing often take flak from business leaders is because, in many cases, marketing messages are just puffery. You need the market to believe what you say. In another word: trust.

You do that through substantiation.

Buyers wil ask, when they read your claims of the value you can deliver (resonance) and your differentiation, "Are they credible?"

Do you claim: * Your work is research based? If so, where's the research and how wel is it done?