Growing Professional Services

Grow Your Own Practice by Bringing the Firm

2011-06-03T10:00:00.006-04:00

Especially for winning the most transformative and consequential prospects, business development requires personal accountability and team effort. If you’re not using the full power of your firm and colleagues, you may be neglecting exceptional marketing assets.

And remember—if collaborative business development is going to be successful, you must cultivate your internal relationships just like you do your external referral sources.

How To:

Collaborate – Collaborate across your practice group, across offices, across your firm. As you do with targets, identify which colleagues are most likely to “fit” with you and your practice. Then cultivate the relationship. First, make sure your colleagues know what you’re famous for. And, you need to know what they’re famous for. Identify joint targets and approach together. Whenever possible, visit prospects and referral sources with a colleague in tow. For the biggest targets, consider putting a client pursuit team together across the practice or firm.
Surround the client – Collectively network across the firm to find out who knows whom at your key prospective clients. Knowing one person at the target is not enough. And, getting in front of more than one influencer or decision-maker at the prospect is more easily accomplished when you have more players on your team than just you. The more positive impressions you make on as many decision-participants at the prospect, the more likely you are to win and expand the business.
Include the client – Bring your client into your client team meetings on occasion; Invite your client to speak to your colleagues about how they manage certain aspects of their business. This lets them know that you are truly focused on them and exposes them to more professionals at your firm so they get a fuller sense for your capabilities and creates opportunities for relationship expansion.

Grow Your Practice by Understanding the Altitude of Growth

2011-06-03T09:00:00.000-04:00

What business leaders can learn from pilots.

By Travis Dommert

What does your professional practice have in common with an airplane in flight? A lot. Both require careful and seasoned stewardship to stay aloft. Both yield catastrophic consequences if they fall. As professional advisors, consider these lessons we can learn from pilots and take action to make sure your practice isn’t losing altitude.

Part 1. Gravity and drag…24/7

An airplane in level flight is a contradiction in terms. Every second an airplane is in the air, it is in a fight to stay aloft. Thousands of pounds of metal and wire are summoned to earth relentlessly by gravity, and drag pulls it backwards with every passing moment.

The blessing, if there is one, is that pilots and engineers know this to be true. The entire airplane was specially designed to maximize lift and minimize drag. And, the pilots are trained repeatedly on the dangers that lurk below if they take their attention away from fighting gravity and drag. They could lose their lives and those of their passengers and crew. Shutting off the engines while they take a break or tend to other matters isn’t just dangerous, it’s idiotic. Who would do that?

Well, how about us? As professional services providers, do we ever idle our business development engines because “more pressing matters” are at hand? If you are an accountant, do you really do a lot of selling during tax season? If you are a consultant or attorney, do you really maintain all your sales and marketing activities after you land a big engagement or client?

Hmm. Should you be surprised that you have lost altitude the next time you get back into the market? Probably not. The fact is, your practice is under the same perpetual forces as the plane. Client relationships that go unnourished fade and die. Merely satisfied clients are the next to leave. Competitors and new entrants are constantly looking for a bite out of your book of business.

So what do you do about it?

First, acknowledge these facts. Just to maintain your practice revenues, you must constantly work to grow your business. Sales and marketing aren’t for the good times or the slow times, they are for all the time. You can’t afford a week to go by without sales and marketing activity. Every week. And, if you don’t have a dedicated business development team (frankly, even if you do), then YOU must be doing some of this work every week.

The exact prescription depends on your practice, but as a rule of thumb, think about what effort it would take to grow your professional practice revenues by 10%. How many new clients, accounts, or sales would that be? What does the prospect pipeline and business development cycle look like in reverse? To yield a 10% gain, what recurring actions would you have to do each and every week? Lead generation, prospect contacts, business development and client cultivation meetings, presentations, pitches, proposals, assessments, follow-up calls, touch-points, recommendations. THAT is what you probably need to do just to stay even.

Think you can take the tax season off while you prepare returns? No. Think you can stop pursuing new client relationships while you work on the one you have? No. It won’t work. You will be losing altitude. And the scary thing about losing altitude is that you don’t even feel it. Pull up and you’ll feel it in your gut; coast gradually into the side of a mountain and you may even enjoy the flight…until you notice what’s happened.

Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t idle your engines. Take time, even in the busiest of times, to sell. Get focused on a few key recurring business development actions. Keep track. And, with a little luck you can smooth the ups and downs from your business cycle, gain ground from one season or project to the next, and stop scaring the passengers each time you go dashing back to the cockpit.

Part 2. Reading your instruments.

We already talked about the fact that you can’t trust your gut instinct when flying an airplane. A steady descent feels just fine, as does a slow turn or a gentle roll. Pilots know that they are safer flying with no visibility and quality flight instruments than with blue sky and no instruments.

With a half dozen gauges, they know the attitude of the airplane relative to the horizon, the speed through the air, the rate of climb or descent, the amount of fuel remaining, and the finer points regarding direction.

The question is—can you run your business or professional practice using your gut? Many people seem to think so. Or worse, whether they think so or not, they tend to do so because they don’t have any instruments. Are you smarter than a pilot or just less attuned the perils of losing altitude?

Okay, maybe both, but our pilot friends are generally a pretty smart bunch. They know that a plane falling from the sky is bad. A plane running out of gas is bad. A plane flying at an unsustainable rate of climb or descent is bad. They know exactly how bad, and they know how to make changes to sustain the delicate balance that is flight.

So what does this mean to you? Well, for one thing, if you don’t have them already, develop a set of quality instruments. Whether you call these key performance indicators (KPI’s) metrics, analytics, or just your rules of thumb, figure out the handful of measures that indicate that business is coming in the door (remember—if you aren’t gaining new business, you are losing altitude). Figure out how much gas is in the tank (working capital, credit). Assess the attitude of your operation—are clients and colleagues happy or under distress?

Then, once you understand your instruments, identify several key actions that keep them in a healthy state of operation. What activity is required on a weekly basis to keep business coming in, keep colleagues engaged, keep service levels high, keep quality in check, and keep the tanks from running dry? Delegate these actions to the appropriate team members and hold them accountable for making time each week for getting them done.

If you don’t undertake these actions, then don’t be surprised when the next time you consult your instruments, one or more of them signals trouble.

Travis Dommert is the Chief Operating Officer at two companies in the area of human performance and HR solutions, IRUNURUN LLC and The Lindquist Group.

Social Experiment – Part 3: Where Do I Find the Time for LinkedIN ?

2011-06-03T08:00:00.009-04:00

In our last newsletter, we talked about your LinkedIN profile.

Here, Patricia Romboletti, Managing Director of Creative Growth Group and Creative Growth Talent, and a bona fide LinkedIN Guru, shares the third tip in her custom program, “Six LinkedIN Steps to Professional Services Growth in 2011.”

Where Do I Find the Time for LinkedIN?

Whenever I lead our LinkedIN training workshops, the issue of time management is one of the first ones raised. Included in that discussion is usually the assumption that I must spend hours a day or week on the site. Not true—and I will share my strategy for leveraging LinkedIN in about 1 ½ hours a week.

But first—let’s go back to Part 1 of this series where I suggested that you reframe your thinking about LinkedIN and look at it as a “live event” rather than a social media site. Now, let’s add another dimension to the reframe—it is a “live event” and your activity on the site, if used properly, falls into the realm of business development, not Web surfing.

So to carve out some time to effectively and proactively leverage LinkedIN, I suggest that you start by substituting one current BD activity for time on LinkedIN. If you look back over your schedule for the last few weeks, are there meetings that were not productive—that did not really move your BD initiatives forward? When working with clients, I have yet to find one person who was not able to find at least one hour per week that they could convert to their weekly LinkedIN hour. And actually, it is closer to 1 ½ hours that can be claimed since there is no commuting time involved.

What to do in that 1 ½ hours? Let me share my routine with you. Each morning I take about 5 minutes (usually less, but seldom more) to go my LinkedIN Home page. There, I review the “Updates” section to see the new connections added by my Level 1 connections. If I see that they have connected to someone that I would like to know, I reach out to my contact either by phone or email and ask if they would be willing to introduce me to their new connection. My assumption, and it has held true, is that my contact has recently had an interaction with their new connection—the relationship is fresh and that person is top-of-mind for them.

I then look further down on the Updates section to see if anyone has posted a status update such as a promotion or some other noteworthy event and I send a note to that person acknowledging their achievement. It is a simple, quick and easy way to stay in touch with my connections and one that is always appreciated.

I also take a minute to click on the link “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” located on the right-hand side of the home page. You will be surprised what that exercise can tell you.

I subscribe to a very targeted article consolidation service through SmartBriefs on topics that are of interest to me and to my network. They come to my Inbox each morning and usually contain valuable information that my network could benefit from reading. Each article includes a LinkedIN Share button allowing me to post great articles to my status update in a matter of seconds. I have my Twitter account tied into my LinkedIN account so I can post to both sites with one click so I make that part of my daily 5 minute session.

I schedule the rest of my time---the weekly hour, for Friday morning. In that focused hour, I review and accept (or ignore if appropriate) any invitations sent during the week. By using a standard feature on LinkedIN (that is—you don’t need an upgraded account), I can create one message welcoming my new connections to my network and again with only one click, I can send an individual message to each new connection. Occasionally I will accept other connections in between my weekly Friday session, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.

I allocate some time—typically no more than 15 minutes during my hour, to browse the contacts of my new connections. If I find a contact that I would like to know, I reach out to my connection, either by phone (I will cover the online to off-line/on the phone strategy in a future Post) or email to ask for an introduction. I also have a goal to make at least one introduction/connection weekly during this time to two people in my network who would really benefit from knowing each other.

I belong to a number of Groups on LinkedIN and would not have time to stay active in each one on a daily or even weekly basis. So instead, I select 3-4 of my Groups each week and during my Friday hour, I “visit” those Groups and engage in a current discussion or begin a new discussion. It really is like attending 3-4 SIG events in about 15 minutes.

Next, if time permits, I go to the Q&A section to see if there is a question in my area of expertise that I can answer or an opportunity for me to ask a question, thus engaging in “dialog” across my network.

And, if I still have time within my hour (and I typically do—none of the above really takes a lot of time) I leverage additional LinkedIN features such as Amazon Books to find a way to engage in “dialog” with my network or I research clients and prospects in the Company section of LinkedIN.

Of course, if I have a specific need to do research in between my Friday sessions for a particular client or prospect, I do that. But this routine accomplishes a couple of things. One, by scheduling and limiting my time, I make sure that I do not get drawn into a big black hole---that is easy to do on a site with so much rich opportunity to network. Two, I ensure that I am visible, proactive and engaged with my network on a weekly basis.

As we discuss in detail in our LinkedIN workshop, each activity described briefly above ties directly to business development.

The routine is deceptively simple but significantly impacts your BD efforts.

If you missed Part 2 of this series, click here to read it

Your Career as a Business Development Test Pilot

2011-04-14T05:46:00.001-04:00

The history of the word experience aligns it closely with the concept of experiment. Building a great client experience – especially during the client attraction stage – is often an experimental initiative.

Larry Fussell is a Business Development Director at PwC. He’s also an experimental airplane pilot and craftsman. Larry is an instrument rated pilot who began flying in earnest in the late 1990’s. Somewhere along the line, he decided that flying the planes wasn’t enough. Larry helped build the Defiant - a twin engine all composite aircraft designed by Burt Rutan – the famous American aerospace engineer who designed record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. Most recently, Larry built an RV-7A kit aircraft that maintains cruise speeds near or even above 200 mph. Can you imagine building your own plane and being the one person who will test it – by going up in the sky – to make sure it works OK? We asked Larry Fussell to relate his experiences building and flying experimental aircraft to his experience doing business development for one of the world’s largest accounting firms. As Larry explained, it starts with the vision . . .

Larry Fussell:

Building /flying Experimental aircraft and business development carry many of the same requirements. First is the vision. I can tell you that when I built the first part for my airplane I could not sleep that night because I could envision the day I took off for the first time. Next is the determination to follow through. Building an airplane is a huge undertaking requiring 1000s of hours and making decisions along the way that could cause the project to fail or cost a bundle to repair. You also find yourself changing plans as technology/circumstance both evolve. Constant problem solving and acquisition of new skills are a major part of the project. Then the day finally arrives where you put all your faith in the skills you have developed and the quality of work that you have done. The engine fires, you roll out onto the runway, everything is in the green, you're scared to death but confident in your work product/skills, full throttle, dancing with the stick and rudder just like you were taught and then comes the moment that your vision feels the wind under her belly and flies. It is almost a religious experience. Which explains why there are so many serial builders in the sport. Now comes many hours of tests and tweaking. A project like this is never done. You are always making adjustments, but you're also having fun expanding your horizons and looking for the next big breakthrough in your skills.

So how does this all relate to Business Development?

Vision - what do you want to do (and with whom). By the way this has to be your vision. You have to be committed to it and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve the vision.
Investment - a business development role done properly takes well more than the traditional 40 hours per week. You have to know about the company, the people you will be working with, their families, their interests, their personal drivers and what makes your relationship a win for them.
Skills - You must constantly acquire new skills to solve the problems that will inevitably present themselves. Find a mentor, enroll in skills classes, and experiment on a small scale.
Judgment - How are your actions bringing you closer to your vision?
Enjoyment - you must enjoy the small wins along the way or the journey will become too arduous to continue.
Bring your skills and confidence to the table each time you are in front of the client. Watch your vision become reality and dance with the ever changing environment knowing that you have done the work properly, sought training as needed, and built a beautiful machine(relationship) that will meet the client’s needs as well as you own. By the way, this has to be real; fake it and you will, I guarantee, auger into a flaming hole.
Enjoy the ride - To me, Business Development is about the relationships that you build and the richness that those relationships add to your life and that of your clients. Yes, if you do it right you will be rewarded in both finances and career. But you will find the real joy comes from the ride.

CGG CMO Dinner and Dialogue in Chicago

2011-04-14T05:42:00.002-04:00

On Thursday March 10th, 2011, the Chicago skyline served as the backdrop for a dinner hosted by Creative Growth Group. We gathered our Chicago-based clients and friends into the Signature Room on top of the John Hancock building for a dinner discussion focused on growing professional services. Our dinner guests included Managing Directors and Chief Marketing Officers from a number of leading accounting, public relations, legal, engineering and consulting firms. We asked two renowned marketing gurus to serve as first among equals at the dinner table to jump-start the conversation. The discussion lasted well past dessert, and we have included just a couple of top-line highlights of the evening’s discussion here.

Serving as catalysts for the discussion around the table were:

Tom Collinger: Chair of the Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Additionally, he’s an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Medill.
Karl Hellman: Founder and President of Resultrek, a global marketing consulting firm dedicated to creating great marketers. Karl co-authored The Customer Learning Curve and is also the primary driver and author of Kotler Marketing Group’s 2011 Marketing in Hard Times Study of CMOs.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DINNER DIALOGUE

The Mind of the CMO

Karl Hellman provided us with a summary of the research that he conducted with the consulting firm, Kotler Marketing Group, founded by famed Northwestern University, Kellogg School professor, Philip Kotler. The study was of nearly 200 senior marketing executives from major U.S. corporations including professional services and financial services firms.

While Karl’s findings were comprehensive – one of the key highlights that stimulated much discussion was around the idea that “Innovation is the Road to Recovery: Hellman and Kotler’s study found that the companies which performed best during the recession emphasized “New Product/Solution Innovation” in their study responses and in their market actions. Though it may be somewhat more challenging to pursue service innovation in a professional firm, Karl suggested adopting an “agile service development” model akin to what technology firms use when developing software. Involving the client in this collaborative and iterative process is also associated with agile development to ensure that new solutions are best-fits for the client audience. Agile development also connotes a diverse portfolio of new service creation taking place at any one time.

CMO as Chief Media Officer

Tom Collinger challenged our guests to think of the CMO as “Chief Media Officer” “What I think is the sea change is that all companies, all brands, have both the opportunity and the necessity to operate the way media companies operate,” Tom said. “Media is concerned with building a marketable audience franchise through information, news that matters and in some cases entertainment for purposes of engaging their constituents in an ongoing dialogue. “

Adopting the media company model calls for more than a change in the marketing communications function. Consider, Tom suggested, what kinds of talents would be needed in the enterprise if you were to follow a media model; how your enterprises might be organized differently; what kind of partners you might need to be bring in to help behave differently. Other roles Tom suggest the CMO of the future may need to take on included Chief Trend Spotter, Chief Content Officer or simply Chief Media Officer in addition to being a superb block-and-tackle marketer.

The evening was full of provocative discourse and gave everyone much to think about. We hope these two highlights stimulate your thinking as well.

Social Experiment – Part 2 – Your LinkedIN Profile

2011-04-14T05:40:00.006-04:00

In our last newsletter, we talked about shifting your perspective from online to offline.

Professional services firm leaders are engaging Patricia Romboletti, Managing Director of Creative Growth Group and Creative Growth Talent, and a bona fide LinkedIN Guru, to share her custom program, “Six LinkedIN Steps to Professional Services Growth in 2011.”

Here, we provide you with a second tip from Patricia’s repository of social networking knowledge.

Your Profile – Showcasing Your Claim to Fame

Your LinkedIN profile has really become your personal Web site. It is the first place people go now to find out more about you.

I challenge you to read yours over and to answer the question---could most everyone else with my position say the same thing, or does this free and yet very valuable real estate showcase my “claim to fame” --- or to say it another way, does it tell what you are famous for?

If it doesn’t, then I urge you to schedule time each week to hone your profile until you can uniquely own it. Most important, make sure that when a client or prospect reads it, they know that you have a clear understanding of their problems/ issues/ concerns or needs and the results you can help them achieve.

And one more thing—be sure that after reading it, they conclude that you, among many other professionals, can do it better than anyone else.

2010 Community Involvement Award Winners Kathy Bremer and Charles Edwards

2011-03-14T14:43:00.000-04:00

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Kathy Bremer and Charles Edwards

To get a sense for the impact that professional services firms have on any local community, all you have to do is look at the Board rosters of any major not-for-profit, institute of higher education and business association and you’ll see immediately that the leaders hail from professional services. Increasingly, Atlanta’s professional services firms are joining forces with their clients to increase their community impact. The Client Advisor Community Involvement Award recognizes one professional service firm and client pair for their joint efforts on behalf of the public good.

We were honored to have the 2010 Winners of the Community Involvement Award, Kathy Bremer, Managing Director of Boardwalk Consulting and Charles Edwards, President and CEO for the Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency (ACSS) on our radio show.

ACSS resulted from the May 2010 merger of the Samaritan House of Atlanta and Atlanta Enterprise Center, two non-profits that had been helping Atlanta's homeless and near homeless achieve self sufficiency for more than 20 years. And as our guests explained, that merger resulted in their crossing paths.

As Kathy explained, her firm focuses fully on non-profit leadership, including board enrichment, executive search and non-profit strategy on a national basis. She noted, “as a non-profit, when you have the leadership piece right, you are going to be able to help more people.”

Charles took advantage of the opportunity to “brag on Kathy” in our interview, noting that her role in the success of the merger was “absolutely essential.” He explained that she served as the facilitator as the two merging organizations created the initial plan for ACSS, including accessing the target market that the organization would serve and identifying the imperatives for success of the merger----all through the lens of leadership.

Having fully defined the role, she began her search for a unique, entrepreneurial-minded visionary leader who could build something that did not previously exits. Charles Edwards was just such a leader.

As a seasoned business executive, he brought a fresh approach and a passion to fulfill the mission of ACSS. As Charles noted, “ACSS empowers homeless individuals to achieve economic self sufficiency and their ultimate potential to thrive in life.”

Charles explained that he was attracted to the role because he could see that it would allow him to make a major new impact on the Atlanta community by breaking the cycle of homelessness forever. The motto for ACSS: Inspire Hope and Make it Real—and that is exactly what he is doing.

His growth goals for the organization are ambitious—ACSS currently serves 500 individuals per year who are capable of achieving self-sufficiency. In the next 4 to 5 years, the goal is to grow that by a factor of 4X. Charles stressed the import role that professionals from firms throughout the Atlanta area will play in achieving that goal. As he noted, the professionals really get excited about figuring out how to grow the organization---and in turn—they realize personal growth as well.

Kathy and Charles stressed the need his organization and many others in Atlanta have for individuals from professional service firms. They also noted the benefits that those volunteers realize. And both stressed that you can start small----volunteer at a food bank, get on a committee----just get involved.

To learn more about how to get involved in non-profit service, to hear about the difference that you can make and the unique opportunities at ACSS, and to tap into Kathy’s expertise, we invite you to download the full interview.

Our guests:

Kathy Bremer, Managing Director, Boardwalk Consulting

Charles Edwards, CEO, Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency

Kathy Bremer has spent her entire career raising aspirations in corporate, nonprofit and community settings. She is known for her tenacious pursuit of excellence, whether on behalf of clients, colleagues or the larger community.

Kathy joined BoardWalk after eight years as Partner and Atlanta Managing Director with Porter Novelli, where she led a ten-fold growth in revenues and profits. Clients she served personally include such best-in-class organizations as the national offices of American Cancer Society and Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Aflac, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta Women’s Foundation and Georgia-Pacific.

Prior to Porter Novelli, Kathy served from 1991 to 1998 as Senior Vice President of External Relations for CARE, one of the world’s leading humanitarian organizations.

Kathy’s commitment to the nonprofit sector is pervasive. She has chaired or served on over a dozen nonprofit boards. She recently completed a four-year term as board chair of the Georgia Center for Nonprofits, a thriving organization that is the statewide advocate for the nonprofit sector. She currently chairs the Board of CHRIS Kids and serves on the American Cancer Society Patient Navigator Cabinet and several nonprofit boards. Kathy is a frequent speaker on nonprofit and career issues, and a facilitator of strategic planning for numerous nonprofits.

Earlier in her career, Kathy was Senior Vice President at NW Ayer advertising. At Ayer and a prior agency, she headed accounts including Procter & Gamble, Minolta and the Ad Council. During a two-year stint in Tokyo, Kathy edited international corporate publications and wrote for Newsweek and NHK radio news. She authored several books for Japanese students of English and contributed two chapters to the book Discover Japan.

Charles R. Edwards
President and CEO

Charles R. Edwards became president and CEO of the Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency (ACSS) upon its founding on May 1, 2010. Prior to ACSS, Charles served more than four years as assistant dean of corporate relations and assistant dean of development at Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business. Before his time in academia, Charles enjoyed working four years as chief marketing officer of the 1996 Paralympic Games and more than five years as an executive search consultant. He also helped lead a successful Internet infrastructure venture as co-CEO during a one-year sabbatical from his executive search practice. Charles launched his career with IBM, where he was an executive in sales and marketing for over 15 years. Academically, Charles earned a bachelor of science in Industrial Engineering and a master in business administration from the University of Michigan, and a master of science in Industrial Engineering from Wayne State University.

UHY Advisors: Achieving Growth While Delivering the Next Level of Service

2011-03-08T21:41:00.015-05:00

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LeighAnn Costley of UHY Advisors

Being on the front end of a growth curve can be exciting for any firm, and challenging as well. Few firms really master growing rapidly while still continuing to deliver an exceptional client experience.

But a few are able to do just that---and many of those firms were honored at our recent 5TH Anniversary Client Advisor Awards luncheon (December, 2010) including UHY Advisors, a 2010 nominee.

Our guest on Growing Professional Services Radio, LeighAnn Costley, is a CPA and Principal with UHY Advisors GA, Inc. and is the practice leader of the Southeast region Tax Services group in Atlanta.

We asked LeighAnn to join us on this week’s program because her firm has been able to maintain a high level of client satisfaction even as they continue to expand and grow their firm. She generously shared how the Firm has been able to do that.

As LeighAnn noted, the foundation of their success comes from the fact that they are a national firm with a local focus. She explained that she and her colleagues in the Southeast have a depth and breadth of knowledge of this market, and when a client’s needs require a specialist, she can leverage the expertise of any of her colleagues on a nationwide basis. So, if a client in the construction industry would benefit from the knowledge of a specialized advisor, LeighAnn can call on the specialist within her firm, regardless of where that person is located. She can help her colleague understand the implications of the region that she knows so well and her colleague can bring exceptional industry knowledge to bear, creating a win/win for her client.

The Financial Leaders Seminar, a quarterly event that UHY Advisors shares with Home Depot has also contributed to the success of the Southeast region. Each quarter, local CFO’s and senior financial executives are able to gain vital information from the thought leaders assembled for the event. The attendees gain CPE credit, but unlike many programs that offer such credits, they gain invaluable broader business knowledge from the Financial Leaders Seminar series. As LeighAnn explained, “the program is real world focused.” The next event is March 17th. To find out more, you can contact Kelly at UHY Adviors – 678-672-4400

While LeighAnn shared many insights on how UHY Advisors has successfully grown the firm in the Southeast, an especially noteworthy point was the fact that individual professionals from UHY remain engaged with clients for many years, thus allowing them to gain a deep knowledge of the client and the unique needs they have. Having gained that knowledge, the Firm’s professionals are able to be highly proactive rather than reactive.

UHY Advisors has been successful by doing things differently, whether it is for their middle-market clients or the larger corporations served by their consulting practice.

You can download our Podcast here to gain many more helpful insights on how UHY Advisors delivers the “next level of service” that they promise and how they managed to win the coveted nomination for the 2010 Client Advisor Award.

Our guest:

LeighAnn Costley

LeighAnn is a Principal with UHY Advisors GA, Inc. and is the practice leader of the Southeast region Tax Services group in Atlanta. She is a Certified Public Accountant in the states of Georgia and Michigan.

