If you want to achieve explosive organic growth in a
professional services firm, you need to think outside the box and be creative
with your approach. This blog post will provide some recommendations for taking
your business development efforts to the next level.
Additional Service
Offerings
1.
Provide value added business consulting services
for your current client base and prospects to increase value to existing
clients, retain existing clients, acquire new clients, and to differentiate
yourself from your competitors. At this point, you are most likely providing
the services that you have always provided with very little value based
consulting. If you stay on this course, your services are likely to become a
commodity and the business will go to the low bidder in the competitive
marketplace. Incorporating value added business consulting services will help
you provide increased value to retain your current clients, out-perform your
competitors, and acquire new business.
2.
Provide personalized business coaching services
to help your current clients grow the value of their business. Your clients are
looking for more than the service that you currently provide. They are looking
for true strategic advisors that provide them with advice that will help them
grow and protect the profits of their business. Meeting with clients on a
monthly basis to help them create sound strategic plans, dynamic marketing
plans, and to address business issues will allow them to build the foundation
for greater profits.
3.
Provide group seminars focused on increasing
sales, profits, and reducing the risks of running the business for your clients
and prospects. Clients are sometimes dissuaded by the hourly costs associated
with individualized consulting or coaching. One way to make this more
economical for clients is to offer group seminars. You can use internal
personnel to provide the seminar if the expertise is available or you can draw
speakers from the business community that you operate in. In either case, group
seminars provide the potential of new revenue streams for you and new value for
clients.
4.
Provide an in-sourced or outsourced membership
program that provides clients with a package of training, consulting, and
business resources. Clients are often reluctant to throw a pile of consulting
money at each particular issue that they have because the costs would add up
quickly. But, if you are able to package marketing services, webinars, and a
business hotline, you could create additional recurring revenue for the firm
and additional value for clients.
5. Provide peer advisory boards for clients and
prospects of the firm. Peer advisory boards are a powerful business growth tool
because they allow your business owner clients to tap the expertise of the
facilitator and all of the business owners in the group to deal with the unique
challenges of running a business. From your perspective, peer advisory are a
powerful tool because they help you generate more recurring revenue, more
project revenue, and they give you a window into the pains and problems of your
client base. This intelligence will be extremely beneficial when marketing to
current clients and new prospects.
Marketing
Communications
1.
Remind your clients and prospects about what
makes you different than your competitors. Your competitors will most likely be
saying that they are experienced and that they provide high quality services.
This only satisfies the bare minimum expectation of the client and it is not
very persuasive. You should focus on how you provide differentiated value for
your clients and prospects.
2.
Speak in the vocabulary of benefits. A business
owner that hires an attorney to draft a contract is not buying the contract.
Instead, they are buying protection from lawsuits in the future and an easier
path to the collection of a receivable. It is not very persuasive to tell
clients that you draft contracts. It is very persuasive to say that you help
assure the collectability of receivables and protect the profits of the
business.
3.
Fully understand the pains and problems faced by
your clients on a daily basis. Every business is established to solve some pain
or problem faced by its clients. As you provide more substantive business
consulting services, you will have a window into the most pressing issues
facing your client base. A thorough understanding of the pains and problems
faced by your clients will help you tailor your services and your marketing
messaging to your client’s needs.
4.
Speak about your clients instead of yourself.
The first mistake that most professionals make in marketing is that they talk
about their expertise, their experience, and their qualifications. Clients do
not particularly care about your expertise, experience, and qualifications.
They are simply looking for positive outcomes related to business issues that
they are facing. So, take the focus off you and put it on your clients.
5.
You need to be comfortable with the fact that
the client is buying results. There is nothing inherently valuable about
providing or receiving a service. The value is in the result that you achieve.
A good example is a client that hires an attorney to help him sell his
business. The attorney must inform the client of the potential risks of the
transaction. But, the client will be more interested in hearing your plans for
resolving the risk in their favor as opposed to a list of potential risks. A
good business person know that there is risk in every transaction. So, they
will take steps (such as hiring an attorney) to reduce their risks to a much
lower level.
Marketing Channels
1.
You need a website that is interactive rather
than an online brochure. Most professional service firms offer the brochure
version of the website. The problem with the brochure version is that once you
have read the brochure, there is no reason to visit the website in the future.
A dynamic website provides a continuous stream of information that will help
clients increase the value of their business. It also provides more continuous
exposure for your business through value creating interactions with clients.
2.
You should develop content marketing that speaks
to your ideal clients, customers, and prospects. Your content marketing should
identify the pains and problems faced by them and it should provide them with
enough information to help them begin to identify the pains and problems in
their organization and motivate them to seek out solutions.
3.
You should interact with current clients and
prospects via email on a regular basis. It is extremely important that you
provide timely and relevant information to your clients because they are
definitely receiving something from your competitors. With an email campaign,
you can control the message and the value that your clients are receiving to
buttress the marketing noise in the marketplace. In most cases, the competition
will be talking about themselves rather than the clients. You will look all the
more desirable if you talk about your clients and demonstrate your benefits
through thoughtful content.
4.
Social Selling is probably a misnomer. Social
selling seems to imply that you should pick your favorite social platform and
start broadcasting your marketing messages to all of your connections. This is
the exact opposite of what you should do. Social selling is about establishing
relationships through the lens of being viewed as a thought leader in the
business community. Your posts and your messages to connections should provide
them with some immediate value that they can apply to their business so that
you can become known as a person of value.
5.
You need to establish a core network of 15-20
complimentary business professionals and stay in contact with them on a regular
basis. Sales people often lament that networking is not working for them. When
you press them further, you find that they spit up their value proposition on
every person that they meet, they do not follow up to establish true networking
relationships, and they do not provide any value that would deepen the
relationship. Your goal is to be the polar opposite of this type of networker.
This information may seem a bit overwhelming at first blush.
But, we have the ability to help you break it down into workable pieces so that
you can establish a world class business development system that hits on all
the essential items. If you would like to discuss this post further, please
feel free to message me via LinkedIn. I review all emails and I accept all
reasonable invitations to connect.
Brian Kerrigan