Professional Experience:

Over 15 years of experience, including as a Director in the Private Client Advisors practice of a Big Four accounting firm.
Significant experience providing comprehensive tax compliance and consulting services to a variety of clients including:

Closely held corporations
Individuals
Partnerships
Tax-exempt entities
Trusts

Highly skilled at assisting clients with the identification and implementation of tax planning strategies designed to increase profits, preserve wealth and achieve short and long term goals.
Assists clients and represents them in cases involving IRS scrutiny.
Serves clients in various industries, including:

Family Offices
Manufacturing
Private Equity
Professional Services
Real Estate
Sports Franchises
Telecommunications

Education:

Masters of Science in Taxation, Walsh College – Troy, Michigan
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor,Michigan

Active and Prior Professional Memberships Include:

Member – American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
Member – Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants
Member – Michigan Association of Certified Public Accountants

Active and Prior Community Involvement Include:

Chair of the Board of Directors – Kate’s Club, Inc.
Member – United Way Tocqueville Society

Arnall, Golden Gregory – A Firm at the Center of Healthcare Convergence

2011-03-01T23:04:00.012-05:00

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Sidney Welch and Jason Bring

Massive industry shifts mean massive growth opportunity for professional services firms. Right now, the big shift is most evident in the healthcare market. We talked to one of the leading healthcare law practices in the country about how they are readying themselves and their clients for the coming growth.

And, as our guests Jason Bring and Sidney Welch noted in the beginning of the broadcast, it is an exciting time to be involved in Healthcare and the changes in that industry are happening almost daily. While those changes may be challenging for many, they also provide growth opportunity for trusted advisors who, like our guests, make a commitment to being well-informed and aptly prepared to help their client’s navigate through the changes.

We invited Jason Bring and Sidney Welch, both Partners in the Healthcare Practice of Arnall, Golden Gregory (AGG), a provider-focused healthcare group, to join us to talk about the industry, the changes and their role at the center of the healthcare convergence.

As Sidney noted, she joined AGG and their Healthcare Practice because of the depth and breadth of the healthcare expertise that the firm has attracted, noting that it is the largest Healthcare Practice in the Southeast and has a national reputation. In growing the practice, AGG has attracted physical therapists, Government regulators, MS in Public Health so they know the industry, not just the laws.

In explaining the idea of “healthcare convergence”, Jason and Sidney discussed how the breadth and depth of their Firms’ practice has helped them to be on the forefront of the movement. Essentially, the reform initiatives are focusing on breaking down the barriers and silos typically found in healthcare to provide a better continuum of care and a continuum of quality.

Jason noted the AGG Healthcare Convergence Symposium that they have launched, noting that AGG is assembling a roundtable that will bring together a diverse group of professionals and leaders in the industry. The Symposium will make AGG the place where healthcare converges and will provide a platform for industry thought leaders.

Download the complete podcast to hear more about this innovative new initiative as well as other insights on how AGG has grown their premier Healthcare Practice and has solidified it’s position at the epicenter of the healthcare convergence movement.

Our guests:

Jason Bring

Jason Bring is a partner in Arnall, Golden Gregory's Healthcare Group, where he leads the firm's long-term care litigation defense practice. He represents nursing homes, hospitals, and physicians in litigation, governmental investigations, regulatory compliance, and administrative disputes. His practice covers four primary areas:

defending nursing homes against liability claims throughout the southeast
representing providers in certificate of need (CON) matters in Georgia and South Carolina
defending providers in False Claims Act (qui tam) cases and investigations nationally
pursuing administrative appeals on behalf of providers to recover and maximize reimbursement under the Medicare and Medicaid programs

The majority of Mr. Bring’s defense work is on behalf of nursing homes, where he capitalizes on AGG’s decades of experience in representing long-term care facilities in reimbursement, survey, regulatory, and transactional issues. Recent successes include obtaining several rulings compelling the arbitration of plaintiffs’ claims, obtaining a voluntary dismissal of a nursing home defendant from a multi-defendant action, and significantly lowering a client’s claims experience.

On the certificate of need front, Mr. Bring counsels and represents hospitals and other institutional providers in obtaining or challenging CONs. He has participated in many of the more significant CON cases in Georgia in the last ten years and has helped obtain several important decisions in the Georgia Court of Appeals. For example, for an imaging provider facing CON revocation proceedings by the state, Mr. Bring and his colleagues defended the action for three years through several administrative and judicial layers and crafted a strategy that allowed the provider to remain operational the entire time. More recently, he represented an existing ambulatory surgery center insuccessfully challenging a competitor’s application for a Certificate of Need (CON) to develop an orthopedic surgery center.

Jason Bring, Partner, Arnall, Golden Gregory, LLP, Atlanta, GA
Phone: 404.873.8162
Email: jason.bring@agg.com
Website: http://agg.com/

Sidney Welch

Sidney S. Welch is a partner with Arnall Golden Gregory LLP's healthcare practice. Ms. Welch concentrates on representing physicians and physician practices in all legal aspects of their practices on a national basis. This expertise includes the following:

Advising clients on federal and state regulatory matters, including the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, Stark I, II & III, the False Claims Act, privacy and security issues under the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, state self-referral laws, fee splitting and the corporate practice of medicine
Working with physicians and hospitals on physician-hospital relationships, including joint ventures, on-call programs, Medical Staff Bylaws, Medical Staff hearings and disciplinary matters, credentialing, and recruitment
Structuring business relationships from a corporate and regulatory perspective
Negotiating business and contractual relationships with other physicians, hospitals and third parties
Representing physicians in litigation and administrative matters, including: Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement issues; investigations, audits and appeals; medical licensure issues; and disputes with insurance companies, other physicians and hospitals

While in law school, Ms. Welch clerked with the University of Alabama-Birmingham Medical Center and the Office of General Counsel for the American Medical Association. Ms. Welch is a frequent speaker on health care issues and regularly addresses the Medical Association of Georgia, the American Medical Association, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Medical Group Managers Association, American Society of Medical Association Counsel and Georgia Medical Group Managers Association.

Sidney Welch, Partner, Arnall, Golden Gregory, LLP, Atlanta, GA
Phone: 404.873.8182
Email: sidney.welch@agg.com
Website: http://agg.com

Call To Action: Upgrade Your Firm's Growth Talent

2011-02-23T23:50:00.002-05:00

You are a professional and an expert in your practice area, whether it be law, accounting, real estate, management consulting, engineering, etc. When you need to add to your professional team, screening and hiring those professionals is relatively easy---you speak the same language and you know exactly how to drill down on the candidate’s expertise and experience. You can find and hire the best of the best with relative ease.

But when it comes to hiring your marketing and business development talent at your firm—you may have noticed what we have noticed—a cycle of high turn-over. Why? Because you don’t naturally speak the same language and you’ve never held those roles, so identifying the best and the brightest who also match your firm’s culture is more difficult.

Here’s what Creative Growth Group (CGG) is doing to reverse this cycle:

We launched Creative Growth Talent (CGT), our executive search practice. As the leader in marketing and client development exclusively for professional service firms, we are able to leverage our expertise to recruit exceptional talent that fits your needs and your culture in these disciplines. CGT is dedicated to equipping professional services firms across disciplines with the superior marketers and business developers needed to achieve aggressive and sustainable growth.

CGG has a deep understanding of professional service firms and of what is required to drive systematic, intentional, collaborative growth. We also know that the challenges of driving that growth have become radically more complex for professional services firms. In many instances however, marketing and business development talent has not kept pace with this added complexity.

We created CGT to solve that problem, and to solve it in a unique way. CGT delivers full spectrum rainmaker search services, from developing the competency profile of an ideal hire, to finding, screening, and interviewing candidates, including administering our proprietary Rainmaker Assessment Profile, and all the way through negotiating terms of employment.

Unique to our search service is the critical on-boarding component provided during the first 90 days. Our coaching guides your new hire to master business orientation, expectations alignment, political connection, and cultural adaptation, thus enabling the selected candidate to rapidly gain credibility throughout the firm and ensuring a rapid ROI for you.

CGG has performed successful searches for several of you in this regard and we are now establishing an official practice to provide a broader-based national service. Most recently, we successfully completed a search for a senior marketing executive at a $65 million strategic marketing consultancy. The success of that search resulted not only from CGG’s in-depth knowledge of the qualities and characteristics required, but also stemmed from our thorough understanding of our clients, their culture and their overall objectives. This unique perspective greatly enhances our ability to recruit a candidate who can contribute in both the short- and long-term.

Andrew Dietz and Patricia Romboletti will be spearheading CGT. Andrew has completed numerous senior-executive searches while working with one of the world’s leading retained search firms, Egon Zehnder International, prior to launching CGG. Pat had a successful career in sales, marketing and client development with business services firms before launching her own organization, Sage Executive Search.

CGT is ready and eager to work with you on any mid- to senior-level marketing, business development or rainmaker position you need to fill. Please call Andrew Dietz at 404-664-7484 or Pat Romboletti at 800-871-8052 for more information or to get started on a search.

Experience Required

2011-02-23T23:45:00.002-05:00

Superb experience equals secure employment—but not necessarily the kind of experience that you think. Your professional experience matters far less to a prospect than their experience of your professionalism. That is, the only way for prospects and clients to really know how great you and your firm are at solving their problems is to let them experience it for themselves.

That is why Creative Growth Group’s Fifth Annual Client Advisor Awards program that took place in December, 2010, focused on the topic of creating a compelling experience, and it featured the world renowned guru of delivering excellent experiences: Jim Gilmore, co-author of “The Experience Economy: Work is Theater & Every Business a Stage,” which authorities have ranked as one of the top “100 Business Books of All Time.”

“Staging a compelling experience is in no way limited to coffee-drinking at Starbucks, computer repair encounters with the Geek Squad, or taking the family to Disneyland -- or any of a vast array of other places and events in which consumers today spend time and money. Business-to-business experiences abound at trade shows, in executive briefing centers, and with other marketing experiences. Professional services firms would be wise to similarly stage unique experiences for their clients lest they find themselves on the slick slope to commoditization -- purchased solely on the basis of price, price, price,” said Gilmore who spoke about staging superior Client Advisor Experiences to a capacity audience during the Client Advisor Awards at the Cherokee Town Club in Atlanta, GA.

Finalists were evaluated on their Client Advisor Experience excellence in five areas: collaboration, creativity, content and value orientation, capability and credibility. 2010 Client Advisor Awards sponsors include: The Atlanta Business School Alliance, BCHORD, Business Wise, Deltek, Creative Growth Group, and Strategies Group. Creative Growth Group founded the Client Advisor Awards in 2006 and continues to serve as the program’s lead organizer. More about the Awards can be found at http://www.clientadvisorawards.com/.

Congratulations to all of our Finalists and Winners listed below. We hope to see you on this list in future years.

2010 Client Advisor Award Winners

Large Professional Services Firm
Winner: Arnall Golden Gregory LLP
Finalists: Arc Worldwide - Leo Burnett   | UHY Advisors

Large Client Organization
Winner: Chick-Fil-A, Inc.
Finalists: NASCO   |   U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Mid-Sized Professional Services Firm
Winner: Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP
Finalists: Jabian LLC | Project, Time & Cost, Inc.

Mid-Sized Client Organization
Winner: Butler, Fairman & Seufert, Inc.
Finalists: Iron Data, LLC | Mud Pie

Small Professional Services Firm
Winner: The Interlochen Group
Finalists: BrightWave Marketing, Inc. | Calysto Communications

Small Client Organization
Winner: CMI Research
Finalists: REACH Call, Inc.  | W.F. Baird & Associates Ltd.

Community Involvement Award
Winner: BoardWalk Consulting – Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency (ACSS)
Finalists: Jabian LLC – Technology Association of Georgia (TAG)
Pathbuilders, Inc. – Georgia State University (GSU)

Wanted: Your Best Experiences

2011-02-23T23:40:00.002-05:00

On the radio, StoryCorps records personal experiences, describing what a personal experience looks like, what it means to the story teller, and how it feels. Maybe you’ve heard StoryCorps’ weekly broadcasts on NPR’s Morning Edition? StoryCorps’ mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives. Since 2003, StoryCorps has collected and archived more than 30,000 interviews from more than 60,000 participants.

Similarly, through Creative Growth’s Client Advisor Awards (http://www.clientadvisorawards.com/), we share superb experiences between professional services advisors and their clients. This posting begins Creative Growth’s experiment in collecting Client Advisor experiences on a continuous and systematic basis. Let’s call this new initiative, ClientExperienceCorps. Only, instead of using the broadcast airwaves, though, we’ll use the Internet right here and now.

Will you help us start the collection? We are now accepting stories of the best professional services client experiences. That is, how have you and your Firm intentionally and successfully staged superb engagement experiences for your clients? We’ll also accept stories of how your clients have staged world class experiences for you as their advisor.

By staging a Client Experience, we mean intentionally orchestrating all (OK, we’ll start with low expectations…forget ALL and let’s try ANY) of the following elements of a professional services engagement:

Attracting – What’s intentionally unique, customized and excellent about how you attract your clients of choice?
Onboarding – What’s intentionally unique, customized and excellent about how you begin new client engagements to ensure a great first impression and quick results?
Engaging – How have you intentionally crafted a unique, customized and excellent experience for your clients of choice so that execution of the core engagement is a “Wow!” experience for them?
Exiting - What’s intentionally unique, customized and excellent about how you end engagements to ensure a great lingering impression?
Extending – How have you intentionally crafted unique, customized and world-class ways to stay deeply connected with your clients of choice when you are between engagements with them?

PLEASE CONTACT US with your best stories today by calling 404-664-7484 or e-mailing Andrew at Andrew@creativegrowthgroup.com. Based on your preference, we will accept your submitted stories directly or we can create an audio recording.

Social Experiment - Part 1 - Shift Your Perspective

2011-02-23T23:35:00.004-05:00

LinkedIn, the social networking phenomenon, is adding one new member per second, and with 90MM current users, including several million from a wide range of professional service firms, it is a valuable resource that is an essential part of any professional’s growth strategy. That is why professional services firm leaders are engaging Patricia Romboletti, a Principal with Creative Growth Group |Managing Director of Creative Growth Talent | and a bona fide LinkedIn Guru, to share her custom program, “Six LinkedIn Steps to Professional Services Growth in 2011.”

In this posting, we provide you with one quick tip from Patricia’s repository of social networking knowledge:

Shift Your Perspective from Online to Offline: Instead of treating your time on LinkedIn as an interaction with a website or social networking tool, consider LinkedIn as a “live event.”

LinkedIn is, in fact, a global, 24/7 live relationship-building event. To make the most of your online time on LinkedIn, think offline.

In most ways, being on LinkedIn is just like the events you attend locally for your favorite business association or conference. Typically, when you enter a live event, you start by looking for people that you already know, people with whom you would like to begin a dialogue, and people with whom you have some clear and immediate affinity. Once you engage in a conversation with those people, you begin to look for common interests, common styles of doing business, a similar approach to serving clients—any common ground, both business and personal. When you approach LinkedIn from this perspective, your own natural relationship-building instincts will guide you to make better use of this resource.

And, if you really understand the most effective approach to business development, especially for any trusted advisor, you begin to look for ways that you might be able to assist each person. For instance, what people or resources can you connect them with that would be of benefit to them?

And remember, just like at any live event, all the rules of good business etiquette apply while on LinkedIn. Your presence and actions on LinkedIn must be authentic and consistent with your personal brand and your firm’s brand.

2010 Client Advisor Awards Finalists Announced

2010-11-08T20:18:00.001-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

5th ANNUAL CLIENT ADVISOR AWARDS ANNOUNCES FINALISTS
Atlanta, GA – Thursday, November 4, 2010 – The Client Advisor Awards, the country’s only Award program honoring the economic impact of Professional Services Firms and advisor professionalism, announces finalists for its 5th annual Client Advisor Awards program. Award recipients will be unveiled during the 2010 Client Advisor Awards luncheon on Dec. 8, 2010 at the Cherokee Town Club in Atlanta, GA, featuring a keynote presentation on creating transformational client advisor experiences by Jim Gilmore, co-author of The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage.

The 2010 Client Advisor Awards finalists are:
Large Professional Services Firm
Arc Worldwide | Leo Burnett
Arnall Golden Gregory LLP
UHY Advisors, Inc.

Midsize Professional Services Firm
Jabian LLC
Project, Time & Cost, Inc.
Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP

Small Professional Services Firm
BrightWave Marketing, Inc.
Calysto Communications
The Interlochen Group

Large Client Organization
Chick-Fil-A, Inc.
NASCO
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Mid-Size Client Organization
Butler, Fairman & Seufert, Inc.
Iron Data, LLC
Mud Pie

Small Client Organization
CMI Research
REACH Call, Inc.
W.F. Baird & Associates Ltd.

Community Involvement
BoardWalk Consulting – Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency (ACSS)
Jabian LLC – Technology Association of Georgia (TAG)
Pathbuilders, Inc. – Georgia State University (GSU)

Finalists are evaluated on their excellence in five areas: collaboration, creativity, content and value orientation, capability and credibility. 2010 Client Advisor Awards sponsors include: The Atlanta Business School Alliance, BCHORD, Business Wise, Deltek, Creative Growth Group, and Strategies Group. Creative Growth Group founded the Client Advisor Awards in 2006 and continues to serve as the program’s lead organizer.

For additional information on the Client Advisor Awards, attending the event or sponsorship options, please visit www.clientadvisorawards.com

About Creative Growth Group
Creative Growth Group, Inc. exclusively helps professional services firms to attain superior, lasting and predictable business development results. For more information, contact Andrew Dietz at 404-664-7484 or andrew at creativegrowthgroup dot com

Announcing: Creative Growth Talent

2010-11-08T09:16:00.000-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Newly Launched Solution Equips Professional Services Firms With Creative Growth Talent
Atlanta, GA - November 8, 2010 - Creative Growth Group Inc., the leading client development agency for professional service firms, announces the launch of the world’s first and only talent acquisition and development practice, Creative Growth Talent, dedicated exclusively to equipping professional services firms across disciplines with the superior marketers and business developers needed to achieve aggressive growth goals.

“Although the growth challenges of professional services firms have become radically more complex in recent years, the quality of marketing and business development talent available to match these challenges has not kept pace,” said Andrew Dietz, Managing Partner of Creative Growth Group, Inc. “It is true that recession has led to a mass of out-of-work marketers and business developers and it is easy to solicit thousands of resumes from a social media website. As a result, it is also exponentially harder to decipher the great professional services marketing and business development talent from the mediocre or disastrous. When a professional services firm really needs superior marketing and business development professionals to achieve aggressive growth objectives, do-it-yourself or quick-and-dirty recruiting can be a costly mistake.”

Creative Growth Talent delivers full spectrum rainmaker search services from developing the competency profile of an ideal hire, to finding, screening, and interviewing candidates, all the way through negotiating terms of employment and on-boarding the selected candidate through a series of customized coaching sessions. Because of Creative Growth Group’s extensive relationships across professions and geographies, the Creative Growth Talent has also compiled and is expanding a unique Talent Registry of the world’s best professional services marketing and business development talent in order to respond to recruiting needs with the highest quality and the greatest speed. Creative Growth Talent identifies full time marketing and business development executives for professional services firms and through its “In Residence” service the firm also supplies interim and part-time marketing and business development talent. Creative Growth Talent is including a satisfaction guarantee and on-board coaching of new hires with each engagement.

Andrew Dietz and Patricia Romboletti are spearheading the Creative Growth Talent practice and its efforts to supply world-class marketing and business development talent for the ambitious 21st Century professional firm. Ms. Romboletti is a Principal with Creative Growth Talent and a seasoned marketing leader with professional services firm expertise. She had a highly successful career leading sales, marketing and business development teams for some of the world’s leading business services organizations before launching her own firm, Sage Executive Search. Mr. Dietz completed numerous senior-executive searches while working with one of the world’s leading retained search firms, Egon Zehnder International, before launching Creative Growth Group in 2003 and building it into a global firm.

About Creative Growth Group:
Creative Growth Group, Inc. exclusively helps professional services firms to attain superior, lasting and predictable business development results. www.creativegrowthgroup.com

Contact:
Andrew Dietz, Creative Growth Group, Inc., 404-664-7484, andrew at creativegrowthgroup dot com

###

2010-09-16T09:13:00.002-04:00

Transform the value of your firm by transforming your pipeline. Although the equity value of professional services firms is closely tied to the predictability and visibility of their future revenue and workload, predictability and visibility of growth are ephemeral notions for professional firms. In “regular” companies, senior leadership drives a process by which they can continuously evaluate the quantity, quality and velocity of the company’s prospective revenue opportunities. They call it “pipeline management” and the executive, sales and marketing teams scrutinize it regularly looking for how they can loosen bottlenecks and capture more value faster. In too many of the professional services firms we encounter there is no such disciplined process. As a result, leadership and professionals are left to ride the feast-or-famine business development roller coaster in the dark.

Lessons Learned About Pipeline Management

Andrew: In your prior work at Ernst & Young, can you describe for us the guiding principles you identified for successful pipeline management in a professional firm?
John: Well, from my experience, there are three key principals that firms must grasp in order to execute successful pipeline management; they are…
First, I would say that the senior leadership of a firm has to strongly embrace and endorse the belief that effective pipeline management is an essential part of driving superior, predicable growth. A healthy, well-managed pipeline leads to more intentional expansion of existing client relationships plus a steady stream of quality new clients and revenue; it’s the life blood of a growing practice seeking to create opportunity and attract top talent.
Next, firms often focus on just revenue acquisition or solely on the market-facing activities of their professionals. But, both revenue and the consequential activities that lead to revenue results need to be recognized pipeline measures in order to accelerate top line growth and its predictability.

The third principle is really an extension of the first one. Effective pipeline management only works if it becomes a cultural habit of the fir and that only happens from continuous executive sponsorship of its importance and hands-on involvement in its tracking.

Andrew: What steps can firms carry out in order to achieve optimal pipeline management?

John: Great question! I have identified 12 leading practices executives can implement to achieve successful pipeline management and they are:

1.Include pipeline targets and pipeline management practices in individuals’ performance goals.

2.Set standards for the relationships, opportunities and deals that can be included in the pipeline—based on your firm’s go-to-market strategy. Require executive approval for any exceptions.

3.Provide individuals with pipeline management training and leading practices.

4.Establish a pipeline management system and use it. It should include tracking and reporting of pipeline performance; including the routine review of big deals by executive leadership to drive opportunities.

5.Define pipeline stages to track the flow of deals from opportunity identification to closing. The distribution of opportunities in a healthy pipeline should resemble a funnel, with many identified opportunities at the beginning, and progressively fewer at each subsequent stage. Set pipeline stage percentage targets to achieve a healthy pipeline.

6.Set your pipeline target size using a ratio based on the total dollar amount of opportunities needed to achieve your sales goal, e.g., 3 X sales goal.

7.Enter potential deals into the pipeline at the outset of being identified. Don’t hold deals back from the pipeline until you’re certain they will close.

8.Apply qualification standards in a disciplined manner to weed out low value opportunities in a timely manner, while advancing higher value opportunities to the next stage.

9.Apply effective targeting activities, including account management and issues-based sales campaigns to identify new opportunities for the pipeline.

10.Apply effective pursuit strategies, including executive level involvement to accelerate the advancement and close rate of deals in the pipeline.

11.Base your overall sales goal on how much you need to meet your fiscal year revenue plan; usually it’s a higher number (e.g., 115%). Why?

•Lag between selling and billing for completed work
•Sales of multi-year contracts that deliver revenue over the fiscal year and beyond
•Effective rate per hour adjustments, write-offs and discounts that happen after the sale and during delivery

12.Apply a velocity or throughput measure, such as “book-to-bill” to monitor the backlog of work. The “book-to-bill” rate is a popular metric in manufacturing but is useful for professional services, too. It is a ration that measures the relationship between new engagements requested and the amount of engagements that have been delivered and billed. Book-to-bill should be > 1 to indicate that the dollar amount of sold worked is greater than that which is being delivered, i.e. strong demand for your services. A book-to-bill number < 1 indicates a low demand and a risk of having periods of downtime in your practice. Effective pipeline management can help remedy that problem.

While few firms have the sophisticated capabilities to track and measure that Ernst & Young does, there’s a lot to learn from their Advisory practice’s pipeline management approach. If we really care about building the value of our organizations, even those firms with more modest means will benefit from a more intentional, systematic and habitual approach to tracking and influencing their revenue and relationship pipeline.

Transforming Your Online Presence: Search Engine Optimization

2010-09-14T10:18:00.007-04:00

A common refrain among professionals regarding their firm’s presence on the Internet: “Prospects don’t buy us from our website.” Maybe executives don’t buy professional services online the way they order a book from Amazon.com, but they definitely are using online sources to build their opinions about firms they might use. As a result, major professional firms are using tactics such as Search Engine Optimization to lure more of exactly the right prospects to their sites.

As an example, we recently picked some keywords of strong current interest to many professional firm competitors: Private Equity Due Diligence and ran an assessment of which professional firms were engaged in search engine optimization related to this combination of terms. To our surprise, even the most elite of consultancies – no less than Bain and McKinsey - appeared to be intentionally optimizing their sites to attract executives interested in those terms. The fact is, you ignore activities such as search engine optimization at your firm’s competitive peril. This article is intended to share with you the basics of search engine optimization and some of the techniques firms use to increase the odds of attracting just the right prospects.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page from search engines via "natural" or "organic" or "algorithmic" search results. The theory is that the higher a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

Why SEO is Important for Your Firm?
Professional service firms have the same need for SEO search engine optimization as does any other business, because professionals such as consultants, attorneys and accountants have arguably more online competition than other types of businesses in their effort to capture the fleeting attention of the world’s most elusive buyer: the senior corporate executive.

A successful SEO campaign will enhance your firm’s web presence which in turn will increase your firm’s market recognition by means of simply having more people find your website in the search engine listings. In addition to an increase of actual visitors to your website, ranking highly in search engines positions your firm, in the eyes of those who search for services online, as an authority in your field.

It is therefore essential for each page on a firm’s website to be focused as much as possible on a specific keyword, and that each web page is optimized both online and offline for its unique keyword (a keyword can refer to a single word or a phrase.) The objective of SEO is to persuade search engine algorithms that your page is highly relevant to the search term being used.

’Page’ is stressed, because most search engines list pages and not entire websites and that page can be your Home Page or any other page on your website. We shall refer to Google from herein because that search engine takes about 80% of the total online search traffic, and if you are not listed on the first two pages of Google then forget it.

Here is a brief synopsis of how you can improve your search engine listing by using an intelligently crafted SEO strategy involving both on-page and off-page search engine optimization techniques. It should be stressed that these are ’SEO essentials’, and there are more advanced techniques that can be used to give you the jump on your competition but which are too focused and specialized to be included here. But, for those of you who want more detail, we provide a link to a deeper dive on these SEO matters at the end of this article.

SEO Techniques
Sections of Your Web Page
You have two important sections within the HTML source code (that’s the behind the scenes software language which web programmers use to make your site work) of each page on your site: the ’Head’ section and the ’Body’ section. The content of the ’Head’ section is not seen by the public, only by search engine spiders that use it to determine the relevance of your page to the search term used by the Google user.

Google doesn’t care too much about your intended page focus - its algorithms will determine the relevance itself, and your job is to persuade these algorithms that your page is worth offering to those searching for information. Spiders do not look at your page and assess it for the keyword you are using on it, but index it in relation to its relevance to the search terms and keywords used by the searcher.

Here is a run-down on the basic type of SEO optimization that should be on every single page on your firm’s website:

a) Meta Tags:
The Meta tags appear in the ’Head’ section of your page HTML, before the ’Body’ section. The important Meta tags in the HTML of your page are the Title tags and the Description tags. Keep in mind that nothing in these Meta tags are seen by anybody visiting your website, but they are very important aspects of your SEO.

The Title Tag should contain your keyword and is what will be seen at the top of your Google listing. The Description Tag will be used partially or in its entirety in the listed description of your page. No other tags have much effect, although the Keyword tag might be used by the minor search engines.

b) Heading Tags
The ’Heading’ tags, seen as H1, H2 etc, should be used for the page and paragraph headings on your web page. Use H1 tags for the visible page title: you won’t go wrong if that is exactly the same as the title in the Title tag. Google’s algorithm will give a keyword added importance in determining the relevance of your page if it is within H tags, and even more if it is in Bold text and Italics. Underlining also adds to the perceived relevance.

c) Graphics ’Alt’ Attribute
You should use the ’Alt’ attribute in the image HTML of each of your graphics. That tells the viewer the content of the graphic if doesn’t resolve on their website, and is also rewarded by Google in its assessment of your page relevance.

d) Keyword Use
When it comes to keyword usage on your web pages, quality may matter more than quantity. Marketers should ignore the geek chatter about “using a keyword density (KD) of up to 3%” and other such presumed benchmarks for how many times your keyword is showing up in the copy on your web page. Google uses its own special algorithm (called “LSI” or latent semantic indexing) to determine the relevance of your page, which means using text that is semantically related to your keywords and the focus of the page. Repetition of keywords will no longer work, and will actually be punished with a low listing. Imagine an 800 word article with 24 mentions of the keyword . . . Good natural writing, with around 0.6% - 1% KD will be better than endless keyword repetition, particularly if you are using a lot of semantically related text to explain the meaning of your page. Descriptive writing is better than keywords, although be careful to use synonyms that are true synonyms and not ambiguous. For instance, you may want to use the word “locks” as a keyword. But, what are ’locks’? Your page content should make it clear to Google’s LSI algorithm to which type of locks you are referring.

Linking Strategy
Google’s PageRank algorithm is a means of assessing the importance and popularity of each web page according to the number of other web pages linking to it: the more links it has, then the more relevant and popular the page must be. These links can come either from within your own website or from other websites.

Each web page is allocated a starting PR of 1.0 by Google, and it is possible to arrange your internal links (navigation structure) to provide the maximum PR points to specific pages in your website.

You can also provide back-links to your web pages from external websites by using techniques such as article marketing, where you can use a link in a section of your article that offers you a share of the PR of any directory page that publishes your article. The same benefit can be achieved by submitting your website to website directories, and also by persuading others to add a link to your site from their own website.

These are the starting-point, basic SEO search engine optimization techniques for professional service firms that you can easily use on your website persuade Google to list your web pages higher in the results pages for specific search terms (keywords). By doing this successfully, you can be rewarded with a significant increase in free traffic of prospective clients to your site. But, keep in mind that these are basic essentials, and there are an ever-increasing number of other methods that can be used to give you a real advantage over your competitors. Or, conversely, can give them the edge over your firm if ignored.

Conclusion
Search engine optimization is not magic; it isn’t a mystical set of powers controlled by a secret society of uber-tech geeks; rather, it’s a basic foundation to one’s web presence, a standard operating procedure that should be adopted by any individual or company that has an operational website, including professional service firms.

Your firm has a lot to gain (additional clients, greater name recognition, enhanced recognition as an industry authority) by implementing a proper SEO campaign, and really nothing to lose, especially if this task is delegated to an SEO professional.

The bottom line is that Search Engine Optimization is simply good business for professional services providers.

Brooks Donner is the founding principal of TopLine Media Group, a firm specializing in Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, and Website Design & Development.

For more information, visit http://www.TopLineMediaGroup.comFor a FREE 17-page report entitled SEO Strategies for Professional Service Firms, visit http://www.TopLineMediaGroup.com/seo-report-psf and enter 'Creative Growth Group' in the Access Code field.

The Unconnected Leader

2010-09-14T10:04:00.000-04:00

If you want to be a Transformational Professional, you must be a connected one. And, consider how you can help the leaders in your clients’ organizations to know how to connect beyond their own four walls. Randy Hain, Managing Partner of Bell Oaks Executive Search is one of the most connected professionals we know. If you haven’t already seen this article by Randy, read it right now. Then forward it to all of your clients who may benefit from this lesson in networking before you need to do so. Click here for Randy’s insights on the perils of being The Unconnected Leader.

A Transformational Experience: The 5th Annual Client Advisor Awards

2010-09-14T10:01:00.002-04:00

Are you a world-class or transformational advisor? Do you work with clients of choice? Tell us about your firm’s or your client’s display of professionalism and we’ll tell the world. Nominate your firm or your best client for The 5th Annual Client Advisor Awards in 2010 honoring the economic impact of professional services firms and setting the standard for the best behaviors and relationships between advisors and their clients. The Awards are announced on December 8, 2010 and there is still time to submit a nomination for your firm or your clients of choice. The theme of the 2010 Awards event is creating transformational client experiences. The keynote speaker is one of the fathers of experience marketing, Jim Gilmore, who wrote The Experience Economy. Go to www.clientadvisorawards.com for information on how to participate.

The Transformational Professional

2010-09-14T09:55:00.001-04:00

The Great Recession’s effects linger. We will never be the same as a country. As individuals. As business-people. Transformational times call for transformational professionals.

·Professional service vendors perform a commoditized activity for clients in a consistent, reliable way. Nothing necessarily changes for the better in the client or their organization as a result of the service vendor but the client has ensured that essential, routine processes are effectively completed.

·Trusted advisors have earned the right to go beyond expert-task-performance to solve complex, important client matters. They are the whisper-in-the-ear consigliore that focuses on the client first, builds collaborative client relationships, maintains a mid-to-long-term view of relationships, and is transparent in their client dealings. And, while trust puts an advisor in position to better guide a client towards the light, it doesn’t necessarily take the client beyond the average, mundane or usual ideas they may consider. Remember, Tom Hagen, Don Corleone’s Consigliore from The Godfather? Sure he was a voice of relative reason and he never got “whacked” but neither did Hagen make a significant impact on the Corleone empire.

·Transformational Professionals are great technical experts and they also earn the trust of their clients. What makes them transformational is that they create engaging experiences that rocket the client forward and shift how the company and its people view their situation, marketplace and maybe even their lives. Because transformational professionals change actions, perspective and culture, they produce big results.

Do our clients like trusted advisors? Of course they do. But what they really need right now are professionals who can create experiences that transform businesses, people, profit, and customer impact. If we can do those things, we create economic value and raving fans.

CAUTION: Business Development Coaching Hazard

2010-05-29T15:09:00.004-04:00

Small cultural details add up over time. Please pay attention to this detail which, approached the wrong way, inadvertently fosters an eat-what-you-kill, every professional for himself mentality. If you lead a professional services firm, office or practice group, think again before you let your professionals hire their own personal business development coaches. You may simply be helping them to build their own portable “book of business” rather than benefiting your firm long term. Are you interested in growing a firm or in growing a collection of individual professionals who just happened to be housed under the same roof and brand name? Client development is both an individual pursuit as well as a collaborative one – at least, that’s the way the most successful firms approach it. Client development coaching can be an extremely effective way to get your professionals more consistently and effectively into the marketplace. But, what’s really optimal for any firm is to build a superior, predictable and sustainable revenue stream and relationship set with clients that are “the firm’s” not just the proprietary property of a lone wolf rainmaker.

The marketplace is now littered with one-person business development coaching practices and it is difficult to tell good from bad. Here are some clues to identify those client development coaches that will benefit your firm, not solely your individual practitioners:

1. They focus solely on the professional services market and understand the nuances of the field…if they’re not completely immersed in the professional services world, they’re likely to be pushing sales methodologies that may be all good for peddling “complex sale” products but are sure fire turnoffs for professional services clients.

2. They have the scale to coach a team of your professionals – not just one or two lone wolves…they’ll have, for instance, more than just one business development coach available.

3. They will demonstrably commit to a long term, relationship building approach to client development rather than a short term, transactional one. Consider, for instance, how they’ve gone about cultivating their relationship with you. Is that how you want your professionals behaving?

4. They’re smart enough to start by helping professionals build unique points of competitive difference and positioning that are custom-fit for the individual professional but which also fit within their practice group and firm’s strategy & positioning.

5. They provide decision-tools to guide professionals so that they spend their limited marketing time in the most productive way…rather than a coach that just cracks the same whip on every individual they coach.

6. They view their client as “the firm” rather than “the individual professional.”

7. They deliver methodologies and frameworks which encourage professionals to collaborate with colleagues to attract and expand clients.

8. They literally bring a firm’s professionals together regularly to foster collaborative client development activity. If a client development coach only works by packing one-to-one sessions with individual professionals from a hodge-podge of firms into a compressed time period for each and back-to-back throughout the day, how effective can that really be for your firm, no less for any of the individual coachees?

9. They collaborate with the firm’s leadership on each coaching program so that leadership can support the coaching effort from the inside – and, so that it is clear to the individual participant that coaching is a firm-approved and sponsored use of the professional’s time.

10. They collaborate closely with the firm’s marketing and business development staff so that coaching seamlessly synchs with, supplements and supports the marketing team’s activities.

Details make the difference in most professional engagements. They also matter when you’re equipping your team to help grow the firm.

Relationship economics is a bankrupt idea

2010-05-29T15:09:00.001-04:00

If you are busily calculating your relationship currency, capital and return-on-investment in order to maximize your professional net worth, you’re busily putting your energy in the wrong place. Great client-advisor relationships are built on authentic commitment to client needs. The digital fount of all wisdom, Wikipedia, says, “Authenticity refers to the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.” You can fake authenticity up to a point assuming that you’re somewhat of a P.T. Barnum-flavored cynic who believes that clients and prospects are gullible simpletons. But, is that the basis for a genuinely effective professional relationship?

Stop listening to charlatans who’s every claim to help you and your firm build genuine relationships is followed by a trademark symbol. Stop calculating the economic value of your current and potential relationships. Stop faking authenticity. Find ways to demonstrate what it is really like to work with you…but demonstrate that before you’re hired. Go back to building relationships by consistently delivering genuine value in a selfless advisory manner and enjoy the rewards of lifetime client loyalty and advocacy.

Unselling

2010-05-29T15:01:00.002-04:00

Editor’s note: If you love to have others sell to you, don’t read any further. Go straight to the local car dealer and relish the interaction.

Most professional services firm clients will tell you that they don’t want to be “sold” but sometimes they find themselves in a position to buy. The correlate for professional advisors is that while most don’t want to sell, the most successful know how to put themselves in a position to be bought. Getting bought is not selling. In fact, in many ways, it is “unselling.” Unselling is not a gimmick – it is the opposite of a gimmick – it is, in fact, the complete absence of gimmicks. It is the complete presence of genuine, authentic, collaborative advisor, expert and fundamentally decent human being.

Selling => Unselling

Cast a wide net to catch more clients => Be famous for something specific
Find more, new relationships => Evolve existing relationships
Trap ‘em when they’re ready to buy => Build dialogue ahead of identified need
Persistently pester prospects => Considerately connect with content
Present with polish => Listen more, present less
Ask questions that are manipulative => Ask questions that benefit the client
Dodge objections => Discuss the dangerous issues
Hand out pitch books & brochures => Hand out ideas and dialogue
Shorten the cycle – speed to close => Take time to build trust – don’t rush it
Go it alone – eat what you kill => Collaborative rainmaking
Be a strong closer => Let the client set the pace

Sellers view prospective clients as sources of revenue. Unsellers view prospective clients as human beings in organizations with interesting challenges which the unseller is world-class at solving. Unsellers don’t have to do anything unnatural. They don’t change their demeanor when with a prospect instead of an existing client. They don’t feel pressure to manipulate the prospect or to control the dialogue. They’re passionate about the prospect’s situation and enthusiastic about supporting the prospect’s effort to succeed. However, they are cool about forcing the sale.

I recently listened to a podcast by a not-for-profit organization which started with, “This podcast is a gift from our organization to you. If you like what you hear, don’t worry about making a donation. But, please rate the show, provide a review or pass it along to a friend who may benefit in the same way you did.” Talk about unselling – “don’t worry about making a donation.” I liked their attitude. They engaged me. They demonstrated their value as an organization. Like a great professional does, they showed that they were interested in my best interests above their own. They earned the right to ask for a donation but they didn’t. And, as a result, I gave more money than I would have otherwise.

Now, I’m not recommending that you tell your prospects not to buy from you. But, there is something to be said for not thrusting yourself upon a prospect. Once you have earned the right to work with a prospective client by cultivating the relationship over time, sometimes it is most helpful to take a step back and allow your prospect to step forward in your direction.

To BD or Not To BD?

2010-05-29T14:58:00.002-04:00

By Mira Leonard, Partner with Creative Growth Group

To BD or Not to BD = to focus on business development or not? That’s not even a question worth debating when it comes to leading progressive professional services firms (PSF), if you ask me. But let me spell it out: to survive and grow, business development, on a firm, practice and professional level, is not even a choice – it’s a necessity. Instead of my pun on Hamlet’s famous quote, I’d argue the real question at hand is how to go about doing it. After experiencing the recent business slow down, PSF’s seem to agree and are increasingly encouraging business development actions. And, because the question “how to BD” offers many answers, one of the fastest and quick-fix solutions contemplated by firms is hiring BD professionals. That certainly is a solution, however it might not be the most appropriate one depending on the situation at hand. So, for the purposes of this article let’s think of “To BD or Not To BD” as the PSF dilemma of whether to hire in-house BD professionals or find alternative growth solutions. Let the battle of our inner Hamlets commence.

In my experience working with PSF’s of different shapes, sizes and cultures, I’ve had the opportunity to see when bringing in BD professionals is successful and when it fails. And so, before sharing my thoughts and weighing the pro’s and con’s of hiring BD professionals please consider the following questions… Does the culture of the firm allow for BD professionals? How would your current and prospective clients feel if they were approached by BD professionals representing the firm? Would the technical professionals leverage the skills and actions of that professional or sit back and relax because the burden no longer lies with them? These are all significant questions, not necessarily pertaining to the growth of the PSF, but to the organizational cultural domain that is just as significant to the firm’s survival. Reflect on these and other similar culture and client related issues before moving forward, I beg thee.

Now, when the firm culture is built to accept and utilize client development professionals, bringing them on board, with the proper expectations, can be a powerful growth solution. One of my business partners likes to say that ”client development is both an individual and a team discipline” and I agree. BD professionals can “hunt” and at the same time offer leverage to the technical professional service providers (i.e. lawyers, accountants, consultants, etc.) by supporting their individual client development actions. Prospect and referral identification and research, as well as relationship building, at both strategic and tactical levels, customarily require unknown or untapped skills for many technical professionals. The right BD executive will act as a mentor and strive to enhance the talents of the technical professionals, amplifying the impact of their collaborative client development efforts. On a micro level, they will also support the proposal process: from scoping to presenting along with the technical professionals, and working along the marketing team on the presentation, in between. Because when it comes to PSF’s, the professionals are the embodiment of the firms’ brands, the proper BD executives will have the executive presence and gravitas to do just that. And so, on a macro level they will also represent the firm in the community, help build and enhance the brand and goodwill and most importantly develop strategic to growth relationships.

I don’t know about you, but I almost convinced myself that hiring BD professionals (the right ones) is the way to go…well, “almost” and the “right” being the operative words here. Before jumping ahead, a few additional to the culture concerns to keep in mind…The economic downfall has purged many PSF’s of excess and unaccounted for spending, making them more efficient and effective. Why should business development and marketing be treated any other way? So, before casting a vote on BD professionals, ask yourself whether the firm is fully utilizing the resources at hand. Audit the firms’ business development systems and assets to identify any opportunities for enhancement or repurpose. The chances are if you look for improvement and leverage you will find it. When you can say - with a certainty - that all of the PSF’s internal client development resources have been tapped in and exhausted, only then would I recommend considering additional growth alternatives such as hiring BD professionals. Even then, keep in mind that ultimately buyers of PSF services buy the people who will do the actual work. In other words, having BD professionals on staff shouldn’t release the technical experts from their own BD responsibilities. However, that often is the case, and it brings a whole new set of growth challenges.

To BD or not to BD – that is the question: whether to grow the PSF with the help of BD professionals on staff. That’s your prerogative, dear reader – I only hope my comments encouraged you to consider the full complexity of the situation; one, which might call for support from experts on creating superior, lasting, predictable client development results for professional service firms.

For the Right Side of Your Brain: Creating Your Practice Growth

2010-03-29T07:30:00.003-04:00

"Cover bands don't change the world," Todd Henry says, referring to those bar room rockers that simply rework popular songs originated by other musical artists. Similarly, "me too" professional services firms don't change much about the clients and markets they serve.

Todd Henry is the founder and Managing Director at Accidental Creative, a Cincinnati-based media, marketing and consulting firm which helps those who produce creative, problem- solving ideas for a living to be "more prolific, brilliant and healthy in the long term instead of burning ourselves out on the altar of productivity." That is, he helps his clients move from being accidentally creative to being intentionally so. Todd's professional bio is composed of just seven words, "An arms dealer for the creative revolution."
The most under-rated tool in a professional's client development kit may be creative problem solving. Through Creative Growth's Rainmaker Assessment program we have examined the natural skills and abilities of a multitude of professionals at all career levels, from all manner of professions and from a variety of countries. One result remains relatively consistent across the findings: professional services advisors score on average far above the general population of business executives in their problem- solving prowess. So, most professionals have a powerful, inherent weapon in their business development arsenal. But, as professionals focused first on serving existing client needs, we don't often use our innate creative skill for the purpose of helping our clients and ourselves to expand our businesses.

How can Firm leaders get professionals to apply their natural capacity for creative problem solving to the challenge of expanding client relationships and attracting new ones? We turned to Todd Henry for his views on this quagmire. Here’s a synopsis:

How did The Accidental Creative get created?

My background was actually in the music business. I studied marketing in college and, like any good marketing major would, I summarily went into the music business after school. I was a music artist in Nashville and performed and traveled with Dixie Chicks, Kenny Chesney, and Toby Keith. I also paid the bills by spending quite a bit of time writing copy. I ended up as creative director for a major not-for-profit organization and led a team of 30 people.

About five years ago, I found myself here in Cincinnati and really struggling with the dynamics in the marketplace around creative professionals. I saw a lot of creative people wrestling with loving what they do technically but struggling to get their heads above water. They were saying, “The overwhelming nature of the work that’s coming at me day after day requires more than I’m able to give and how do I stay ahead of that?” There’s a significant branding and design community here and as I was getting together with others, it turned out that everyone was experiencing the same thing. So, I created a forum for people to talk about this – that was the genesis. As I interviewed more people and put some of the emerging ideas into practice, the platform grew. I launched a podcast in late 2005 and put it in the business section on iTunes. I kind of forgot about it until I happened to be surfing for business podcasts a few months later on iTunes and came across one called “The Accidental Creative.” My first thought was “Oh no, I can’t believe I stole someone else’s name.” It was one of the most popular business podcasts in the business section on iTunes. Then I realized this is my podcast and there are a lot of people listening to it! That was the birth of Accidental Creative as a more formal entity.

I understand that your Accidental Creative podcast audience probably numbers in the tens of thousands and is continuing to grow. On each show, you describe the current workplace as a "create-on-demand world." What does that mean?

In the “olden” days you would make widget and you would develop a system to produce it and you could crank out a bunch of the same things over and over again because there was no difference among them. At some point, the economy moved to what Peter Drucker called “knowledge work” where we approach each problem with a unique set of skills and we no longer have a systematic checklist that we just work our way down. Today, we more often have to define the work for ourselves – that’s creative work because creativity is problem solving – each challenge requires a different approach and has a different complexity and requires creative insight and breakthrough thinking to solve. But for many professionals, how you conjure up those types of solutions seems elusive or mystical. When the demand for those types of ideas is constant – but you don’t know how it happens and it isn’t systematic and, by the way, you have to do this in ever increasing measure – there’s tremendous pressure-packed feeling of responsibility for something you have no authority or control over. It’s the world where you’re going to have to innovate, strategize, manage rising expectations, juggle limited resources and time. Faced with this, you either default to mediocrity or just disconnected acceptance or learned helplessness. That’s what we call the Create on Demand World. There’s not a lot of literature for dealing with this that tell you where ideas come and what you can do to have more mastery over the creative process. That’s where Accidental Creative comes in.

You say that you’re an “arms dealer” in the creative revolution. Is there really a war for just-in-time ideas raging?

It is absolutely a war for ideas. The competitive nature of the creative (intellectual capital) market is intense and growing more so every day. Some firms don’t understand how to structure their work environment so that great ideas are a part of their ecosystem. Sure, they may have occasional brainstorming sessions but they haven’t built a culture of continuous ideation. If you want to know what organizations really value and prioritize first, look at the calendars and check books of the people in those firms. There’s not much time or resources devoted to nurturing ideation. Firms talk about creativity but there’s very little resource going to this. But, ideas really are king. Those with the best ideas are eventually going to win provided you can take action and do something about them.

As you know from leading your own professional firm, successful client development requires a healthy dose of creative problem solving and improvisational action. Most professionals are superb problem solvers (though perhaps more analytical than intuitive) when they are helping a client. The question is, though, how can they apply that creative skill to the challenge of how to attract clients in the first place?

It begins with asking the right questions of yourself first. Ask yourself about where your core energy is spent day to day. Many of us just focus on day to day client work and neglect key focus areas like positioning ourselves and growing our client base. We’re just not spending a lot of strategic time building these. You can spend as much time as you like delivering work for a client but if you’re not regularly thinking about how you’re seen in market or how you’re reaching out to people who need your services you’re missing the boat. You need to start asking important questions around your client development efforts and purposely generating ideas about those matters on a regular basis. One discipline I have in my life is maintaining a two hour block in my week which I have basically blank slated. I use that time to ask myself questions about Accidental Creative strategy, where we’re going and what’s on the horizon. Are we moving in that direction or are we compromising what we say we’re about in order to earn a couple of quick dollars? Clarity is far more important than certainty. Just having that time dedicated on the calendar to gain clarity is significant.

How have you applied your own creative problem solving prowess to attract clients and build your own firm?

We’ve taken less of a mass market approach. Our approach is to use a hook to catch the best fish one at a time rather than a net to catch a bunch of fish all at once. We hone in on a selective few people that we really want to work with or a select audience and we try to serve them as well as we can. You just can’t be all things to all people. We tried to mass market and it was a mistake. Accepting an engagement for the sake of money actually does a lot of damage and the money you make isn’t commensurate to the damage caused to the organization and team psychology.

The niche we’ve selected where we can be the best is especially working with organizations to figure out why there’s so much tension around the creative process and bridging the understanding gap between management and creative talent. Our approach is to ask for personal introductions to the right kind of people at the top level and talk to them individually. We work on building healthy client relationships and gain new work based on those good prior experiences by asking, “Have you ever experienced this? Are you getting wind of unhealthy whispers in the hallway? Do your experienced people seem like their holding back?” Almost unanimously people respond, “Yeah!” I say, “Well let me share some ideas on why that may be the case.” I believe in freely sharing concepts as a way to build relationships. Personally, I’ve found that hoarding intellectual property is not a useful tactic. Sharing insight and information works in your favor.

What are some simple tools or frameworks which professional services providers can experiment with to help them better leverage their creative capabilities?

First of all, there are plenty of professionals who work with their minds and solve problems but who don’t think of themselves as creative. I want to spread the gospel that if you work with your mind, you are a creative. You feel all of the same pressures as an agency creative director but you don’t identify that way because you haven’t tagged yourself as a creative.

To better leverage your creative capabilities, you want to build disciplines and practices in your life so you are more likely to have great ideas when you need them most. You want to establish a rhythmic ideation process rather than just trying to generate ideas when you are required but rather create them on a regular basis as a discipline. Put time on your calendar to generate ideas even when you don’t have to so that you can ideate when needed because you’ve practiced enough. Block off 1 hour each week for generating ideas and treat it like an appointment with yourself. List the big three priorities you have to tackle this week – what are they and what are the challenges associated with them? Spend during part of your hour writing out challenge statements for each one. Spend twenty minutes generating ideas around those key priorities. At the end of the hour, record both the actionable ideas and record the next action steps needed to it to move the situation forward. Take the time to think, what is the next thing I need to do about this? What matters most is not what you know but what you do.

Also, think about how you are managing five key disciplines: your time, energy, stimulus, focus & relationships. Consider them both from personal and professional angles because personal commitments effect your energy level as much as professional ones. How are you going to deal with these elements over the coming week, month, and quarter? The creative process is rhythmic in nature. These five areas compose and establish your creative rhythm.

• Time: How you allocate your time determines your effectiveness as much as it does your efficiency. Add unnecessary creating and strategy time. Doing this will change your life and your work trajectory and will be the most important thing you’ll build into your life.
• Energy: To realize the power of full engagement, how you manage your energy is key to success.
• Stimulus: Just like “you are what you eat,” what you take in is what you create. Be very mindful and careful about what you take in. For example, read the metanarratives – those classics of literature which were the earliest to express certain universal truths.
• Focus: What is it you are really trying to do? Do you know?
• Relationships: Hang out with people who stimulate your creativity.

Last words of wisdom?

You “own” your creative engagement. It is solely your responsibility. You need to choose to creatively engage your life and to set yourself up for creative success.

For The Left Side of Your Brain: Thinking of Consultative Thinking

2010-03-29T07:26:00.002-04:00

As a guru of critical thinking, Bill Welter is a big fan of Louis Pasteur's quote, "Chance favors the prepared mind." Welter is a consulting educator and managing director of Adaptive Strategies, Inc., which helps professionals and executives to think like consultants. That is, he helps them think critically and analytically in order to more successfully solve complex business challenges. He is also a Fellow in Executive Education at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota and the co-author of The Prepared Mind of a Leader: Eight Skills Leaders Use to Innovate, Make Decisions, and Solve Problems and he's also the author of Mindlab: A Place to Think. Welter's latest book, Rethink, Reinvent, Reposition: 12 Strategies to Move Over Your Business, is due out in June 2010. We recently had breakfast with Bill in a Chicago business club with a 67th floor view of the sweeping Midwest landscape and expansive Lake Michigan. The location and the company certainly got us thinking about thinking. Here’s what Bill taught us.

Can we really think our way out of challenging situations? Even though critical thinking may be of benefit in solving client problems, how might it help professionals and their firms to solve the problem of attracting those clients in the first place?

Let’s put this into a medical metaphor and consider professionals as the “doctors of business.” Clay Christensen’s recent book about healthcare innovation (The Innovator’s Prescription) has a wonderful model that addresses the question you have posed.

Medical services move along a continuum from “intuitive medicine” to “empirical medicine,” to “precision medicine.”
• Intuitive medicine works to solve complex, messy, non-routine maladies. Doctors embark on a “differential diagnosis” process to first discover the underlying causes and then address those causes.
• Empirical medicine works to apply “generally accepted” treatments to fairly common problems. There is a large enough body of knowledge allowing the doctor to be “pretty sure” of a straightforward diagnosis and treatment.
• Finally, precision medicine is the application of best practices to clearly understood problems. Here a common test will tell you the exact problem and a doctor is not even needed for resolution.

The need for critical thinking in a business context falls to the intuitive side of this spectrum – and so do profit margins. Clients with simple problems can often solve them by buying a good book and following the advice found in the book. As the problems become more complex they need people who have “been there before” and they can hire experienced managers or bring on junior people from their service providers. However, professional service growth (and good billing rates) comes with finding the emerging issues and being among the earliest to have figured them out for clients and prospective clients. No books – no software – just plain good thinking.

Professional services firms are expected to be “thought leaders” who anticipate future conditions for their clients. Doesn't such divination rely on raw intuition rather than critical thinking competence?

Raw intuition is valuable to the degree that the future is a reasonable extension of the past. The military consistently worries about “generals fighting the last war” and so should business. I’m old enough to recall the problems of bringing “just-in-time” inventory control and Total Quality Management to groups of managers whose intuition was that both of these developments were not only not needed, but not the “right way” to run a business.
Thought leadership is found in seeing how the future is different from the past and how this difference will impact our clients’ businesses as they engage an emerging reality.

What’s the Sense-Response Cycle and how is it a breakthrough framework?

The Sense-Response Cycle is a simple depiction of the work needed to address the phenomenon of Creative Destruction. (Side note: Creative Destruction was the term the economist Joseph Schumpeter used to describe industry evolution. Basically, industries evolve in an amoral sense and provide opportunities for some companies and destroy opportunities for others. Not good – not bad – it just happens).

Now, there is nothing special about the four phases of the cycle (Sense – Make Sense – Decide – Act) but the brutal reality is that it is a CYCLE and it has to run at the speed of industry evolution. And, unfortunately for many of our clients, their industry is evolving faster than ever before. If you run the cycle too slowly, your business becomes irrelevant. And here is the tough part – some businesses are great at one or more of the phases of the cycle, but unless they operate all of the phases well, the cycle slows down. Many mature, hierarchical businesses are great at the Act phase but they almost ignore the Make Sense phase. The result is that the cycle is running slower than it should. Want an example? Look at some of the “old line” retail businesses in the US and you see companies that have not kept up with the evolution of the industry.

Thinking is great – it’s nice to be differentiated from lower life forms, of course – but it is only useful if we act on our best thoughts. What is your advice in terms of closing the thinking-doing gap?

There are four factors of strategic success and they have to be considered as an interrelated whole. Success depends on combining strategic intention with great execution. Strategic intention, in turn, is a combination of proper goals and an aligned strategy; and great execution comes from considering the capabilities you need and having enough capacity in each of the capabilities.

So, my advice is to consider all four components from the very beginning. The gap tends to worsen when leaders take them sequentially. Strategy without the ability to execute in a timely manner is just wasted words and we have weakened our ability to execute over the past fifteen years with an overemphasis on becoming “lean and mean.”

When is it that we need to rethink? What’s the difference between rethinking and second-guessing?

Here’s a glib answer to the first part of the question: we need to rethink sooner than most of us actually do rethink. Now here’s a more serious answer: consider the amount of time you have to respond to significant change. If change is upon you, you have very little time and you are most certainly in reaction mode. Considering change that is further out gives you time to adapt. Finally, searching for clues on the horizon and “connecting the dots” gives you plenty of time to anticipate potential changes and rethink the position you have taken so far. I always try to get clients to spend time with items in the “adapt and anticipate” category. Very little real thinking takes place when you are in reaction mode.
The major difference between rethinking and second-guessing is the depth of thinking that takes place. Rethinking requires an active search for “what’s changing,” a reexamination of the assumptions underpinning your strategy, and, finally, an objective analysis of the existing set of goals and strategies. Rethinking requires deliberate reflection; second-guessing tends to be triggered by “feelings without facts.”

What can professional advisors do to practice and strengthen their critical thinking muscles?

I have good news and bad news for professional advisors who want to improve their critical thinking. The Good news is that all of us can improve. Here are a few exercises:
• Document strategic assumptions and test those assumptions for reasonableness on a go-forward basis. (“Gosh, do you think housing prices will always go up?”)
• Examine potential actions from multiple points of view. Remember, your point of view is only one point of view. (“What might the union rep think about this?")
• Look for and evaluate alternatives. One alternative may be favored, but there are always alternatives. (“What else could we do?”)
• Spend time looking for the unintended consequences of potential actions. They are always there, but may happen further out in time and place. (“How would cutting fees affect our reputation in the coming years?”)

The bad news is that building this skill takes time and focused effort. In our multi-tasking world we all-too-often allow these muscles to atrophy.

Where In The World Is The Next Generation Of PSF Partners?

2010-03-29T07:21:00.004-04:00

By Mira Leonard, Partner with Creative Growth Group

You know how there are some people that you just can’t help but notice when they walk in a room? They tend to carry a certain air of gravitas, walk taller, speak louder (not shouting) with confidence and command immediate respect – present themselves as a proper executive. Where are these people now? I see fewer and fewer of them in the professional circles these days and most tend to be of what I’d call “old school”. Is the notion of “executive presence” extinct? And if that’s the case, what will the next generation of leadership look like?

Executive presence has always been an unwritten requirement for advancement in a professional services firm. But, now it may be unwritten, unspoken and unnoticed altogether. Living in a quick service society, especially in the US, the younger professionals we work with today appear to approach their professional life and how they present themselves in an extremely casual way. It starts with the way they dress, their preferred methods of communication and language, and most importantly, their pride-in-presentation and confidence (or the lack of both). Is this a function of the Millennium, Gen X, Y, Z (can’t keep track of them anymore) overall breeding or something else? Does this mean that the next wave of Managing Directors will text message their teams and clients instead of writing letters or meeting in-person, change the dress code to “no jacket required” at all times, and…?

Call me old fashioned, but I believe we should bring “executive presence”- and the professionalism it implies - back. We need to groom the next generation of leadership so that they are not only a generation of competent technicians but also advisors that capture their clients’ and colleagues’ confidence. I am glad to report that I am not the only one who has noticed this disturbing trend. Managing Partners and Directors are increasingly bringing the matter up during our conversations on how to elevate their professional force and make them better advisors, client cultivators and leaders. And, it all starts with executive presence. So, what do we do about it? In my experience it takes work on both sides of the equation – current and future leadership – to make a real impact. Here’s what I’ve seen work and might stimulate thinking:

Confidence comes with knowing what one stands for and having the internal strength (ego) to defend that position. Managing partners need to encourage their fresh workforce to start identifying specializations and define their professional claim to fame early in their careers. Professionals who know what they are or aspire to be “famous for” tend to carry themselves with a higher degree of confidence. Up and coming partners need to find the balance between improving their technical skills while serving senior partners and navigating internal politics. A lot of this has to do with the ability to establish and maintain peer-to-peer rapport – both with clients and colleagues – and to assert ones’ point of view with conviction yet patience and poise. Be mindful of each interaction and prepare ahead of time. I often hear from our younger clients that they tend to step back and let the senior professionals run meetings. While that’s most natural because the senior professionals most likely have the experience and perhaps the client relationship, I always encourage them to step up. It starts with a brief conversation with the rest of the colleagues ahead of time defining each one’s role during the meeting. Senior partners need to allow the junior partners equal “airtime”, encourage them to participate if not lead the meeting, become mentors and think of how this sharing of airtime supports the succession of the firm’s leadership and sustenance of its value.

Professional service providers are hired by clients for their advisory and leadership skills. Clients look for outside help, a comprehensive view of the situation and direction on how to go about solving a problem, hence leadership influence. And, in order to get a full view of the situation, professionals ought to understand it first and even before that earn the trust of their colleagues and clients so as to gain a better understanding. The latter takes time and patience which is not something junior professionals have in abundance. Yet, there are ways to get there – put oneself in place of the person across the table from you, listen actively and genuinely, demonstrate emotional intelligence. Remember the person I mentioned earlier in this article? The one that everyone notices when he or she walks in the room? That person can be either a completely arrogant jerk or someone that everyone’s attracted to because of the friendly and reasonable nature of his or her personality. Be the latter one! Radiate positive charisma and you’ll be able to lead both colleagues and clients.

So far, I’ve spoken only of what takes place between the ears of young professionals. How a professional’s thinking manifests in verbal and physical presence is equally important. I was recently in Europe for client visits and was reminded of all the small, external items that add up to make an impact. Most of the professionals I met had excellent command of their tone and language (mind you, they spoke at least three languages each), were always dressed a level up (even in casual situations) and seemed genuinely interested in conversations (made eye contact and smiled). It certainly made me feel I was working with an extremely high caliber of professionals – I am sure their colleagues and clients feel the same way as well. So, dear junior professionals, pay close attention to how you dress and carry yourself. If you’d like to move up to the next level in your career, distance yourself from the current casual fad. Communicate in a crisp and concise manner – sometimes, even, face to face rather than by Twitter - dress up (even on casual Friday’s) and build up the internal confidence to embrace stillness and eye contact.

Is there something to this or do we need not worry about executive presence? Is the power of a quick serve cultural trend too strong to overcome? Even if that’s the case, perhaps that allows you more opportunity - dear future leadership – to dramatically stand above your casual crowd of competitors – with a level of professionalism in thought, words and appearance that allows you to claim impact and influence.

About the Author:

Mira Leonard is a Partner with Creative Growth Group, Inc. where she is famous for helping to grow Creative Growth and manage our own business development efforts. She also serves as a client development strategist and coach for our professional services clients.

Building a Culture of Growth

2010-02-19T11:39:00.011-05:00

Over the past several months we've been asked frequently by our clients about culture and what it means for professional services firms to create a “culture of growth” in a slow growth market. Because the subject generated significant interest we hosted conversations on the subject in several major professional services markets: Boston, Chicago, New York and Atlanta. For those of you who couldn't join us, here's a snippet of the combined takeaways.

Growth Culture refers to the set of shared values and beliefs that help the professionals in an advisory services firm engage with the firm's sales, marketing and business development efforts. It provides professionals with behavioral norms related to client attraction and development. Growth Culture in a professional services firm (PSF) captures the importance the firm places on sales, marketing and business development and describes how revenue generating activities get done in the firm. Some Growth Cultures are weak and others are strong. Some positively serve the purpose of growth and others act counter to it.

Culture sometimes has a dark side - it does have the word "cult" in it - especially when the reality of colleague behavior doesn't match the cultural promises made to new firm recruits. So, a Firm's culture may also be described as the collective myths, stories, language and delusions around which the community concretizes and solidifies its thinking. When market conditions are stable, such solidity of thought and action can produce positive growth results. When a major market discontinuity strikes, however, strong cultures sometimes traps a company in its inability to adapt.

PSF Growth Culture Top Ten List:

1. Grow or No Go

When it comes to Growth Culture, each Firm is unique. But one factor remains the same: if you’re not growing in some way, you’re likely to be falling behind. Not only is each Firm’s culture different but so is its definition of “growth.” Andy Bosman said, “In terms of defining growth we can’t give one definition that is consistent across Firms, but we can acknowledge that the first step in creating or advancing a culture of growth is to understand what kind of growth matters most in your Firm – headcount, top line revenue, margins, growth in solutions offered or something else.” At Navigant, Andy leads the Firm’s efforts to gather perspectives and align on what “growth” means across his organization.

“A simple rule in our business is you grow or you “go away,” Andy noted, especially referring to the fact that Navigant is a publicly-traded professional services firm. “A few private firms survive in “status quo” but usually they become acquisition targets in an investment environment or slowly just fade away as the senior team retires.” As Bob Dylan put it, “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

2. Don’t Deny the DNA

When Murray Coffey joined the newly formed marketing team at Jenner & Block in December 2000, the 84 year old law firm had never before had marketing professionals on staff. Nine years later, Murray and his colleagues’ success in including a marketing and business development mindset into the firm may be credited, in part, to their work-with-what-you’ve-got approach. Rather than try to force a marketing culture on the Firm, the Jenner marketing team’s goal was to democratize business development beyond the rainmaker model by enabling more Partners to play an active market-facing role. But they didn’t do this by trying to do a “marketing makeover” of each professional but, rather, their approach was to “discover the DNA of each Partner, package it and communicate it” more effectively. As a result, Jenner’s marketing professionals helped each partner attract clients in a way that was consistent with their self-identity and the cultural DNA of the Firm.

Ignoring the cultural DNA of your organization can lead to significant trouble. As Arthur Andersen’s consulting group began to gain dominance, the Firm's accounting leadership felt outpaced by their consulting practice colleagues’ sales-oriented culture. As the accountants increasingly morphed their behaviors away from the Firm's long-held tradition of systematic, arms-length service quality and in favor of their consulting colleague’s approach, they opened themselves to the likes of Enron. Meanwhile Accenture - Arthur Andersen’s former consulting group – has shifted from a “sales-culture” and shaped its current Firm culture around an intense client-intimacy-focus on its “diamond clients.”

Where good culture has gone awry, the culprit is often culture envy. Andrew Dietz of Creative Growth Group described the challenges which a Europe-headquartered Global Executive Search firm faced when trying to chase the rapid pace of growth enjoyed by its U.S.-headquartered, publicly-traded competitors, Heidrick & Struggles and KornFerry, during the Dot Com boom. The European firm’s culture was inherently geared towards long-term, team-oriented growth and its professionals are hired for intellectual horsepower, collaborative nature and service quality rather than transactional selling competence. The Firm’s flat organizational structure, which required passing a 40-interview gauntlet before admittance, meant low leverage and slowness to scale. As the Firm jealously pursued the U.S. growth rates of competitors who sported highly leveraged and sales-focused models, it inadvertently eroded core elements of its innate culture: shifting more towards eat-what-you kill mentality over its former all-for-one ethic. The European Firm lost significant money, staff and market position by pursuing a U.S. growth approach which didn’t fit its DNA.

3. Activate the Cultural Levers of Growth

Andrew Dietz described growth in a professional services firm as the result of actions and behaviors which emerge from and simultaneously influence the firm’s culture. Growth is both an input to and an output of culture. He also introduced the framework of the Growth Engine Index, turning the amorphous idea of culture into a quantifiable attribute which can be managed as a practical tool to help achieve client and revenue growth. The Growth Engine Index evaluates the four common elements – or levers - which impact how a firm approaches its growth efforts: power, efficiency, structure and sustainability. The behaviors, practices, values and assumptions which shape the firm’s overall culture infiltrate these four growth engine elements. Andrew noted that all firms – intentionally or unintentionally – address these levers when making sales, marketing and business development decisions. However, firms choose to accentuate one lever over another depending on their inherent culture.

Power - Emphasized by market leaders & bold competitors - Refers broadly to Firm’s market and brand strength and ability to effect change or exert control over clients, prospects, colleagues, referral sources, markets.

Efficiency - Emphasized in frugal and ROI driven cultures – Focus is on how smartly resources are used to derive desired impact of reaching enough of the “right” clients, prospects and referral sources within a given timeframe.

Structural Design - Emphasized by cultures which value standardization of service delivery and messaging – Focuses on how marketing & business development teams are organized & equipped to best support professionals’ client/prospect interactions.

Sustainability - Emphasized by cultures which value longevity and steady, safe growth. Concerns the degree to which a Firm’s marketing and client development systems remain diverse, healthy and reliably productive over time.

For additional details on the Growth Engine Index and to compare the growth culture of your organization to other professional service firms’ please email andrew or mira @creativegrowthgroup.com.

4. Demonstrate Client Benefits of Cultural Difference

In professional services, the benefits we offer clients are delivered through the advisory professionals we provide. Since our Firm’s people are the source and embodiment of our Firm’s culture, then our Firm’s culture is an integral part of the client experience. If that’s true, then our Firm’s culture could be a key marketing tool assuming you show it and don’t just tell about it.

Consider how your firm communicates about its culture in the marketplace. The details of your firm’s culture – especially its growth culture – do not explicitly benefit prospective clients. The fact, for instance, that your compensation structure fosters greater collegiality and collaboration doesn’t necessarily translate to benefit for your client. Without you making the explicit link between your culture and client benefit, yapping about your firm’s culture is mere dullard talk. Can you, instead, quantify or otherwise prove that your collaborative approach leads to faster, better, more cost effective results for your client? Demonstrating – not just telling – how your firm’s culture leads to significant and tangible benefit for clients can be highly persuasive.
5. Link Strategy and Culture
Professional services firms often put tactics ahead of strategy. This often yields near-term, unsustainable marketing and business development spurts. One sage, Sun Tzu who authored The Art of War, said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Similarly, Firm culture and strategy go together. Culture integrally ties to the focused mission, means and measures of the Firm. It is also what enables strategy and tactics to be successfully executed…or not.

Paul Zellner reminded us of what Merck CEO, Dick Clark, once said about strategy and corporate culture. "The fact is culture eats strategy for lunch," Clark explained. "You can have a good strategy in place, but if you don't have the culture and the enabling systems that allow you to successfully implement that strategy, the culture of the organization will defeat the strategy."

After his famed turnaround of IBM, former CEO Lou Gerstner said that earlier in his career when he was a consultant at McKinsey & Co, "I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's make-up and success. I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn't just one aspect of the game - it is the game."

Remember that games and their rules have a way of changing on us when we’re not looking. Just as strategies evolve over time, so does culture. In order to maintain a flexible perspective regarding how a firm’s culture may be tapped in the service of growth, remember that culture is an evolving process rather than a static one.

6. Walk the Growth Culture Walk

A Firm’s leadership is the source for articulating, codifying and maintaining a firm’s growth culture and the number one way they can do that is through “walking the walk.” That is, they consistently embody and communicate through their credible actions, their firm’s cultural norms.

Stories of a leader’s behavior often become the legendary underpinnings of culture in a firm. For instance, when Lou Gerstner took the CEO position in 1993 at the then faltering IBM, he wanted to cut through the company’s bureaucratic communication style. In his words, here’s what Gerstner did: “At that time, the standard format of any important IBM meeting was a presentation using overhead projectors and graphics on transparencies that IBMers called – and no one remembers why – “foils.” Nick was on his second foil when I stepped to the table and, as politely as I could in front of his team, switched off the projector. After a long moment of awkward silence, I simply said, “Let’s just talk about your business.” This story almost instantaneously made its way around the IBM global network and became part of the firm’s new lore – an indication of cultural shift from political presentation to substantive dialogue.

Death to the bland and meaningless mission statement! Professional services leaders will better serve their Firm’s culture by modeling it, not by yapping about it. Kevin Cook described Edelman’s client, Starbucks, like this, “As Howard Schultz goes, so goes Starbucks.”

Alan Deutschman is an alliance partner of Creative Growth Group, a renowned business journalist and the author of four books including “Change or Die” and his latest, “Walk the Walk: The #1 Rule for Real Leaders.” The story of Howard Schultz and Starbucks’ tremendous growth from 400 stores to 14,000 is included In Alan’s new book. Schultz came to realize that in their pursuit of market domination and growth, Starbucks had lost its vision and diluted its coffee culture which had originated with a café-like experience, the aroma of fresh ground coffee beans, and personal interaction with the barista. Schultz realized that he had to lead his company back to the basics and “walk the walk”.

“Even the most well-intentioned leaders often fail to walk the walk. Howard Schultz of Starbucks didn't live up to his own vision of the customer experience by putting relentless growth and expansion ahead of quality (as he admitted in a leaked memo),” Alan wrote. In a January 2008 memo describing his “Transformation Agenda,” Schultz wrote to his employees:

“If we take an honest look at Starbucks today, then we know that we are emerging from a period in which we invested in infrastructure ahead of the growth curve. Although necessary, it led to bureaucracy. We will now shift our emphasis back onto customer-facing initiatives, better aligning our back-end costs with our business model.”

Schultz said that he returned to his operational leadership role at Starbucks because he felt that the way out of crisis was not a simple change in business strategy, but instead– in his words– “love and nurturing.” His key to turning things around was revitalizing the investment in his people, recommitting to the core purpose of the organization and providing employees with hope and inspiration.

As a demonstration of his commitment to Starbuck’s cultural DNA, Schultz took 10,000 of his best people and brought them together in New Orleans in late 2008 for a leadership conference where they spent 50,000 volunteer hours helping communities re-build after Hurricane Katrina. Schultz summed up his thoughts about the company culture this way: “When you love something, when you care so much, when you feel the responsibility… you find another gear.”

Clearly, the culture of a professional services firm – growth-oriented or otherwise - is a function of leaders commitment to nurture it. But, Firm culture is also often a reflection of ego and charisma of its leadership. Kevin Cook told the story of a former client in the commercial real estate business which neglected its backend operations in egotistic pursuit of growth and novelty. The Firm had to ultimately restate earnings and fell into disrepair. Charm and charisma don’t equate necessarily to great leadership or decision-making but they do have a persuasive impact on culture.

“We fall into the clutches of toxic leaders who promise us the moon, knowing full well they cannot deliver. In the worst of all cases, toxic leaders fall under the spell of their own grand illusions and believe that they can. Jeffrey Skilling, former CEO of Enron, predicting an astronomical spike in the next year's stock price just as the company was imploding, is but one classic example.”
- Jean Lipman-Blumen, “The Allure of Toxic Leaders”

7. Build Growth Culture One Professional at a Time

Because, in professional services, the functional professionals are the walking embodiment of your brand, developing a culture of growth must include activities and behaviors which help individual professionals successfully contribute to the client and revenue development effort. Investing in opportunities for professionals to learn and practice client development skills in a safe environment or under the tutelage of a senior partner goes a long way in driving growth culture down through the organization. New recruits to the firm – at the earliest levels of their career – should be involved in the marketing and sales efforts at least in proposal development or thought leadership research roles. Lateral hires should demonstrate the ability to fit or, at least, adapt to the Firm’s growth culture before they’re hired. Once hired, laterals should be “onboarded” in terms of marketing and sales activities, not just on where the files are stored and coffee maker kept.

Matt Rebro, Director of Business Development with Pepper Construction asked the panel, “How do you shift the functional professionals in your Firm to a sales mindset?” Since this is one of the challenges that Creative Growth Group is often asked by professional services firms to address through workshops and coaching, we offered the following tips.

One size fits none - Specialists look at the world in a unique way. A Specialist is someone who thinks differently than anyone else and likes to own personally any project he or she works on. When specialists are expected to be part of the herd and always come up with the expected response, they will always be working against themselves. Because professional firms are made up largely of specialists, a one size fits all approach to business development – expecting your specialist professionals to all be great connectors for instance – is doomed to failure. Instead, fit individual strategies and tactics to your individual professionals.

Celebrate Incrementalism – Professionals are generally high-achievers if not over-achievers. They like to get the right answer and achieve results quickly. Alas, client development is an ambiguous activity fraught with paradox and delayed gratification. As a result, professionals who fear failure do nothing instead. They just won’t play the game. You can help them by focusing on simple, short-term, sure-to-win steps. Then celebrate each forward step. “You made one call to a prospective client today? Hooray!” “You sent an e-mail to a friend describing what you do for a living? Yippee!” No kidding.

Start with who they know – Ask your professionals, “Who already knows you, likes you and trusts you? Who is already willing and able to help you grow your practice?” Have your reluctant marketers start there. They’ll encounter much less initial rejection and discover the warm and fuzzy fact that client development success is deeply rooted in reciprocal relationships and friendship…and that’s when it is fun.

Retool their brains, – Reinforce that you are not asking your professionals to be salesmen. They are likely to view sales as sitting on the opposite side of the table from some sucker and manipulating the poor schmoe into buying something they don’t want and won’t help. Client development in professional services is not selling. It is attracting clients to you. Client development is about putting yourself in a position to be bought. It is about sitting on the same side of the table (figuratively) as the prospective client and helping them to solve a challenge they can’t surmount without you.

Group them – Human beings – even introverted professionals - are social creatures who grow and develop by having adequate and meaningful exposure to social situations. We learn and change well in group settings with the help of peer support and peer pressure. By bringing professionals together in regular group sessions for collaborative and cooperative accountability, learning and networking (“The Rainmaker Council” program) Creative Growth has been very successful in converting reluctant professionals into active business developers. A safe, confidential group setting provides a forum for professionals to practice their client development approaches out-loud and get feedback to improve and gain confidence before they face the real thing.

Send them a Sherpa – Sherpas are a Nepalese ethnic group of elite mountaineers and experts in their local terrain who accompany adventurous Westerners on mountaineering expeditions in the Himalayas. Who will be the client development Sherpa for your functional professionals? Whether from inside or outside your Firm, assign the professionals (individually and by group) one or more business development coaches who can serve as a role model and steer them on the right path.

Provide the platform – Equip your professionals with ways that they can “sell without selling.” A great example of a platform which makes it easy to connect is the CFO Roundtable program created by Cushman & Wakefield. Originated in Atlanta and led in Chicago by Dougal Jeppe (who was one of the attendees of our 12/10/09 event), the CFO Roundtable provides learning and networking for Chicago’s leading Chief Financial Officers. But it also provides an easy way for Cushman & Wakefield’s real estate professionals to gain direct and credible access to their best prospects. Dougal’s colleagues just need to show up. What kind of programs, content, and other tools can you provide your colleagues at a Firm or Practice group level which make it easy for them to attract clients without even knowing it?

Measure progress and deliver consequences – Nothing beats paying attention to actual results to make sure people take action. Track a pipeline of business development activity and results and deliver positive and negative consequences visibly and consistently to encourage the right behavior.

Leaders first – If you’re Firm’s leaders aren’t demonstrating the right client development effort and aren’t paying visible attention to progress/consequences, you won’t succeed in helping your functional professionals become active marketers.

Change the people – If you can’t change the people, change the people. If you’ve really done your best to support your functional professionals in their business development efforts but you still see no change in them you may need different people on your team.

8. Practice Patience AND Encourage an Anticipatory Culture

Here’s patience: Navigant Consulting made a commitment in 2009 to sustain the brand reputation they worked so hard to build since its inception ten years earlier. “The Firm gave up profit this year – despite Wall Street’s displeasure – to keep investing in the Firm for the long run,” Andy Bosman said. That doesn’t mean the Firm wasn’t more careful than ever with its marketing spend. Like many, it shifted budget from broader, mass marketing initiatives to more targeted and measurable electronic marketing programs.

Other leading consulting firms took a lesson from the market downturn in 2001 and are not over-reacting in the current slowdown by slashing people and programs. One example is Deloitte which – though some cuts have certainly been made - has managed to balance expenses and investment in people. The challenge for Deloitte is also balancing the four different cultures which exist among its four business units - three of which operate with through regional practices and one of which – consulting operates through a national, location-agnostic team. At Deloitte, a shared compensation model on signature accounts is helping enhance the firm’s growth culture.

Here’s anticipatory thinking: “When the market isn’t causing growth and you have reached a market share point where each extra percent of growth is much harder to capture, your (the CMO or Firm leader) role is to be the driver of thinking differently to look for new growth opportunities – and this isn’t typically just doing more of what you are already doing,” Andy Bosman told us. “It requires stepping out of the comfort zone and making bets (risk is always “fun” to sell in professional services). Good examples of this are our investment over the last several years in Clean Energy (a topic that is just now cool) and FTI’s investment in a strategic communications practice.”

Jay Godla is a big believer in Anticipatory Culture…though he may not phrase it exactly that way. Jay is the Consulting Markets & Strategy Leader at Hewitt Associates. During our session, Jay described a 2007 article from McKinsey Quarterly (Jay is a McKinsey & Co. alum) titled, “The Granularity of Growth.” The article (which we’ve attached alongside this summary) is based on a study showing that the biggest factor in a company’s successful growth was its ability to pick a market with a “huge tailwind.” Wayne Gretzky once said, ““A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” Culture plays an important role in institutionalizing the ability to find and mine micro-markets in hyper-growth. It is especially by fostering a culture of curiosity, resilience, forward-thinking and entrepreneurial spirit, that a professional services firm can anticipate where its future market and clients will experience the strongest need.

9. Merge Culture not Just Cash Flow

Mergers and acquisitions of professional services firms are on the rise as some seek market relief and others opportunistic inorganic growth by joining forces. Yet, we all know how often mergers fail to achieve objectives. In the land of inorganic growth, culture is also a make or break factor.

Jim Farrell is a Management Consultant at JP Farrell & Associates, Inc. and author of the blog, A Management Consultant At Large. Jim shared this quote about a troubled merger during our session, “The only thing we didn’t do right was ignore culture.” Jim continued:

“The quote came from John Terry, President of the Transportation Group of IU International, speaking about the merger of Pacific Intermountain Express (P-I-E) and Ryder Truck Lines in 1984, the largest trucking merger in the U.S. theretofore. Both companies had been subsidiaries of IU International for six years, but had been operating independently. During the merger, John took care to have leaders from both organizations participate in all phases of the planning. However, he did not anticipate that the rank and file would find the integration so challenging. While no workers were let go, many changed workplaces, as several hundred duplicative facilities were eliminated. The highly detailed merger plan had hundreds of tasks, relating to the timing of various regulatory requirements, announcements, and systems changes. John was surprised at the extent to which people had emotional connections to their workplaces, brands, titles and co-workers, which were disrupted when reporting relationships, were realigned and the new “Ryder/P-I-E” name was adopted. Looking back, he would have paid more attention to communication with the rank and file.”

Though Jim’s story references a trucking company, the issues he highlights are equally true when combining professional firms. Successfully merging professional services firms starts with making sure that the Firms’ cultures fit. Paul Zellner described Russell Reynolds Associates’ Executive Assessment Practice which uses a competency-based diagnostic that helps clients ensure that they have strong, unified teams that can react quickly and effectively to new opportunities and challenges. The Firm’s “Culture Analyst” system examines cultural fit of organizations including those in an M&A situation.

Beyond assessment, cultural integration planning and close, constant communication with key professionals is core to firm merger success. But to acquire true cultural insight, may require both parties to take part in each other’s culture. By sending professionals from each firm into the other organization for some time or by creating dialogues between members of the two cultures, differing assumptions about growth, marketing and client development can surface and be addressed.

10. Treat Culture as Opportunity, Not Excuse

“Playing the culture card” can no longer excuse the failure of Firms to evolve a culture of growth and to activate the business development behaviors of their professionals. It is the responsibility of Firm management to close these cultural gaps in their organizations. Instead of an excuse, your Firm’s culture provides an opportunity and a basis to grow in a way that succeeds in the marketplace even at it stays true to the core of your Firm’s values and mission.

Do professional women go to market differently?

2010-02-19T11:32:00.006-05:00

By Mira Leonard, Partner with Creative Growth Group

In our work with professional service providers, we often get asked to present to affinity groups, some of which are professional women’s groups. One of the first comments we hear from women is that when it comes to client development the process for them is different. Is it, really? This piqued my curiosity and as a result I observed and talked to several successful professional women about it. Here’s what I discovered.

When it comes to growing their practices, professional women go to market NO differently than any other segment of professional service providers. In fact, I’d argue that we are in a better position to be successful in client development because of our natural skills – all we need to draw those skills out are strong support and a little bit of chutzpah (I learned that word during an interview process, a long time ago).

Let me elaborate on what I mean by natural skills. While this might be an overgeneralization, I’d say women tend to have better intuition, are more sensitive and have better multitasking and time management skills. All of these are important attributes when it comes to client development.

In my experience, the ability to intuitively relate and genuinely connect with people is one of the most important skills necessary in client development, regardless of gender. Still, female professionals may have the advantage here. People work with other people they like and trust, and that’s exactly where sensitivity comes to play. Professional women have it, which makes them natural at developing relationships. They are more readily able to “sit on the same side of the table” (figuratively) with their prospects, can quickly identify points of affinity with those they’ve just met, regardless of age, gender, etc., each of which are important first steps in any client development approach. Intuition, also known as a gut feeling, is the ability to weigh a situation and quickly and accurately decide on the most appropriate way to handle it. An extremely helpful attribute when it comes to client development, intuition is the inside voice that guides people during conversations, helps them uncover client opportunities and make the judgment calls on when and how to pursue those opportunities. If we can assume that the age old lore about “woman’s intuition” holds some truth, then we’ve identified another female business development advantage. I was talking with a client the other day who was wondering how to approach a prospect who hadn’t responded to a proposal. He had offered multiple solutions to a problem after a first meeting with that prospect. Did he offer too much too quickly? Here’s where the instinctually sharp intuition of a woman would have helped handle this differently. A female professional may have readily sensed whether enough trust had yet been built before sending a proposal. Both sensitivity and intuition play integral role in developing relationships and clients. Moreover, technical skills aside, these attributes make professional service providers better advisors. In all of these, women have the upper hand.

Most professional women, like myself, have multiple titles and tasks to juggle. We are wives, moms, leaders of community organizations and of course, directors and partners, which forces us to be very good at time and project management. This also gives us multiple venues for client development. According to Monica Bell, Chief Marketing Officer of the engineering firm HDR CHU2A, the ability to multitask coupled with a strong support system, one that women can trust and rely on, are the secrets to success for professional women. Observing female clients and friends who have risen to professional success, I’d have to agree with her. Many of our clients are often asking us for an efficiency system to help them coordinate their client work, client development efforts and management of the firm. Aside from encouraging them to think "how else?", "what else?", "who else?" and "where else?" they can get support and leverage, we also ask that they don’t segment their lives into silos but think about brining it all together. Is that need to integrate seemingly disparate aspects of our lives different for different genders? I’d say no. The days of “Mad Men” are long gone. Professional men are just as busy and involved with family and community today as women are and share the same time deficiency challenges. So, when it comes to time management and availability necessary to pursue client development, we are no more advantaged or disadvantaged than our male counterparts.

Earlier, I mentioned that professional women could use a dose of chutzpah to succeed in client development. Chutzpah is the confidence to stand up, speak up and take on a leadership role during the client development process and afterwards. The nature of professional services calls for strong advisors, who offer solutions and can defend their opinions. If professional women can’t demonstrate respectful but direct chutzpah during a prospective client encounter then they might have a challenge growing their practices. Once again, I would have to say that’s no different for women than it is for men. Regardless of gender, confidence comes with experience and client and leadership validation. In order to get to that point professionals, both male and female, have to step up and take chances.

The bottom line is that professional women, like their male colleagues go to market by developing relationships and in many regards are in a better position to be successful at it because of their baked-in traits. Before I open this to comments, I’d be remiss not to mention a couple of examples. Hedy Rubinger, a mother of four and a Partner at Arnall Golden Gregory has been extremely successful in building her practice and managing it all. Jackie Montag is another example of the quintessential successful professional woman: she is a woman who uses her natural capabilities to build a practice, run a family and lead numerous community boards. I am happy to say, the list can go on and on…

Agree or disagree? Drop me a note and let me know your thoughts mira@creativegrowthgroup.com

About the Author

Mira Leonard is a Partner with Creative Growth Group, Inc. where she is famous for helping to grow Creative Growth and manage its own business development efforts in addition to serving as a client development strategist and coach for our professional services clients.

What are you talking about?

2009-10-27T17:58:00.001-04:00

The recent passing of the wordsmith, William Safire, has me rethinking my own use of words. I have set a challenge for myself and hope you will do the same. During the next 30-days, I vow to scrub my vocabulary clean of professional babble and choose plain, skillful words instead. Join me in this effort.

Client development success in professional service firms is based on building meaningful relationships. And, relationships are built one conversation at a time. And, each conversation succeeds or fails based on the words we choose to communicate. So, we could say that words are the key to client development in professional service firms. The right words provide a distinct advantage.

Bullcast
On the other hand, the wrong words…well…I just listened to the first ninety seconds of a podcast from one of the world’s leading professional services firms and turned it off in disgust. Here’s a near verbatim transcript of what I heard: “Executives must multi-task which makes it hard to align company assets for maximum leverage but if you utilize services-thinking and the best practices we espouse you can, create collaborative capabilities that build solutions jointly across the company, assign resources effectively and rapidly adapt to dynamic market conditions, execute policies quickly, implement change fast while optimizing the level of investment relative to return.” What? Who taught that professional how to communicate, Mr. Double Talk? If you favor this style, learn from the master: http://doubletalk.com/videoHome.php3

Buzzkill
Here are some of the other buzzword-busting websites that motivate me to avoid sounding like a babbling fool.
• http://www.vidlit.com/cbs/ - A tag-a-long video for The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit performed by The VidLit Repertory Players.
• http://www.fightthebull.com/index.asp - Brian Fugere is a Principal with Deloitte Consulting and he’s a self-described bull-fighter. He coauthored the book, Why Business People Speak Like Idiots.
• http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/buzzword/ - a hoot and a good way to raise your awareness of the lazy language we and our colleagues blather.

Big Talk
Since 1922, The Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation has been studying the correlation between general vocabulary and hierarchical position in companies. The Foundation’s research has consistently demonstrated a nearly perfect correlation (on the order of .95) between vocabulary strength and how high one rises in an organization. “Why do large vocabularies characterize leading executives and outstanding men and women in other fields? The final answer seems to be that words are the instruments by means of which men and women grasp the thoughts of others and with which they do much of their own thinking. They are the "tools of thought," Mr. O'Connor once said.

If professionals need to build relationships with senior corporate executives, our vocabulary strength should mirror those executives. But this is not license to drop every fancy word we know on our prospects and colleagues. Clear thinking means clear speaking. Think plan. Speak plain.

Me vs. You
Fancy talk is self-centered. It seeks to focus the attention on how smart you are at the expense of the listener. My earliest word lessons in business were from a seasoned magazine publisher who was my first boss. He would look at every letter my colleagues and I wrote to clients and would return copies edited viciously with a slashing red pen. One early letter that I wrote unfortunately contained the phrase “I think.” This solicited a crimson ink mark made with such ferocity that it nearly tore through the page. “Never use the phrase, “I think,” he scrawled. “No one cares what you think!” His point was that the word “I” should be replaced almost every time with an expression that focuses on “You,” that is, you my client.

Weasel words
Buzzwords are akin to weasel words with the latter most often attributed to the speech and contractual language of attorneys. A 1900 edition of The Century Magazine first published the phrase “weasel words” referring to them as "words that suck the life out of the words next to them, just as a weasel sucks the egg and leaves the shell." How much substance will a professional be perceived to have if so many of their words are hollow?

Crisp communication also means avoiding hollow words that hedge – making you sound uncertain. Extensive research by professors at Duke University has shown that phrases like “it seems like” and “you know” and “kind of” and “sort of” and “I think” weaken message impact significantly resulting in what academics call “powerless speech.” Powerful speech, by contrast, is laden with enthusiasm, optimism and certainty. Instead of “I think this may be a helpful approach,” try “This is an excellent approach that has worked for many clients and will work for you.”

Right speech
Right speech brings the right results. The same word, delivered with a different attitude can have a vastly different impact on the listener. Intention and intonation make a big difference in the success of our words. The precept of “right speech” says that if we put out the right words, the right way, we will get the right results. To ensure the right results, be mindful that your words are:

• Spoken at the proper time
• Spoken in line with the truth
• Spoken gently yet with genuine enthusiasm
• Spoken beneficially and with a friendly heart
• Spoken plainly and directly and buzzword-free

What do you say to all this? Share some words with me on your experience with words that work and those that don’t.

Community Involvement as a Client Development Tool for PSF's

2009-10-27T17:52:00.002-04:00

Earlier this year Creative Growth Group organized a discussion for its clients and friends-of-the-firm regarding how professional services firms can leverage their community affairs as a client development tool. Ann Cramer, who is Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs Director – Americas for IBM, led the discussion and it was clear that the opportunities go well beyond community involvement.

Top three takeaways:

1. Integral and Strategic: Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs imply a broader impact than merely giving some cash to charities. This is no longer a nice-to-have, outlier set of activities. It is now imperative that professional services firms, just like their corporate America client base, integrate community activities into the fabric of their business strategy. As Ann Cramer said, “IBM views corporate social responsibility efforts as an integral, aligned piece and principal of our business strategy with direct impact on our ability to achieve growth and greatness.” Taken at this level, corporate social responsibility efforts can and should demonstrate an impact on quantifiable savings and/or market opportunity creation.
• Action: Lobby your firm to raise corporate social responsibility to the level of strategic imperative.

2. More than Money: You don’t have to be as big as IBM to make a significant community impact. IBM itself evolved from grand benefactor dropping cash around charitable organizations to intentional and strategic community participant considering all assets the firm has to potentially deliver to non-profits such as time, talent, treasure and technology.
• Action: Take an inventory of the time, talent, treasure and technology assets at your firm and offer an expanded resource pool – not just cash (or, in some cases, instead of cash) – to offer the non-profit community.

3. Genuine not just Generous: Strive for congruence between what your firm claims as its values and how it actually conducts its community and corporate affairs. Beyond congruence, a firm’s corporate citizenship activities should stem from a genuine passion for the cause being supported. If the cause has a clear, genuine and believable link to the firm’s core business and the interests of your professionals (not just your Managing Partner) it is more likely to succeed.
• Action: Involve employees in deciding how the Firm allocates its philanthropic activity and assets. 1/3 of IBM’s philanthropic activity is employee guided.

Apples versus Berries

2009-08-20T08:57:00.007-04:00

Because professional services advisors are among the most active mobile phone users, in June 2009 we asked a random sample of professional services firm partners about their experiences using Smartphones. We also spoke with a couple of Smartphone experts to get some additional insights. A Smartphone is a fancy word for a multipurpose mobile phone offering advanced capabilities and exceptional computing power. ..you know, an iPhone or a BlackBerry or one of the multitude of devices now on the market. We were especially interested in how professional are using their Smartphone as a business development tool.

“Where, not long ago, the Smartphone was considered a business tool only for large enterprises and their senior executives, these devices are now broadly available and highly affordable,” said Bryan Melton who leads Cbeyond’s Mobile Product Management efforts. “And this prevalence of Smartphones is especially valuable for the small businesses that we serve as they regularly integrate these devices into both their personal and professional lives. Smartphones help our small business customers compete head on with the Goliaths,” Melton said.

Communications Table Stakes, Applications Advantage

Here’s what we learned from the professionals we surveyed…Smartphones are table stakes when used solely as portable e-mail and calendaring tools. Right now, they aren’t heavily used as points of access to customer relationship management systems back in the office and they’re even less frequently used for other business applications. For anything beyond utility business communications, they’re as often used as personal devices as business ones. The iPhone’s appeal further muddies the water between Smartphone as business tool versus personal one. While we believe that Smartphones might provide some competitive advantage, it will only come with a firm-wide push to implement client-focused applications – not through traditional Smartphone utility communication features. Still, any advantage is likely to require the professional services firm to be an early adopter of applications that enable its advisors to clearly, significantly and almost instantly benefit clients.

Device Wars

Here are some of the details we discovered: Most of the professionals who responded (over 55% ) felt that a BlackBerry device is best suited for professional services firms and advisors and that’s what they currently use. 30% thought the iPhone was more suitable and use that device – although some complained about the AT&T iPhone network availability and performance. And, the rest leaned towards Windows Mobile devices. The primary rationale among BlackBerry users was pragmatism and needs with regard to e-mail – keyboard manipulation and integration. The primary rationale among iPhone users was ease of use and accessibility of the Web and applications beyond e-mail.

BlackBerry users praised their Smartphone for its business communication utility:

• “Better e-mail device, the typing on the others is much harder.”
• “Best for corporate supported e-mail.”
• “Syncs with Outlook; real keyboard for e-mail.”
• “Superior email capabilities and integration with Exchange”
• “For me, it's because I am using it more for communication than for web browsing. I think it is a little easier for email.”
• “Industry leader, secure, it has business applications, so I can view PPT as well as Word docs, the Storm is really easy to use.”

iPhone users preferred their Smartphone for its usability and applications beyond e-mail:

• “Ease of use, superior functionality”
• “I find it easiest to use”
• “BlackBerry seems to have a corner on the market, however, I've had no issues with my iPhone, despite it seemingly being an entertainment vehicle first and professional tool second, which seems to be the opposite of BlackBerry.”
• “Access to internet is better.”
• “The best technology and applications.”
• “Numerous applications in one device.”
• “It seems to be the device with the most friendly navigation tools and easy to access applications.”

Maury Margol is a wireless industry expert, President and Co-founder of the Wireless Technology Forum and Founder at Productiv Wireless which trains corporate users how to make the most of their Smartphone usage. Margol put it like this, “iPhone is the best output device. Blackberry is the best input device.”

Tim Wise, co-founder of the communications technology & strategy consulting firm Advocate Networks, draws a sharper distinction, “For the power mobile users, the iPhone is inferior from a business perspective given the coverage and network quality issues and the more time consuming interface. However, from a future potential, iPhone has a lot of potential.”

One wildcard in the Smartphone war is the Palm Pre which first went on-sale in June 2009. Some see this new device as blending the best of both Blackberry and iPhone worlds but the Pre’s late start, limited application-base and distribution on the Sprint network make the climb much harder for Palm within the professional services market. Palm is first launching a paid-App store in September 2009 so the Pre’s late start will be further hindered in the professional markets by a dearth of business applications available even later. Further, Palm has placed its initial distribution bet with Sprint whose reputation and channels have suffered relative to Verizon and AT&T. For instance, when Sprint released second quarter 2009 results, it revealed the defection of over 250,000 subscribers and a net loss of $384 million. Instead of demonstrating a commitment to selling its services to the professional services space, Sprint has invested in the prepaid cellular business which seems to serve a broader, mass market, lower price/lower margin market. Because of these factors, we believe, Palm Pre will have difficultly gaining traction in the professional services market. According to Tim Wise, “After almost 3 months, we are seeing limited penetration and wins by Sprint with the Palm Pre in the enterprise market. The primary factor appears to be the historical perceived coverage gap Sprint has had compared to AT&T and Verizon Wireless.”

Sorry folks…Responsiveness is NOT an Advantage…It’s a Must

More than half of respondents (54%) saw no business development or client management competitive advantage accruing to them because of their Smartphone usage. While 46% indicated some advantage from using their Smartphone, a look at their reasons for saying so reveal little true advantage. Those who attributed advantage to Smartphone usage suggested the benefit came from increasing their client responsiveness. “The devices clearly provide a time advantage – especially for the more mobile professionals,” said Tim Wise.

However, as more professionals are equipped with Smartphones, any advantage is diminished. Survey respondents shared views such as:

• “It has become required, so I would not say it gives an advantage any longer.”
• “They are a commodity in the business place at this point.”
• “Most competitors have them too.”
• “NO advantage. Everyone has it.”

Further, our ongoing investigations into competitive advantages for professional services firms indicate that “responsiveness” is a vague, hackneyed term and that, while clients expect professionals to respond quickly to their communications, responsiveness is a hygiene factor. By that we mean if responsiveness is missing from a client advisor relationship, the client will be significantly dissatisfied with the advisor. However, responsiveness is not a motivator which compels a client to use you more. So, we fail to see how a Smartphone – as currently used by our professional services firm respondents – provides an advantage. Right now, the Smartphone is a utility and a requirement but without a new compelling application, it is not a differentiator.

Mixing Business and Personal

This surprised us: 67% of our professional services advisor respondents own the Smartphone themselves. So, individual professionals are largely making their own purchasing decisions regarding which Smartphone they use. Even when the firm dictated Smartphone usage, many of our respondents were planning on buying their preferred device anyway…especially when the firm’s device was a BlackBerry, many professionals were planning on their own iPhone purchase.

Also, far more professionals had downloaded a personal productivity tool to their Smartphone than had loaded a business applications provided by their firm. Nearly 70% of professionals had downloaded a personal productivity application such as GPS, social networking tools, games and restaurant finders. About 50% used the multimedia capabilities of their Smartphone – mostly the music/mp3 functionality of their device - and nearly as many used the device’s video capability.

“The best application for professional services firms are mobile access to social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Plaxo and others as well as time and billing applications,” said Tim Wise. “Other application integration is limited and primarily related to personal interests.”

The fact is, there may no longer be a distinction between devices used for work versus personal purposes. “There is no line between business and personal use anymore. Professionals are “always on” whether they are the office or at the kid’s soccer game,” said Margol.

No Strings Business Development Opportunity

We asked professionals, “In addition to email, calendar, contact details and Internet what office based applications, systems or databases has your firm made accessible by Smartphone?” The largest single response was “none.” We asked what professionals “wish list functionality” items would be for their Smartphones and the primary response related to CRM system access with a scattering of forward thinkers who replied with apps such as “Live video phone for virtual “in-person” meetings from anywhere.”

These “wish list” apps are interesting and basic and, in actuality, require little to put into effect.

While professionals may perceive little competitive differentiation from their Smartphone usage, it is quite possible that no one has shown them where the advantage lay nor have they experienced the breadth of applications already available.

“Most firms spend a significant amount of money deploying Smartphones and little on training the user,” Margol told us. Many more potentially helpful Smartphone applications are already available for use than any of us have time to find and master on our own. Many are already loaded on the devices. And, thousands more are available on the devices’ App Stores. The Blackberry application store has at least 2500 applications with still more available outside of Blackberry’s confines. iPhone has 65,000 apps available on its store. Blackberry may have a larger installed-based of phones among professionals, but iPhone has been far more aggressive in touting the availability of its apps. A recent full page four color advertisement on the back cover of The New York Times Magazine touted twelve seemingly simple apps to help you run your practice. The new battleground among Smartphone providers is the app and this will certainly hold true for those serving the professional services market. "I definitely see the wireless industry moving towards more professional services applications on the Smartphone,” said Cbeyond’s Bryan Melton.

Many of the seemingly “Buck Rogers” style apps like video phone are already available now, albeit it in somewhat raw form. For instance, Qik is an app which enables mobile live video sharing. During a recent lunch with our friend, Fred Perpall of Beck, he flipped his iPhone on its side and showed us a crisp video showcasing Beck’s recent projects…no special add-on required.

On the personal front, you can already watch TV on your Smartphone. The other day, I kept my seven year old daughter occupied in a dreadfully boring waiting room with an episode of the Jonas Brothers streaming on my phone. Apps like Slingbox let you watch live TV and others like Iheartradio, Slacker Radio and Pandora let you listen to existing radio stations or your own custom music radio station from your Smartphone. So, certainly there are or will soon be services streaming professional development content such as rainmaking tips to Smartphones. Brush up on your business development skills immediately prior to your new prospect meeting with a little refresher video or audiocast downloaded on the spot.

A few of the other current Smartphone applications and content already available include:

• Vlingo which provides voice recognition for mobile applications like searching Google without the keyboard.
• Google maps and directions tailored for the Smartphone
• Goog-411 Free phone information services
• Forbes reader – no subscription required
• Wall Street Journal reader – no subscription required
• Instant messaging – From AOL’s AIM to Yahoo! Messenger and from the classic ICQ to Google Talk, there are a host of IM tools available for Smartphone us.
• Skype – Free Skype to Skype calls on iPhones and they’ve got versions for other devices too

Because Smartphones usually come with a GPS chip built-in, “location based services” are supposedly the next big thing in Smartphone apps. That means your phone can tell an application somewhere in the Internet ether where you are so that app can deliver just-in-time and just-at-the-right-place information to you. You could, say, drive up to a prospective client’s office while the most current, news of the day, prospect intelligence is beamed to your Smartphone as you enter the parking lot.

Who Will Step Up?

Maybe there are too many apps and too much technology for professionals to tackle and too little time to figure it all out? “This will continue to evolve rapidly as applications and devices develop – with the 4G license (next generation, higher capacity, wireless network) requirement to “unlock” devices from the carriers being the next leapfrog event,” said Tim Wise. Opportunity or overload? Perhaps, that’s why there’s not heavier usage of the myriad features and tools available with the current generation of Smartphones? But, if the potential exists for these tools and apps to provide competitive marketing advantage, who will step up to help? It seems that device manufacturers and their partner telecom service providers have a significant opportunity and, perhaps, obligation to support professionals’ realization of their Smartphone’s full potential. Perhaps, the technology teams within professional services firms, alongside the firm’s marketing leadership, should require more app adoption support and training from Smartphone device and service providers? We would like to hear from you about how you and your firm are getting the most business development benefit out of these high-potential technologies.

Government Stimulus Effect on Professional Services Firms

2009-08-20T08:45:00.004-04:00

Earlier this summer, Jeff Anderson, Huron Consulting, Patricia Pryor, Cherry Bekaert & Holland and Jeremy Silverman, McKenna Long & Aldridge - three experts in serving government organizations and dealing with government contractors spent time with a sub-set of professionals involved with The Rainmaker Council to discuss how professional services firms can potentially tap stimulus spending and work with government entities. The following key points emerged from the meeting:

• Being a government contractor means being in a unique industry. If you participate in the government sector seriously, you need to rethink of your services – you’re no longer an “IT Services consultant” or a “financial services consultant,” for instance, but rather you’re a government contractor.

• Taking the step to participate as a government contractor is an expensive one due to the lead time to win projects and also because of the compliance requirements involved. Firms that that do business with the federal government are subject to a variety of rules and regulations. Most notable among them, perhaps, is the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) - codified at Title 48 of the Code of Federal Regulations - containing the uniform policies and procedures for acquisitions by the U.S. Government. Although many agencies supplement the FAR with their own requirements, the FAR represents an effort by Congress to create a uniform framework for contracting with agencies of the Executive Branch. Enforcement of these regulations has been highlighted and scrutinized recently due to negative incidents with U.S. contractors in Iraq such as KBR and Blackwater.

• The reason firms commit to government contracting is the large volume, long term annuity projects which can result. While government contracts can be terminated for convenience by the government at any time, 95% never are. The barriers to enter the government market are significant. As a result, firms with significant revenue from government contracts can command a valuation premium in an acquisition.

• You can’t just “run in and get your feet wet” in this arena – you need to demonstrate your firm’s long term commitment to it. Patience matters and you need to demonstrate to the bureaucrats that you and your firm have got it. Bureaucrats want to work with “government contract warriors who have deep experience” helping in their specific field.

• If a government project may pay over $100,000 to a service provider a bidding process is required. You can learn about government RFPs on www.fedbizopps.gov but by the time the information is available, you’re too late to get on the front end and shape the opportunity.

• To get in the door with a government agency the first time, some providers will offer to do a sampling of work or an entire project at no fee. Like with other areas of professoinal services business development, it is important to demonstrate your capabilities before an RFP process even begins. Offering training / educational opportunities.for a government entity is one good way to do this. Another is to offer what Ernst & Young calls “Accelerated Solution Events” which were essentially free consulting sessions.

• Responding to RFP’s or RFQ’s is not enough. Very specific expertise matters. The Government wants to work with providers who have experience doing the same type of work for government entities in the past.

• At the same time, to win you need more than “quals,” you need connections. When it comes to building relationships with government officials, however, you need to respect the “arms-length” requirements once a bid is underway and follow the rules to avoid compromising your government contractor status. You can’t, for instance, buy lunch for a government worker in an agency you’re wooing unless the lunch is under $25 and even then many government employees maintain a zero dollar tolerance policy.

• Small firms have a unique opportunity to compete as government contractors because of disadvantaged business set-asides. By definition, a Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) or,sometimes, a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) is a small business that is at least 51 percent owned by one or more individuals who are both socially and economically disadvantaged. SDB status makes a company eligible for bidding and contracting benefit programs involved with federal procurement.

• Disadvantaged businesses often succeed by being highly expert in a portion of government contract work that is complementary to the work done by the “big” contractors. These firms often team up with larger government contractors to offer full service solutions and provide the larger firm with the bidding advantage of adding diversity and unique expertise to their bidding team’s qualifications.

• Procurement advocacy through lobbyists or your own team members can help you gain advantage ahead of the RFP. When using Lobbyists, keep in mind there are two types: “access” (people who are primarily just connectors to the key government officials) and “substance” (strategic influencers who deeply understand the issues) ones. Know when and how to use them and be careful playing any political cards.

• If you lose a bid, you can get debrief intelligence including disclosure of the winning bid information in detail. This can be helpful information for your next approach.

• Protesting of an RFP loss is an option, although, before doing so make sure you have a very good reason because even if you overturn the decision and win the work it may be the last opportunity you get to work with that organization. Bureaucrats have long memories and don’t appreciate the hassle and embarrassment of being second guessed.

• The Stimulus package doesn’t mean much more than regular givernment spending with a twist. It will most likey take 12+ months before any “stimulus” spending is granted. Stimulus = Procurement

• At the same time, there will be significant opportunity for government work as a result of the increased budget allocations for healthcare, environment/energy and infrastructure projects. Also, there are opportunities to support the government in areas where it has now become part or full owner of key business assets such as in the automotive and financial services sectors.

• An example of how the government is hiring a variety of professional services firms to help with bailout situations is the FDIC Receivership Assistance Contractor program. The scope of work under Receivership Assistance Contracts (RACs), which have been awarded to the contractors encompasses the full range of financial institution closing support functions, including: Facilities, Asset Management, Claims, Investigations, Settlement, Employee Benefit Plans, Financial Closing Process, Personnel Administration, Franchise Marketing, Branch Marketing, and Trust.

• Beyond a professional services firm being a government contractor itself, there are opportunities for professional service providers to prepare clients to work with the government by helping them achieve transparency and have reporting, disclosure and compliance processes in place.

Conclusion:

With increased influence and money to spend, the US Government is an attractive business prospect for many professional services firms and their clients. Working with the government takes massive commitment and patience but it could offer lucrative pay off both in short and long term, especially with the right exit strategy in place.

Professional Services Firms: The Honey Bees of Commerce

2009-08-20T08:40:00.005-04:00

How Organizations Can Access & Benefit from Professional Services Firms' Extensive Influence in Today’s Economy

By Randy Hain, Managing Partner of Bell Oaks Executive Search
and Brandon Smith, Founding Principal of Core Growth Partners

An “all hands on deck” call has been made. It is clear that the survival of many companies, and industries for that matter, is going to require collaboration with innovative, deeply influential partners. The corporate C-suite needs to understand what resources they have and may need in the short and long term to avoid knee-jerk reactions that may cause more harm than good. No where has this call been heard loudest than perhaps among professional service firms.

As respective partners with two different professional service firms, our client experiences have been similar in many ways with regards to this new economy. We hope this piece will inspire further discussion on how organizations of any size can—and should—take advantage of the influence and cross-pollination offered by this sector of business.

Professional service firms—or knowledge-intensive firms—are an interesting study. Their main business is the delivery of specialized, expert services, and they differentiate by depth of knowledge and innovation in their particular fields. They span industries and functions from marketing to accounting, IT to people development, legal to recruiting, and on. They have an increasingly important impact on our economy and culture that is often disproportionate to their comparative sizes. And while varied, most traditional professional service firms serve the same critical role: help companies optimize their performance.

One can argue that professional service firms have largely delivered on that objective in recent decades. This success rests primarily on the professional service firm’s ability to influence others. In the past, successful firms effectively used this influence to help clients stay on the cutting edge of industry trends, manage complexity and maximize their ability to positively impact shareholder value.

Today, the need for influence is even greater, and the responsibility that accompanies it is larger in scale and scope. Professional service firms need to not only help client organizations prosper by maximizing their internal workings, but also improve their abilities to positively impact the community, industry and economy in which they operate. It is a mindset shift from maximizing shareholder value to maximizing stakeholder value. Stakeholders include all of us: investors, customers, colleagues, coworkers, families and friends. Professional service firms must make this shift through a focus on innovation, collaboration and relationships for the benefit of their clients and themselves.

Influence through Innovation and New Ideas

Naturally, professional service firms need to stay current on trends and technology while still maintaining an eye on the future. Ideally, this puts them in a state of near constant innovation. These firms are the equivalent of honey bees in the garden of commerce. Through networking, researching, continuous learning and adaptation, they are able to glean new ideas that they and their clients need to be effective. Successful professional service firms utilize their influence to gain acceptance of new thinking within their client companies and pollinate their existing business models with new ideas, thus facilitating innovation.
This constant sharing of new thoughts and ideas adds tremendous value to organizations. Historically, this was considered more of a value-add than a responsibility. But today’s business environment requires something different. Professional service firms need to intentionally pollinate as many business models and industries as possible to further the health and growth of our collective garden.

What this looks like today is the deliberate practice of sharing success stories and best practices between organizations. For example, we’ve been hearing that many consumer packaged goods organizations (particularly basic goods) are seeing revenues increases—but they don’t know why. These companies range from packaging companies that box the goods down to the convenience stores that sell these basic items on their shelves. They are all experiencing somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-5 percent increases in revenue and are mystified as to the reason. This is where professional service firms should collaborate and discuss this trend with others and identify the “why” so they can help other organizations implement the “hows” for the benefit of the larger economy.

Influence through Connections and Collaboration

Andrew Sobel, co-author of Clients for Life, wrote in an article titled “Who Advises the CEO?”: Today, a whole new cast of top management advisors has emerged. Many professionals, for example—management consultants, investment bankers, lawyers, publicists, university professors, executive coaches, and even pollsters—now style themselves as “counselors to management.”… At the root of this enormous advice industry is a simple fact: the job of leading and managing a complex organization really is harder than ever. The half-life of information is getting shorter and shorter, and the strategic choices available to a CEO have multiplied.
Professional service firms are at the heart of this collaborative process to advise senior business leaders. We live in a world that is increasing in its complexity and its degree of ambiguity. Consider the possibility that today is the most complex day in the history of human kind … and tomorrow will surpass today. This is both frightening and exhilarating.

Professional service firms are accountable to helping organizations make sense of this complexity and direct them to others who can help them weather the storm. It has been our experience that the most connected people tend to work in these advisory roles. They are continually meeting new prospects, getting introduced to other professionals, attending networking events and expanding relationships within their existing client base.

The best firms stand out by utilizing their influence and contacts to make useful connections for their clients that add value and contribute to highly-effective collaboration. Clients should come to expect these connections to assist with their personal and professional development and provide needed services for their companies that not only lie outside the firm’s core expertise but that introduce other thought partners as well.

Influence through Enhanced Relationships

Historically, many professional service firms assume a “vendor” or “transactional” relationship posture. “Tell me what you want and I’ll deliver that service.” Given their unique perspective in the world of commerce, these firms are called upon to elevate relationships with clients through cooperative problem solving and a comprehensive perspective of the industry and business at large. After all, referencing the honey bee analogy, clients know their patch of flowers, we know the entire garden.

How do professional service firms create this new level of client relationship, and what should clients look for? Carl Rogers, famous psychologist and one of the founding fathers of relationship-based counseling, offers three critical elements:

1. Accurate Empathy – We must get curious about what it is like to walk in our clients’ shoes. This entails asking precise questions to get clear … and help our clients get clear on what they are struggling with and needing.

2. Congruence – In our conversations with others, all of us, but particularly those in advisory capacities, need to elevate the quality of our conversations and more intentionally practice a level of gut-check honesty. It is our obligation as friends, colleagues and professionals to share not only the good news, but our worries and concerns, even if the result is lost business because it’s not what the other party wants to hear.

3. Unconditional Positive Regard – We need to care about our clients. They are people just like us who are struggling to do what needs doing.

To conclude, professional service firms have significant impact on our economy and the local community. But these firms need to continue evolving and transforming mindsets from a desire to maximize shareholder value to maximizing stakeholder value. For corporate executives, the question to ask is simple: “Do I currently engage with professional service firms that add significant value, act as collaborative partners, provide innovative ideas and put my interests above their own?” For professional service firms there is also only one question: “Am I a trusted advisor to my clients who uses influence to add value to the relationship and the greater community or am I acting like a transactional vendor?”

In our own careers, we have worked diligently to earn the right to offer the influence we have described. The value-added relationships we have forged with clients have provided the catalyst for active engagement in positively impacting their companies, employees and the greater community. It can be challenging in these difficult economic times to look beyond the monetary gains in a relationship, but our years of experience have revealed that we are in a marathon, not a sprint. Investing in collaborative relationships, providing new ideas and being good stewards is the right long-term formula for how professional service firms should do business.

We all have an opportunity to use our influence today. How will you wield yours?

About the Authors

Randy Hain is Managing Partner and Shareholder of Bell Oaks (www.belloaks.com), a nationally-recognized executive search firm. He has an established track record of leading successful searches and building teams in diverse industries and functional specializations ranging from individual contributors to C-level leadership. He has played the lead role in hiring, training and developing of one of the most successful search consultant teams in the business, and has earned a reputation as a values-based leader who invests heavily in his colleagues, candidates and clients. He may be reached at rhain@belloaks.com.

Brandon Smith is Founding Principal of Core Growth Partners (www.coregrowthpartners.com), a consulting firm specializing in leadership development and strategic culture building, as well as a Senior Lecturer in the Practice of Management Communication at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. With extensive experience in both executive development and corporate growth, he has worked with clients representing the following notable firms: Chick-fil-A, The Coca-Cola Company, Alston + Bird, McKinsey & Co., The Home Depot, Procter & Gamble, IBM and Bank of America. He may be reached at brandon@coregrowthpartners.com.

Creative Growth Strategies by Pamela Adams | Constant Contact

2009-08-20T08:22:00.006-04:00

Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available today for professional services firms to stay in front of clients and prospects. When you add email to your marketing mix, you spend less time, money, and resources than with traditional marketing channels like direct mail or print advertising. In this article, we'll take a look at email marketing-where to start and how to make it work for you and your Firm - with a specific focus on list segmentation.

Where email marketing rises above other marketing methods is the user’s ability to deliver messages to a targeted, segmented, permission-based list of recipients. The relevance of the message to the recipient is key; email marketing allows for targeted communication to a pre-qualified, interested audience.

Using email marketing, in a few short steps, you can:

 Send great-looking, professional email newsletters, and announcements
 Build and manage your email addresses
 Communicate consistently with your customers and prospects
 Track which customers are opening your emails and what links they are clicking on

Where Should You Start?
No matter your type of business — launching an active dialogue with your customers takes just a few simple steps:

Build a list of people interested in hearing from you
Collect email addresses and request permission to send emails at every point of contact with your current and prospective customers and clients. This works in both your online and offline interactions. For example, you can add a “Join My Email List” sign-up box on your website, display a sign-up book in your store or office, and ask people you meet, such as when exchanging business cards, if they would like to join your email list.

Decide what you want to communicate
Compelling content will engage your readers and make them more likely to keep reading. Therefore, make your email campaigns useful, relevant, and interesting. It’s important to send personalized communications that address your audiences’ concerns and needs without being overly sales-oriented. This will position you as a source of valuable information, and even as an expert. You know your audience and what’s important to them – include plenty of relevant images or share an upcoming events calendar for “goings on” at your business.

Determine when you want to communicate
Developing a regular schedule will familiarize customers with the frequency of your email newsletter. Evaluate your business calendar to make sure you’re including timely information and strategizing the best time to communicate. Consistent and scheduled communication can strengthen the relationship you are trying to build.

By looking at your calendar and paying attention to the feedback and reactions from your customers, you can map out what information you want to communicate and determine the best timing. Planning your content and focus ahead of time will make it much easier for you to develop your campaign and stay on schedule.

By implementing the simple steps above, you can rest assured that your important emails are being read by your desired audience. Applying these tactics can help increase sales and provide you with the full benefits of a successful email marketing campaign.

Segment Your Customers
Not all customers are alike — what appeals to one may not interest another. Therefore, it is important that you connect your customers’ different interests to the marketing messages that you are sending. Segmenting your list of clients or targets based on their interests is an efficient way to stay out of the junk box.

By using segmentation, customers are notified only about new services, specials, and offers based on past buying patterns and what they’ve clicked on in previous newsletters. Every small business can segment its customer base at some level. Creating different email messages for different groups is a bit more work on your part, but it’s worth the extra effort when a message hits your customer’s sweet spot. Your general newsletters may appeal to most customers, but mailings that reach out to your audience segments can build even deeper relationships and drive more sales.

The tips and examples below demonstrate how to start targeting, or segmenting, your email marketing lists:

1) Start with the first touchpoint: The best time to collect information for segmenting purposes is when your prospect or customer initially joins your email list. You can easily create segmented lists by offering options with checkboxes on your sign-up form, both on your website and as part of a sign-up sheet at your business.

2) Ask for personal information: Ask for information, such as location and personal preference, to determine what's relevant to the person signing up. For example, an HR consultant might ask whether someone prefers to stay abreast of all HR-related news or simply wants news specific to their industry. That way, the consultant can create two separate lists and send HR industry news to one list and industry-specific news the other list.

3) Use online surveys: In your email newsletters, include a link to a short survey and ask for non-critical information that helps you add your customers to the appropriate segmented lists. Once you have the survey results, you can create new lists or add to existing ones based on how respondents answered questions. For example, “Are you interested in hearing about relevant industry events ands conferences?”

4) Use tracking reports: If you are using a professional email service that provides tracking reports, let the links that people click on help you understand them better. For example, take a look at the last three campaigns you sent that included links for a new business development strategy—if customers consistently click on the link; add them to your “growth strategies” distribution list.

5) Segment your list: Apply what you have learned about your clients in steps 1 through 4 and segment your email lists into groups based on whatever factors make sense for your business – it may be sales history, interests, gender, or age, for example. This enables you to target your specific messages to the group of people who will be most interested.

Overall, remember that there is a real person at the other end of each email address. Every time you create an email, ask yourself whether your email content is addressing the specific needs of your audience or whether you’re addressing only the needs of your business.

Pamela Adams is a Regional Development Director, GA for Constant Contact. She can be reached at padams@constantcontact.com

Unleash More Velocity, Volume and Value

2009-06-18T20:30:00.000-04:00

Consulting is a barometer of the professional services market overall and it is still struggling. Robert W. Baird & Co. is a financial advisory firm that produces quarterly research reports about the consulting industry. I recently caught a glimpse of Baird’s Q1, 2009 report and I took away these top three findings:

1. Weak and spotty demand: Current and predicted consulting engagement activity was weak across the board excluding restructuring work which was strong. While there’s still mostly the hint of work to come, the government consulting space is becoming more crowded as consultants are repackaging services in anticipation of a spending boom.

2. Competitive pressure is coming from David-sized firms at the expense of Goliath-sized ones: For instance, competition is being seen by laid off personnel attempting to enter the consulting market. And, smaller consulting practices are offering creative installment payment plans for cash strapped clients and lowering fees in an attempt to draw business away from larger competitors. As a result, Bill rates are under continued pressure.

3. Relationships harder to get and keep: Professional services firm buying decisions are increasingly made at the Executive level with declining buying power below that level. Plus, higher-than-normal management turnover at client companies leads to consultants having to “re-sell” their services and capabilities. It’s taking longer for client decisions to be made and for projects to reach completion.

Whether you’re a consultant, lawyer, accountant, or other form of professional services advisor, what can we do to win more business in an environment like this? Accelerate velocity, volume and value related to your client development efforts and service offerings.

1. Velocity: Existing relationships are fastest – Marketing 101 – what else can you do with/for your existing clients? But beyond that, if you and your team haven’t already done so, circle back to those most willing and able to help your practice including family, friends, colleagues from your community involvement, alumni from your firm, former clients, partners in kindred practice groups or offices across your firm. If they already know you, like you, trust you and, maybe even, have tried your services before – your odds of success and speed in getting work or referrals goes up significantly. Have you fully tapped these assets and helped equip them to drive work your way? Velocity also means proving that you can deliver results faster for your clients than any other competitor can – how else can tweak your delivery processes to accelerate project completion?

2. Volume: Volume of outreach matters more than ever. Existing relationships aren’t nearly enough right now – because it takes so much longer for any one opportunity to come to fruition, we need to dramatically increase the volume of outreach – look for leverage in your rainmaking. By leverage, I mean more opportunities for you to meaningfully connect with more than one prospect or referral source at the same time – this can be done through writing, speaking and other thought leadership activities but also through having meetings where you invite key contacts from different non-competing organizations and you’re the facilitator or match-maker. They meet each other and benefit from that but you get a two-for-the-price-of-one type encounter. We all ought to be asking ourselves “how else?” with regard to the internet as leverage – it’s a powerful tool for reaching out more broadly, more quickly through social media, e-mail, etc. Whatever means chosen, get the volume of outreach for yourself and across your office up to record heights – measure it – celebrate it – take it higher.

3. Value: Make ROI measurable, vivid and immediate – Not only do we all need to do a better job of highlighting and communicating the benefits of working with our firms, we need to be bolder than ever in measuring before-after results and finding ways to tighten our processes so the results are delivered with much greater efficiency and in nearly real-time. If you don’t typically measure quantifiable results in your profession, well now’s the time to start. If you already do so, challenge yourself to develop an offering whereby you can deliver the same results (or better) in half the time. Don’t imagine that it can’t be done. Nobody could run a four minute mile either until Roger Bannister did the impossible. Also: Value is a function of benefits delivered over price paid. If you’re going to get squeezed by clients squawking about “value” …and you’re gonna…get something back in return. Seek pricing quid quo pro. Make a concession if, quid pro quo, you get more ALL of the client’s work and push a competitor out. Make a concession if, quid pro quo, the client lets you do work for another division of their business that you’ve not before touched. Offer to work on partial or full contingency if, quid pro quo, the client pays a penalty if they impede your ability to get results for them - or put some other equal risk-sharing mechanism in place.

Pump Up The Volume

2009-06-18T20:25:00.000-04:00

How can you and your colleagues each make at least 15 meaningful business development contacts per month? We expect our professional services clients make at least that many contacts. Depending on your perspective, fifteen may be an enormous number or a nominal one. We more often hear about the former, “How do you make 15 meaningful contacts each 30 days?! Isn’t that an unreasonably aggressive goal?”

Play with me on this for a minute. Imagine we ratchet the monthly number up to 100 meaningful contacts per month? Assuming you can’t give up your existing client responsibilities, how would you accomplish this? Got no idea? Think again. How else?

Broaden your view of meaningful. What if meaningful contact meant something broader than “sales pitch to a ready, willing and able prospect?” For instance, a contact which helps move your relationship with a prospect or referral source from awareness of you to trust of you qualifies as meaningful contact. Here are some other examples of “meaningful” contact:

· Gaining knowledge about a prospective client by talking with someone connected to but not within that company

· Building a business friendship with a complementary professional services advisor who could refer business to you

· Sharing content of value with a client (unrelated to your existing work with them)

· Reaching out to a college classmate who you haven’t talked with in a long time but who is now in a position or company where she might be of help to you

· Setting up meetings with members of a Board of Directors for a community non-profit or business association where you are interested in getting involved.

· Interviewing a CEO for an article you write about an emerging business topic

· Reaching out to your firm’s alumni who are now in client-side roles?

· Come up with some of your own ideas here please.

Broaden your view of who is a contact. What if a meaningful contact didn’t just mean someone you’ve never met before in your life? What if it included a phone call with an existing client about an idea you have for how they can improve their business? If the encounter is intentionally leading towards more business with a current client – it’s a meaningful contact.

Broaden your view of how and where contact occurs. What if a meaningful contact didn’t just mean a one-to-one encounter? You could invite two clients or referral sources from non-competing firms to lunch – they benefit from meeting each other and you benefit from meeting with two contacts over lunch instead of just one. What if you gave a talk in front of fifty prospective clients? What if “how and where” included meeting a key executive at a prospective client while standing on the sidelines at your kid’s soccer game and suggested you get together for coffee during the work week? Or, spending time over a Saturday night dinner with a prospective referral source along with spouses?

I can brainstorm dozens of other opportunities and ways through which you could make meaningful contacts – many of which you may already be doing but not recognizing or mining as a meaningful contact opportunity. We’re not asking you to make 100 contacts…just fifteen each month.

Fifteen meaningful contacts a month is less than four a week. Because it takes longer right now for any one prospect to convert to a client, volume of outreach (in addition to quality) to clients, prospects and referral sources matters now more than ever. You can do it. Contact us at Creative Growth Group if you’re getting stuck.

Generate More Revenue Faster

2009-06-18T20:20:00.000-04:00

A word about the veracity of the words you’re reading in Growing Professional Services: whatever we, at Creative Growth Group, tell our professional services clients to do in order to increase revenue; we do and have proven ourselves. We eat our own cooking and, as a result, we’ve grown Creative Growth Group nearly 50% annually for the past several years. Given the economic pressure on professional services firms, we’ve been sharpening our approach so that our clients can realize even faster results. We recently completed a six month engagement for a key practice of a major global consultancy in which participants realized a 142% increase in the value of issued proposals and a 41% increase in sold revenue. In order to help professional services firms realize stronger business results faster, we’ve now launched Creative Growth Group’s 90-Day Revenue Acceleration Program which, within a three month window, delivers a minimum 25% impact on the number and dollar value of opportunities and closed deals. We’re so certain that we can drive results that we’re willing to take some of our compensation from the upside we generate. Contact us at Creative Growth Group if you would like to ramp revenue faster.

Walk the Walk

2009-06-18T20:15:00.002-04:00

Standards of Professionalism are often set by governing bodies in each field – like the AICPA or the American Bar Association. More generally, professionalism is when you choose to consistently conduct yourself with your clients and colleagues with the highest possible character, ethics, spirit, and methods. It’s when your real-world actions are fully aligned with what you espouse as your true values.

When you’re entrusted with giving business leaders mission critical advice, we believe there’s a common set of behaviors that equal professionalism regardless of profession. And, back in 2006 we launched the Client Advisor Awards to showcase firms which consistently displayed those behaviors. It turns out that a great outcome between client and advisor is also highly dependent on the CLIENT’s professionalism. So, the Client Advisor Awards program honors clients as well as advisors. What if a client chose to be a “world class client” or a “client of choice?” We’ve all had difficult clients from time to time and they simply don’t get out best work – what would happen if client professionalism became a matter of importance? Clients would get far more value from their professional services firm engagements.

We’ve outlined five behaviors that make a difference on both sides of the table:

1. Capability – successful professional services providers will consistently maintain and demonstrate their subject matter expertise and capabilities at the highest levels of their profession. Successful client nominees appropriately staff engagements with client-side personnel who meet their obligations to client-advisor projects to ensure successful deliverables.

2. Content and Value-orientation – successful professional services providers will consistently demonstrate thought leadership on behalf of their clients. Successful client nominees look beyond fees and pricing of professional service firms to the total value provided.

3. Collaboration – Successful professional services providers will consistently demonstrate a team-oriented approach to their client and colleague relationships. Successful client nominees operate as if the professional service advisor is a virtual part of their organization while, at the same time, respecting all legal and ethical boundaries.

4. Creativity – successful professional services providers will consistently demonstrate innovative approaches to solving client problems and to growing the client-advisor relationship. Successful clients consistently encourage their providers to provide innovative approaches to solving client problems and to growing the client-advisor relationship.

5. Credibility – successful professional services providers will consistently demonstrate Integrity and the ability to build and sustain trust at the highest levels of their client-base. Successful client nominees consistently manage professional service firm relationships in a forthright, high-integrity, intelligent and humane manner.

Last year, we had a blockbuster speaker – Paul Voss – Managing Partner of Ethikos and Georgia State professor who spoke about ethics in the relationship between clients and their advisors. This year our key note speaker is Alan Deutschman – Alan is a business journalist and a regular contributor to publications such as Fortune Magazine, Fast Company and Vanity Fair. Check out www.alandeutschman.com He’s the author of three best-selling business books including one of my favorites – Change or Die – how’s that for a direct title? And, his fourth book, Walk the Walk, is due out this Fall and is about the number 1 rule that leaders need to know to be truly effective. He’s going to talk at the Client Advisor Awards about where leadership and professional services intersect. If you want to know what the rule is, join us for the event.

Rainmaker Radio: Professional Atlanta

2009-06-18T20:10:00.001-04:00

Because Creative Growth Group focuses solely on serving professional services firms in their efforts to grow revenue and client relationships, we’ve launched a 30-minute, weekly online radio program co-hosted by Business Radio X and Creative Growth Group, and featuring news and interviews about Atlanta’s professional services ecosystem and the centers of influence that make it thrive. The show is in conjunction with a blog by the same name www.professionalatlanta.com and you can go there to listen to our first show featuring an interview about cultivating business relationships with Randy Hain, Managing Partner of Bell Oaks Executive Search.

Cut the Cord: How Mobile Technology Empowers Rainmaking

2009-06-18T20:00:00.000-04:00

Most professionals are equipped with a smartphone - those mobile phone devices offering advanced capabilities…we each carry a wallop of wireless computing and communication power in the palms of our hands…most of which may go untapped. Please click here and complete this quick study about how you and your firm use wireless devices for client development purposes and in next month’s issue of Growing Professional Services we’ll share the results along with insights, commentary and simple, viable new ideas on how your smartphone can help you attract more clients.

Ready-Made Referral Network

2009-06-18T19:48:00.001-04:00

The Rainmaker Council is a dynamic, ready-made network of like-minded professional services providers from across all professional disciplines that come together regularly online and in-person to support each other’s client development success. Creative Growth Group now offers several tiers of membership benefits geared to individuals, practice groups to firm-level needs. Benefits range from monthly client development special interest sessions that combine learning and connecting to quarterly networking events, from systematized content to guide client development efforts to facilitated monthly peer sharing and networking groups of six to ten professionals to one-on-one client development coaching and more. Because the quality of the participants is a key benefit of the program, The Rainmaker Council does have strict guidelines for admission…but participants will wholeheartedly vouch for the value of making it in to the club. If you’re interested in learning more, please contact info@creativegrowthgroup.com

Talking Ourselves Up and Down

2009-05-13T11:30:00.003-04:00

In almost every conversation we have these days we’re asked, “What are you seeing?” They mean, of course, “Are you noticing any positive economic signs?” It’s not so much what we’re seeing but rather what we’re hearing that gives us some hope.

For nearly eighteen months we have, in part, talked ourselves deep into recession; clinging to the words of the nation’s anchormen and news editors and economic pundits and politicians and select business leaders. That’s not to imply that our economic troubles haven’t been real. Just that the reality of those troubles is always hyped by others with a vested-interest and exacerbated by our anxiety about them.

Talking it Up

Now, we may be talking ourselves back-around. What we are hearing now is:
• “Fed chief: Recession may end this year,” May 6 headline on front page of USA Today, Money Section.
• “Metro restaurants’ business a bit better,” May 7 headline on front page of Atlanta Journal Constitution Business Section (Note: Stephen Boyd of Luckyfish quipped about this, “Yeah, that’s because alcohol sales at the bar are way up.”
• “U.S. sheds fewest jobs in 6 months,” May 8 headline from Reuters news service
• "We are, as far as growth is concerned, around the inflection point in the cycle," European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, May 11, 2009
• “World Regains Taste for Risk Investors are aggressively returning to developing-world markets, driving stocks up 50% since the beginning of March,” Wall Street Journal Headline May 11, 2009
• Reports last week indicated of eleven retailers reporting April sales for stores open at least one year, 60-percent are doing better than Wall Street had hoped.
• “Nation ready to be lied to again about the economy,” recent headline from The Onion…http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nation_ready_to_be_lied_to_about?utm_source=a-section (OK, this one’s just kidding folks)
• “In April we had one of the best months we’ve ever had,” Michael Kogon, CEO of the internet development and marketing firm, Definition 6.
• “Two new deals starting, so things are getting busier,” a professional with a private equity transaction advisory group e-mailed last week.
• Smaller, locally-focused, specialty firms that can deliver superior service at competitive rates are “in” and doing increasingly well. (Note: Billy Ching of the law firm Nelson Mullins commented, “Cost consciousness is the new sexy.”
• Scott Kriscovich of TrueBridge Consulting voiced the mantra, “Flat is the new Growth” but despite the economy, Scott’s business has been on a growth rampage with not “flat” in sight.
• "Many of my clients are starting to spend money on research and planning to ensure they are in good shape for the upturn they feel is coming," says Andy Abend of M is for Marketing.
• "I'm seeing positive turnaround signs everywhere, from increasing technology budgets to overall culture shifts. We're getting closer . . .," Mark Butler of IT services firm, Zertia, told us.

The Glass Not Yet Half Full

On the other hand…we’ve still got plenty of skeptics and it’s hard to say their viewpoint isn’t well founded.
• “CEO's who were once prospects are now contacting me to help them network to find new opportunities,” one of our human resource consulting friends told us the other day.
• “In its latest letter to investors, Elliott Management, a hedge fund run by Paul Singer that specializes in distressed investments, warns that the current wave of government bailouts and stimulus spending will not work and could ultimately make the economic situation worse,” the NY Times blog, Dealbook, posted on May 8, 2009. (note: Distressed assets, huh? Could Paul Singer have a vested interest in seeing more distressed investments coming on the market?)
• “I think we’ll see unemployment at 10 to 15% before its all over,” said the Managing Partner of a major turnaround management firm at a recent executive gathering. Perhaps, the turnaround guys benefit from keeping the downturn down too?
• “Worst may be yet to come,” reads Chicago Sun Times reporter Terry Savage’s post on May 11, 2009. After providing more advice of the Elliott variety, he adds, “Sorry to spoil your day with these unpleasant forecasts. We'll only know in hindsight if the bulls or the bears are right. But it's always dangerous to get caught up in the euphoria of the bullish crowd. We learned that lesson already, didn't we?”

What can we say?

So, how should professional services advisors participate in conversations about current economic conditions? We’re paid to provide our clients and colleagues with a complete vision of reality in order to deal with it most effectively. So, perhaps we should always answer the “What are you seeing?” question with a perfectly balanced “good and bad” analysis. At the same time, we’re also paid to enthusiastically lead our clients and colleagues from darkness to light; from difficult situation to success. And, we’re paid to attract clients and grow them…not just dispassionately advise them. We get hired for our likeability as much as for our capability. Client perception of our likeability almost always correlates with an advisor’s positive, optimistic enthusiasm. Further, our own persistent action correlates with our optimism. The classic book, "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman, confirmed that the most successful salespeople were had the most optimistic mindset. So,if we are at risk of misleading the client with either too positive or too negative an assessment of what we’re perceiving in the marketplace, it is in your best interest and the client’s to lean toward the positive. It turns out that hope IS a strategy. Talk it up.

Dad, Is the Recession Over Yet?

2009-05-13T11:28:00.003-04:00

By Randy Hain, Managing Partner, Bell Oaks Company

My children are a constant source of wisdom and clarity for me. Our sons are eight and 11 and keenly interested in what’s going on in the world. We share openly and candidly the current state of politics, the economy and world news in a way they will understand. This past Saturday, my wife and I were discussing the family finances and how to cut our budget in these lean times when our younger son, Ryan, came up to me and asked if we could throw the football outside. I let him know what we were doing, discussed the recession as we had before and explained that we were trying to spend less money as a family. He looked at me for a minute, said okay, and walked away to do something else. He came back 30 minutes later with a question that was wonderfully simple and clarifying: “Dad, is the recession over yet?”

His priceless and timely question really made me think. It dawned on me that my wife and I have been carrying the recession around with us for months like a nagging cough that won’t go away. I decided at that moment to stop living in the recession and start being the guy who is working out of the recession. Showing my angst and stress is just making my hair fall out faster and accomplishing very little that I would consider productive. My attitude and actions need to reflect the hope I truly feel that better times are ahead.

Although I now have the inspiration of my son’s wisdom to guide me, surviving in business during these challenging economic times can often be a tough thing to accept. How are you coping? Surviving often means delaying or canceling important projects, laying off great people, reducing employee benefits, thinking about only today when we should be thinking about 10 years from now. Expense cutting becomes the dominant thought and paper clips and pens start to take on some magical value as if buying fewer office supplies will somehow restore lost profitability. All of the above is reality and is probably going on in your company.

I don’t care much for the concept of merely surviving. In my 20-year career, I have done plenty of surviving and have been through recessions before. You can’t cost cut your way to sustainable profitability. Yet so many organizations are slashing budgets and shedding jobs by the thousands that panic has set in and it appears obvious that we have a confidence epidemic on our hands. Don’t get me wrong, prudent management of expenses and justified attrition are part of running a business. But, so is intentional and strategic growth.

If you will indulge me, I invite you to look at the current recession as a game of chicken. The economy, with all its challenges, is barreling right towards you. Will you blink? Will you move out of the way? Or, will you have the courage to stand your ground, embrace the economy and look for ways to “win” in this economic climate. Everybody else is running so why not buck the trend and transform your mindset from surviving to winning?

While not a trained economist, I do have broad experience in corporate leadership roles. I have led an executive search firm for several years and speak to senior business executives every day. My clients and extended network are a treasure trove of information and insights, and much of what I am sharing comes from my company’s experiences and theirs.

At the bottom of the agenda I give my team during our weekly staff meetings, I often write the phrase “Make Your Own Reality.” It is a bit clichéd perhaps, but it cuts to the heart of what I am asking all of us to consider: either let the recession put you out of business or find a way to win. If you are in a leadership role, look at your team very strategically and ask yourself these 10 important questions:

• What do my clients need right now that I can provide?
• Do I have the right people in the right jobs?
• Can I “win” with this team and achieve our goals?
• Do I need new talented people and where will I find them?
• Do we have the right compensation plan in place to incentivize superior performance?
• How would I describe my team’s morale?
• Are we thinking outside the box?
• Can we develop alternative revenue streams?
• What is our vision?
• Am I providing positive leadership?

We are buried every day in an avalanche of bad economic news delivered by the media, so there is little opportunity to escape an overwhelming sense of dread. But, if we simply resign ourselves to accepting all that we hear and don’t work diligently to help our companies grow, we will be out of business in six months. The only viable catalyst to making your business win in this economy is our people -- they are our greatest resource. Employees have a clear obligation to perform well and meet their goals, but employers have the responsibility to treat people with dignity, professionalism and respect as well. You can’t sell a single product or service in the world without a human being playing a significant role, so let’s embrace, encourage, inspire, motivate and lead our greatest resource to growing our way out of this mess. In the immortal words of Tim Robbin’s character in The Shawshank Redemption, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

As I continue to ponder the innocent question of my son Ryan, it occurs to me that we would benefit from looking at the world through the eyes of our children. Before they become exposed to the ugly side of life, kids have an innocence and a clarity of thought that always makes me smile and occasionally makes me think. I have a pile of work problems to deal with when I get to my office tomorrow, but I can’t wait to get home to play outside with my sons … and seek their advice.

About the Author

Randy Hain is Managing Partner and a Shareholder of Bell Oaks (www.belloaks.com), a nationally-recognized executive search firm. He has an established track record of leading successful searches and building teams in diverse industries and functional specializations ranging from individual contributors to C-level leadership. He has played the lead role in hiring, training and developing one of the most successful search consultant teams in the industry, and has earned a reputation as a values-based leader who invests heavily in his colleagues, candidates and clients. Randy’s deep sense of community is reflected in his work and that of the Partners of Bell Oaks. He may be reached at rhain@belloaks.com.

Beyond Linkedin: Pushing Past Social Media Clutter

2009-05-13T11:18:00.004-04:00

Social media and social networking have bounded across the professional services firm adoption chasm recently. In fact, there’s so much social media noise; so many texts and tweets that our value can be lost in the digital deluge. Creative Growth Group recently convened four expert panelists on the topic:

• Lisa Tilt - Full Tilt Consulting
• Lee Kantor - Business RadioX
• Debra Kline - Business Wise
• Michael Kogon – Definition 6

They shared the following best practices and suggestions on how professional service firms can get the most out of social media:

1. There are three main ways that professionals are using social media and social networking: (i) as a Marketing communication & demand generation channel; (ii) as a Recruitment, Retention and Productivity tool; and (iii) as a Client Service Delivery Tool and Satisfaction Monitor.

Marketing Communication & Demand Generation:

2. Start by clarifying the target audience you want to reach through social media tools.
a. The primary audiences of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Plaxo, MySpace, etc. are not all the same and are not necessarily where you will reach key professional services purchasers. Though the demographics are changing rapidly, they may be still be best for reaching the “next generation” of professionals rather than the former one. The good news is that there’s an ever-increasing ton of information about who is using which tools…and, even, where they’re using them.
b. Remember, too, that the context in which your professional brand is displayed carries a message about who you are and what you do. Therefore, who you invite to be “friends” or “linkedin” to you can be seen by others and those friends and how they behave may reflect on your professionalism by association. And, perhaps you shouldn’t post the photos of you and your drunken fraternity brothers or list that you’re single when you’re actually married…that sort of thing. I actually know of a guy who got kicked off the Board of a company for doing the later.
c. Tools such as Business Wise allow you to enter the profile of your best clients/targets and develop lists of “clones” – that is, they help you figure out all the other prospective clients in the local market that look demographically just like your best existing clients. Business Wise also now links its database directly to social networking tools like Linkedin for fast and easy “who knows who” discovery.

3. Keep in mind that social media and social networking are not about hawking your business services…at least not directly and blatantly. They’re about demonstrating how you and your business can solve problems for others and make them look smart. The more focused and specific your messaging and targeting in social media the better.

4. Social media venues can help you establish a relationship building opportunity, but there’s nothing like in-person dialogue to help develop that relationship. Some tools, like online radio, are equipped to do both. Example: Jason Jones of CresaPartners and his use of on-line radio (Battlefield of Business) illustrates how to develop a branding opportunity into a chance to hold an in-person, direct dialogue with prospects while also increasing a prospect’s public profile and giving the client and oneself additional client development content. The work that Lee Kantor creates through his online radio programs offer the same opportunities.

5. Social media is just another communication channel that happens to be more cost effective and easily accessible than others. But it is not a silver bullet. In fact, it demands a higher degree of honesty and transparency with the audience. For instance, Wal-Mart did themselves more harm than good when they got caught staging their blog about a couple that drove an RV across the use. The “authentic” couple, it turned out, had been hired by Wal-Mart’s PR agency.

6. When using social networking for Client Development make a distinction between collecting and connecting. Adding names (alone) to your LinkedIn doesn’t generate revenue. Instead of randomly adding more and more names to your list, actively nurture the most important real, live relationships behind those contacts and convert them into opportunities and referrals. To increase effectiveness make sure you have a process in place to measure and follow up.

7. Use other people’s content as a marketing tool (crediting the others, of course) and don’t underestimate the power of information. That is, social media tools can put you on the front line of new information and you might help your clients by being the first to share certain news with them directly – so long as you share insights and not just facts. Now that everyone can readily access the same information, it’s important to focus on “how else” you might interpret the facts in ways that benefit your clients and demonstrate your added-value as a professional.

8. New Social Media PR tools like www.pitchengine.com are emerging so that you can package and share news across social media platforms.

Recruitment, Retention and Productivity Tool:

9. Inside the organization, consider using Yammer: (i) the archiving option and other features make it an enterprise-grade Twitter-like communication tool for co-working and transferring/retaining knowledge; and (ii) it allows a closed dialogue just among your colleagues rather than with the entire online world so there’s more privacy than with other tools like Twitter.

10. Your firm’s HR and privacy policies and practices already in place should apply to social media as well. When using on individual basis, keep in mind it’s a free-for-all and accessible by all so all your social media communication is open to unfettered interpretation. Adopt a filtering system similar to that which you use for your other communication (email, mail, verbal, etc.). On a larger scale – make sure your crisis communication policies are in place to deal with issues created by or unwanted information disseminated by social media.

11. Establish a Linkedin company/group page established and/or a Facebook page for your company. Use it to project the brand image your Firm prefer’s to present and to engage and attract prospective clients and future colleagues.

12. Firm’s executive/management committees should consider including a rotating generational liaison slot for one of the youngest full time employees to attend key meetings and provide a social media and social networking – heck, an overall technology usage – perspective for the Firm.

Client Service Delivery Tool and Satisfaction Monitor:

13. Social media forces transparency and authenticity between you and your firm’s stakeholders. Avoiding the social media trend may cause a trust gap between your firm and your key clients, colleagues and colleagues. Embracing it can enhance the how clients perceive your responsiveness and service quality and help you know whether they really like you or not. Some examples form the world of consumer services and entertainment services:
• Southwest Airlines: Southwest Airlines uses Twitter to broadcast service information and deals to customers.
• Detroit Pistons: The Detroit Pistons are using Twitter as part of a larger social media strategy that includes a social network, team blogs, and video to connect fans with other fans, and boost the team’s word of mouth marketing.
• Comcast: Comcast has several Comcast representatives on Twitter who scan tweets for Comcast-related complaints or issues and reach out to help.
• H&R Block: H&R Block use its Twitter account to share valuable information to customers, listen to what’s being said about the company online and provide support and solve problems.

Professional services firms might consider monitoring what the social media world is saying about their clients and prospects because that buzz may expose situations which call for the solutions which only your firm can provide. You can track what social media participants are saying about you and your clients through sites like www.twendy.com, www.technorati.com, and www.icerocket.com.

General:

14. If you’re wondering, “Who has time for all this social media?”
a. Take it slow by starting with one and focusing on using just one tool for just one pragmatic purpose. For instance, start with Linkedin and use it to gain deeper background information on key contacts within prospect organizations.
b. Don’t author original tweets, blog posts, or other interaction but simply answer questoins or provide comments. The more you get your name in comments, the more you enhance your presence on Google searches.
c. Create a repository of content before moving online – repurpose the content online and then distribute across multiple online/social media venues. Tools like www.ping.fm, www.tweetfeed.com, www.friendfeed.com

15. Consider the implications of social media on your clients’ businesses and then consider what that might imply for you you can better serve them.

How are professional services firms and clients changing their behavior in light of the chaotic economy?

2009-04-24T11:55:00.002-04:00

One goal of the Client Advisor Awards is to celebrate the impact of the professional services industry on the economy. Each year, as part of the program, finalists and sponsors are invited to attend a content rich Summit session. For those, who didn't make the exclusive circle, here is the executive summary from the 2008 Summit dialogue focused on how professional services firms and clients are changing their behavior in light of the chaotic economy.

Our esteemed panel included:
• Paul Gladen, President, Muzeview
• Bob Davis, Managing Partner, TopRight
• Read Ziegler, CEO, Vantedge Group
• Lynne Zappone, Sr. Vice President, Global Learning, InterContinental Hotels Group

The economic chaos in the past three months has significantly changed the way clients and professional services advisors are interacting…and, especially how firms are marketing. Paul Gladen recently conducted a review of the thought leadership marketing activities of major professional services firms and identified a rapid shift from simply “reporting” about the crisis to providing implications and advice in their thought leader materials and programs.
Read Ziegler observed that clients are becoming more transparent in their discussion about the difficult economic reality and about the state of their business. If this increased openness is indeed a trend (at least between clients and their most trusted, “inner circle” advisors), the current situation may present a special opportunity for professional service providers who have built close relationship and are in excellent positions to help their clients. Inner circles of advisors will solidify and become more difficult for competitors to penetrate.
Bob Davis counseled on the need for advisors to be especially sensitive to the emotional impact on clients of career uncertainty and survivor syndrome (when your colleagues are laid-off but you aren’t). Client may be equally stressed about reductions in budgets and delays in new product or service introductions and increased competition for a shrinking total market.
From the client’s standpoint, Lynne Zappone confirmed these challenges. She indicated that while budgets are tight, she is still willing to pay for professional services help from firms that view themselves as committed team members who are willing to make the same kind of financial sacrifices that her team is expected to make. Lynne reinforced the importance of professional services providers sharing relevant ideas and information that can help solve immediate challenges.
The recent election and the resulting changes in the political landscape and the government’s active intervention in the economic crisis will create new opportunities for professional services firms. Clients will be looking for help understanding how the policy changes will impact their specific industry. The key here is industry specific knowledge. Immigration and labor laws, off-shoring, and the shift from retail to the internet are all hot topics for creating change. The critical issues will revolve around compliance and keeping up on human resources legislation and changes in the tax code.

The panel came up with four suggestions for moving forward:

1. Talk to clients about the impact of economic and political changes on their business and careers and stay close to them. Confirm your spot in the client’s inner circle of advisors. Building relationships with existing clients is the first priority before developing new relationships.
2. Develop insights and implications regarding the current financial crisis. Help identify issues, but more importantly, come up with implications, opportunities and prescriptive action-oriented recommendations.
3. Develop services that address current urgent needs and cannot easily be duplicated by clients or competitors. In addition to cost-cutting, clients need new thinking regarding revenue generation and customer satisfaction. Consider how you can help your clients grow despite the economy, not just cost-save. Make sure your offerings bring quick and significant ROI in 2009.
4. Provide your clients with flexibility and options. For instance, when developing proposals, be sure to provide a menu of options covering different project scopes and costs. Focus proposals on the most critical, pain-reducing elements. Be very cautious about discounting fees…the downward fee spiral is extremely hard to reverse.

In a nutshell, change and the confusion it creates is good for helping to generate new business in professional services…clients may need their closest advisors now more than ever.

To find out how you too can participate in similar dialogue visit: www.clientadvisorawards.com

Announcing: Creative Growth Communications – a division of Creative Growth Group, Inc.

2009-03-29T16:46:00.001-04:00

Since a large number of our professional services firm clients have been asking us to provide them with a communications component to our business development services, we’ve launched a new service offering.

Creative Growth Communications tilts the playing field in your favor with competitively advantaged public relations efforts that tightly integrate with your existing marketing activities and drive business development success.

The Creative Growth Communications program includes:
• Immediate impact Communications Audit
• Positioning & Brand Development
• External & Internal Communications Strategy
• Web Site & Collateral Copywriting
• Event Planning & Sponsorship Management
• Media Relations
• Social media strategies and execution
• Internet Radio
• Expert and Thought Leadership PR
• Speaking Engagements / Speaker’s Bureau

We deliver each of these activities using our unique Client Cultivation Campaign process which is a method of linking public awareness of your firm directly to business development dialogue with prospective clients. We have partnered with other marketing communications experts to deliver these services to our professional services firm clients.

I welcome your thoughts and experience on the value of public relations linked to revenue generation for professional services firms.

Top 3 Strategies for Provoking Your Prospects

2009-03-29T16:33:00.003-04:00

Before you can provoke your prospective clients into realizing your immeasurable value you need to embrace three key strategies:

1. Know your prospects’ top three corporate strategic goals and initiatives. That is, what do the CEO and Board care most about? You must link your offering to more quickly, effectively and efficiently solving one or more of those strategic corporate challenges.

2. Know your prospects’ top three corporate strategic goals and initiatives. That is, what do the CEO and Board care most about? You must link your offering to more quickly, effectively and efficiently solving one or more of those strategic corporate challenges.

3. Know your prospects’ top three corporate strategic goals and initiatives. That is, what do the CEO and Board care most about? You must link your offering to more quickly, effectively and efficiently solving one or more of those strategic corporate challenges.

Please note: This is not a typo...I repeat...this is not a typo. The same strategy is listed three times because that's how darn important it is. Kind of like location, location, location. If you want to figure out how to provoke your prospects, you've got to focus your prodding on their most essential challenges. If you can't tie what you do to a consequential impact on their key strategic objectives, you're in trouble.

How do you figure out the top three corporate strategic goals and initiatives?
• Check the annual report.
• Check the press releases.
• Ask the client.
• Ask one of the client’s other professional service advisors.
• Hypothesize.
• Google it.

What if you can’t make a viable argument for how your services tie to reaching the corporate goals?
• Change your offering until it fits.
• Get a colleague to brainstorm with you until you make it viable.
• Move on to a different prospect.

Make Your Prospects Famous

2009-03-29T16:17:00.002-04:00

Online radio and podcasts provide a venue for thought leadership which breaks through the social media noise and lets you engage prospective clients in meaningful dialogue and make them famous at the same time. In this article, Internet Radio expert, Lee Kantor, provides his views on how and why online radio shows provide business development power and leverage for professionals.

Top 10 Reasons To Host Your Own Local Internet Radio Show
by Lee Kantor, Business RadioX

More and more professional services firms are adding social media to their marketing plan. Blogging is a given now for most forward thinking firms. Twitter is perfect for the Attention Deficit Disorder crowd, with its 140 character limitation per post. Regular Vlogging or Video Blogging is a little over the heads of most businesspeople. But I think the most underutilized and underappreciated of the social media is internet radio and podcasting. And, it may well have the biggest immediate impact for client development in professional services.

Here are my Top 10 reasons to add internet radio and podcasting to your social media marketing mix.
1. Target Your Best Prospects – By creating a show about your clients (instead of yourself) you build a network of your best prospects with you at the center.
2. Increase Credibility – Having the credential of radio show host gives you added cache and stature among your peers. You are now the media.
3. Gain Local, National & International Exposure – By interviewing local and non-local guests you will build a following from around the world.
4. Distinguish Yourself from Your Competition – How many of your competitors have a radio show that spotlights their industry?
5. Instantly Position Yourself as an Expert in Your Field – When you interview leaders in your field you become part of the conversation. You gain credibility through association.
6. Create Business Relationships with Leading Authorities – It is much easier to get to know the movers and shakers in your industry once they’ve been on your show. After an interview you will not have a problem getting them to return your phone call. You’ve just helped add to their fame and visibility.
7. Increase Website Traffic and Improve Search Engine Optimization – Regularly creating fresh, relevant content about your professional practice and industry is exactly what Google loves to see and usually rewards by moving you up the search engine rankings.
8. Capture Additional Revenue Streams through Sponsorship and Advertising – As your show grows it isn’t unusual to attract complementary businesses that want to reach your audience.
9. Repurpose Audio Content for Other Marketing Efforts – By strategically creating the format of your show you can create content that can be used in white papers, ebooks, articles and information products.
10. Fun and Easy – There is not an easier or more enjoyable way to market. Instead of getting to know your prospect over dinner - you will meet them in the studio and chat with them face to face. You’ll broadcast and record that conversation and post it on the internet.

Thought Failureship

2009-03-29T15:53:00.004-04:00

According to almost every e-mail newsletter and missive from professional service advisors stuffing my Outlook inbox, we are apparently in Unprecedented, Turbulent, Chaotic, Challenging, Troubled…and REDUNDANT, HYPERBOLIC, SHALLOW AND TRITE Times. Though these e-mails promise “thought leadership” which can guide us to success in the midst of economic disaster they attempt to lure us with words that are so oft repeated as to be completely hackneyed. I tune out. Boring and repetitive does not attract clients.

The March issue of Harvard Business Review features an article by marketer Geoffrey Moore and some colleagues who claim that the answer is “In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers.” That is, don’t listen for pain points but instead get in your clients’ faces and point out enterprise-threatening pain points they don’t even realize they have yet. Rattle them into spending money with you! Counterintuitive thinking can help shake up a client or a market for the better. And, it takes courage and confidence...perhaps even cockiness. But, it really didn't take much guts or creativity for Moore to suggest it. What’s ironic about the HBR article by Moore is that this idea of “provocation marketing” which Moore holds forth as a new idea of his own making is actually an ancient one. It is Crazy Wisdom.

Crazy Wisdom has been employed by religious leaders, artists and philosophers for eons and for at least a century by modern business leaders from Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to Nolan Bushnell and Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Ted Turner. Author Tom Robbins calls it “the opposite of conventional wisdom. It is wisdom that deliberately swims against the current in order to avoid being swept along in the numbing wake of bourgeois compromise. Wisdom that flouts taboos in order to undermine their power.”

Creativity expert, Edward de Bono, coined the crazy wisdom concept of “PO” or a “Provocative Operation” in his 1969 book, The Mechanism of the Mind. Because the stuff that got you here (slow or no growth) may not be what you need to get you there (revenue resurgence), provocation matters. “Something that is obvious in hindsight may be invisible to foresight,” says de Bono. So, he recommends using provocative statements “to make things happen in our minds.” These “PO” statements range from the mild “What if…?” challenge to the current situation to bold statements that flip conventional, taken-for-granted assumptions upside down. Some of de Bono’s examples:

“Po, restaurants do not charge for food.” How would you create a profitable restaurant if this were the case?

“Po, cars have square wheels.” How would you design roads if this were the case?

What if you created some “Po” questions regarding your clients’ business or about your own practice area? Could you come up with some seriously new viewpoints? This approach requires you to know more about your clients’ business than you may now. How else could you find out what their hidden problems are? Po, you need to demonstrate in real-time your professional competence to clients before they hire you. Po, you need to ask questions that benefit the client, not you.

Remember the 1984 commercial by ad agency Chiat/Day which first introduced the Macintosh computer and firmly positioned Apple as the brand for non-conformist creative thinkers? They changed the market with provocation. Or before that, in 1959, when Doyle Dane Bernbach created the Think Small campaign for Volkswagen – unexpectedly shifting consumer thinking about small car size as a positive attribute. They changed the market through crazy wisdom.

OK, so some ad agencies which are “supposed to be” creative have employed provocative, crazy wisdom to their clients’ benefit. But can you think of many other professional services fields which have taken daring positions? I can’t. The bad news is that pursuing already-old thought leadership positions based on the theme of “unprecedented, chaotic, turbulent times” is neither unprecedented nor stimulating. Po…what if we viewed the economy as good news?

The real good news is that if you stand on your head, see things in reverse, provoke yourself, poke your clients in the belly, you may actually shake loose some additional client budget and some new business. This takes a level of client knowledge and creative problem solving skill which you and your team may have but have not used. It will stretch your brain. It takes chutzpah. Do you have the guts? Go on, I dare you.

Live on High Velocity Radio

2009-03-23T16:32:00.007-04:00

Recently Andrew Dietz had a chance to sit down with Stone Payton of High Velocity Radio and talk about Creative Growth Group, strategic market positioning and the impact on Professional Services Firms.
To hear his interview please click here.

The Lost Trust

2009-03-04T09:35:00.004-05:00

by Mira Ilieva Leonard, Partner, Creative Growth Group

For the past 10 years Edelman, one of the largest and independent public relations firms, has been researching and publishing a study of the state of the global consumer trust. The results have customarily been revealed during an event, called “Edelman’s Trust Breakfast”. Last week for the first time I had the opportunity to attend and observe the discoveries of the most recent study first hand. Because I consider the findings extremely timely and most of them relevant to the professional services field, I thought I’d share them with you:

(i) The state of the consumer trust: US consumers have generally lost trust in the business sector and especially when it comes to certain industries like banking and automotive. Biotech and technology are the least affected areas due to the idea of innovation and hope that consumers attribute to both of these fields.
What that means to professional services firms: biotech and technology will most probably experience the highest growth in the upcoming years and we should position our practices / industry groups for that.

(ii) There are different trust levels based on the size of the business. While consumers have lost trust in corporate America, they will be most willing to trust small size and entrepreneurial organizations because they know the leaders (who understand and are hands-on involved with the organizations and have direct control over them) and are overall transparent.
What that means to professional services firms: look for opportunities with emerging small and entrepreneurial organizations.

(iii) What sources would consumers trust? Surprisingly internet doesn’t appear as a reliable source even with the young generation. Market analysts and business articles seem to be some of the most credible sources, though friends and employees follow very closely.
What that means to professional services firms: websites with our own statements are no longer enough. Include client testimonials and quotes from current and alumni employees in your materials. Give your advocates venues like web site, events and annual reports to underwrite you.

(iv) How long does it take to make a message visible and believable? The marketing communication norm that it takes 3x to communicate a message for it to register is no longer valid. Given the current consumer cynicism it appears it takes closer to 5x for a message to make an impact and to become believable.
What that means to professional services firms: increase the frequency and consistency of your messaging. Keep in mind your statements will be questioned, so be clear, precise and consistent.

(v) How do we build and sustain trust and relationships given the current consumer cynicism?
a. Diplomacy - demonstrate your corporate responsibility; take a stand on global issues like regulatory ones; get your leaders out in the community and make sure they are actively involved and offering solutions.

b. Social responsibility - clients and their customers will be looking for what your organization stands for and how you go about demonstrating that. If being “green” is important to your organization make sure your clients know about it, not only by telling them but also by showing them.

c. Shared sacrifices – “walk the talk”; communicate to your clients and prospects what your organization is doing to share their burden (i.e. instead of spending on a large client Holiday party make a donation on their behalf, etc.)

d. Continuous conversation – open two way communication lines with your clients via blogs, intranets, client interviews, etc. More than ever clients would like to share with you their experience, both good and bad, and in order to keep their trust you should be willing to listen and take notes.

e. The bottom line: service and leadership as well as authenticity and transparency will matter the most in sustaining and building relationships.

For a copy of Edelman’s Trust study visit the following website: http://www.edelman.com/trust/2009/

WHEN RAINMAKERS LEAVE

2009-02-04T14:03:00.000-05:00

What do you do when your best Rainmakers leave your firm? In a recent article in Legal Times titled “Flight of the Rainmakers” journalist Dan Binstock says, “Given that "fear and uncertainty" sum up the sentiment of many law firms (note: this is the sentiment at a majority of firms across all professional fields – not just law), and that many are bracing for a less stable year, major revenue-generating partners may well launch their own flight to quality this year.” That is, they are more likely to leave in pursuit of what they perceive to be a more robust marketing platform. Because once a person decides to exit a firm it is exceptionally hard and expensive to change their mind, the real question isn’t “how do we stop the flight of the rainmakers,” it is instead, “how do we make sure those who stay are positive and fully equipped to sell?” Instead of simply relying on the instincts of one or two revenue generating super heroes to save the firm, now is the time to ensure that all members of the firm market consistently, persistently and systematically.

IS CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS YOUR NEXT RAINMAKER?

2009-02-04T14:02:00.000-05:00

Maybe we should all hope for a super hero to save us right now. Flying through the air on his way to save the day, Captain Underpants (the cartoon character from the kid’s book series – www.pilkey.com ) sports nothing more than a red cape with black polka-dots and a pair of white fruit-of-the-looms. I took my kids to a holiday parade recently where Captain Underpants was inflated to the size of an office building and floating along wielding his mighty plunger. It is always surprising to see an enormous chubby dude in briefs hovering over you. It is even more surprising was to see that the sponsor of the balloon was a nearly 100 year old law firm which prides itself on intellectualism and professionalism.

Shortly after the Captain’s hyper-inflated buttocks drifted out of sight, the street filled with a neatly lined army of dark suited, RayBan-wearing accountants swinging black briefcases and dancing a jig in unison. This spectacle was paid for and proudly represented by a firm which “delivers professional services in the areas of internal audit and controls, technology risk management, tax, and finance and accounting.”

Is a gigantic, half-naked balloon man an effective use of marketing funds for a major law firm? How about a financial services firm sponsoring marching accountants doing a briefcase boogie? Before you answer, consider that the Parade was a benefit for a local children’s hospital and the audience represented a broad cross-section of the city’s population: cutting across ethnicity, age, education and income. Who were these firms trying to persuade and how did they expect their involvement to make an impact? In light of the economic mess, did this spend make sense? In an economy where you must do more with less, how do you determine what’s a good use of business development and marketing dollars?

CUTTING COSTS WITHOUT CUTTING CLIENTS

2009-02-04T13:56:00.001-05:00

The companies which emerged from the Great Depression as category leaders were largely those who marketed more aggressively – not less – during hard times. I’m not suggesting that you increase your marketing spending nor should you necessarily cut your expense level – but you should absolutely scrutinize it and realign it so that your money and time work much harder for you. Review each of your initiatives against the following factors before adding or cutting from your marketing budget:

What kind of revenue will the effort yield? Relative to other initiatives you might pursue will the revenue generated likely be:

o Plentiful – will the initiative lead to enough projects that can be priced at high enough rates?
o Profitable – will the initiative lead to work with clients who are willing and able to pay those rates and to engagements which, despite the fee level, won’t suck your resources and profits dry?
o Predictable – will the initiative lead to annuity work or one-time-only engagements?

Are all the levers engaged? Growth is a function of reaching enough of the right people, often enough, with the right content, in the right context and with a level of urgency that accelerates the process. As you assess your marketing budget and the initiatives represented, are these levers aligned and engaged?

o Reach - you need to reach enough of the right executives within the right prospective and existing clients who are most likely to resonate with you and your claim to fame. Are you getting the right quantity of outreach?
o Frequency – you need to reach those right executives often enough to be perceived as familiar, likeable and trustworthy by your prospective and existing clients. Is your marketing program loaded with opportunities to engage prospects over time…or just once? Are you getting the right frequency of outreach?
o Content - reaching a lot of people often without providing anything of value is simply stalking. “Need any of my services today? How about now? Now?” Instead, connect with content – meaning only make contact if your message is loaded with value for the other person. Value doesn’t mean sharing commercial solicitation material that touts your capabilities. It is, instead, a demonstration of your difference as a professional advisor because it shows that you are fully equipped to bring ideas, introduction, information and income to them and their company. Are you getting the right quality of outreach?
o Context – ensure that the environment in which your outreach is conducted reinforces the image you want the prospect to have of you and your firm. Do you want to be affiliated with Captain Underpants?
o Velocity – focus your marketing on activities that most quickly move prospect relationships from initial contact to successful engagement. Do your marketing initiatives significantly speed and shorten the client development cycle?

What’s the full cost? Examine both the evident, immediate cash cost as well as the hidden cash, time and anxiety costs of your business development initiatives.

o Cash commitment - what’s the absolute out-of-pocket cash cost to you and your firm of your marketing program? Are you spending enough and how do you know?
o Non-cash cost - what’s the cost of the time you and your colleagues need to commit in order to enact the marketing initiatives? When you buy a car the “total cost of ownership” includes what it costs to drive and maintain the car, the same needs to be considered when understanding the real, total cost of your marketing initiatives.

Return on Marketing Investment = marketing results (output of the reach, frequency, content, context and velocity of your efforts) divided by the cash and non-cash costs of executing your marketing efforts.

DO IT NOW: IMMEDIATE IMPACT MARKETING

2009-02-01T14:39:00.005-05:00

If you haven’t re-assessed your marketing and business development budget to ensure better and more immediate 2009 impact, do it now before the year slips away from you. We can help. Our new Immediate Impact Audit is a quick turnaround method for reallocating your budget to only the most consequential tactics. Could your marketing initiatives use optimizing?

As a natural extension of our Immediate Impact Marketing platform we’ve also just launched our Client Cultivation Campaign program, in which our team of rainmakers takes some of your business development efforts off your hands – giving you more leverage and results. Our Client Cultivation Campaigns are content-rich initiatives (roundtables, studies, awards programs, and related events) that build brand awareness but mainly deep dialogue with the prospects before, during and after the campaign, and deliver direct growth results. They are specially crafted campaigns which optimize reach, frequency, content, context and velocity to provide measurable return on investment. And, because we’re so certain that our efforts will bring immediate impact, we take part of our fee for this work on a pay-for-performance basis. Please contact mira@creativegrowthgroup.com to find out how we can help.

ANNOUNCEMENT: POWER OF ONE

2009-02-01T14:35:00.000-05:00

While traditional M&A may have slowed, merger activity is alive and well among professional services firms. The promise of these firm combinations is that one plus one will equal three or more. Usually, however, one plus one equals two or sometimes one and a half when it comes to professional service firm mergers. Because of the way post-merger integration is handled, the failure of these mergers is assured from the start. The ultimate driver of merger value is predictable revenue growth…aka business development. Alas, business development rarely tops the list of integration imperatives. Great attention is paid, instead to:

 Firm name, logo & stationary
 Executive leadership
 Practice leadership
 Who Stays/Who goes Staffing
 Compensation
 Back office synergy
 Office management

But where is…

 Business Development (???)

We’re pleased to announce the launch of Creative Growth Group’s Power of One service which ensures successful business development integration when professional services firms merge. Power of One is a complete solution encompassing the strategy, capabilities and execution needs that must be addressed to make one plus one equal three.

 Strategy – To make sure everyone in the new entity is marketing consistently, we sharpen and articulate the merged firms’ collective points of difference for clients and select the best prospects and tactics that take advantage of this differentiation. Then we help make sure everyone across the merged firms is speaking the same language.

 Capabilities – So that business development initiatives run in a smoothly coordinated way, we evaluate the merged firms’ disparate CRM and pipeline systems and select and blend the best of both. Then we equip the firm’s professionals with the skills they need to market.

 Execution – Because knowing what to do and actually doing it are often separated by a large gap, we stay with you and your colleagues to coach and facilitate the business development changes and activities needed to make the merger’s promise of synergy actually pay off.

Please contact andrew@creativegrowthgroup.com to find out how we can help.

Will Your Firm Be The Next Arthur Andersen? The Ethics of Enough in Times of Scarcity

2008-11-13T13:00:00.000-05:00

Will your Firm be the next Arthur Andersen? I'm not asking whether it will become the next professional services firm to score over $9 billion in revenue after nearly 90 years of stellar reputation. I am asking whether your Firm will be like the one that collapsed after an obstruction of justice scandal involving document shredding and other alleged misdeeds. The time is ripe for the next professional services firm implosion - not necessarily due to actual but perceived scarcity and the ethical discrepancies that surface as a result.

Though we just witnessed one of the fiercest and most public competitions in American life - the presidential election - there's an even fiercer battle raging on Wall Street and in business markets across our nation. Credit is tighter than a banjo string and jobs are disappearing like rats down a sewer drain. Because of this, now is the most important time to be vigilant about your professional ethics and the ethical behavior of your colleagues and clients - especially when it comes to the most ethically vulnerable spot for professional services: business development.

Competition and scarcity go hand in hand. If all we wanted was abundantly supplied, competition wouldn't be necessary because there would be no obstacles to obtaining what we desire. It is at times when scarcity and competition are perceived to be excessive that ethical breakdowns seem most likely to occur. The key word is "perceived." This doesn't just mean when times are actually bad. Consider times and markets where abundance was an understatement such as the mid-1980s when the stock market was booming. Remember Michael Milken the Junk Bond King? How about Ivan Boesky? Gordon Gecko? Ok, Gecko was fictional but still...These ethics-benders lived in a time and market of great wealth but they still perceived themselves as no t having enough and needing more and more and more of a scarce resource without which they - personally - weren't "enough."

The Enron/Arthur Andersen debacle - featuring ethically and legally challenged behavior which occurred in the midst of the technology boom - is the more obvious and recent example. I know plenty of former Arthur Andersen professionals and they are among the most professional and ethical people I've met. But somewhere in Andersen's Enron account team lay a mindset of scarcity - or fear of it - which motivated a series of highly questionable decisions that ultimately helped to crumble the Firm.

When the economy is in the dumps and there is real scarcity, businesses and professionals are even more likely to fight over scraps. Litigation rises in bad times. More fraud is unearthed in recessions than at other times. Client negotiation tactics are nastier when budgets are squeezed - causing some Firms to loosen standards in reaction to "the squeeze." Colleague elbows are sharper when opportunities are dwindling - collaboration flies out the window. We are hearing stories of Professional Services advisors (not OUR clients, of course) who are:

· Billing for hours that were probably not worked or charging clients for the time they spend entertaining over dinner...shouldn't that be a marketing expense for the firm?

· Dropping fees by 50% to match a competitor's offering...if the incumbent firm can legitimately deliver the same service for 50% less were they overcharging the client all this time?

· Escalated infighting over which Partner "owns" which client in order to claim origination fees - even when one of the Partners really has no known contact with the client decision-maker.

· Making vaguely questionable claims about credentials, capabilities and ability to solve client problems - was this just over enthusiasm or intentionally misleading?

The perception of severe scarcity can often bring out the worst in clients, too. In difficult economic times, we hear more stories of Clients who feel it is their obligation to force professional services advisors to dramatically lower fees "or else." We see more Clients pushing advisors for free services - not just sample size services, but full blown projects with real, substantial cost to advisors. This exploitive behavior is sometimes a catalyst for ethically gray behavior among advisors as it exacerbates the sense of scarcity and "do whatever it takes" to win.

Regardless of the profession, it's our obligation to "first, do no harm." I recommend that you revisit your professions ethical standards and review them with your colleagues. Seek to go above and beyond the standards - always - and especially now. You might want to check out the recently released book, "The Elements of Ethics for Professionals" which is an easy, substantive read to help wrap your brain around setting higher standards for yourself and your colleagues. The book was released last month and you can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Ethics-W-Brad-Johnson/dp/0230603912 At a minimum, this would make a good lunch-and-learn discussion starter for your team.

As one way to promote the highest standards of professionalism across professional services disciplines and also as a way to encourage clients to raise their own ethical standards in dealing with advisors, Creative Growth Group developed the Client Advisor Awards. One of the evaluative criteria in judging nominees for the Awards is demonstrated credibility and integrity on both sides of the client advisor relationship. Successful nominees in the professional services provider Awards category must consistently demonstrate integrity and the ability to build and sustain trust at the highest levels of their client-base. Similarly, successful Client category nominees must consistently manage professional service firm relationships in a forthright, high-integrity, intelligent and humane manner.

Given the ethical susceptibility of the professional services market in the current economic turmoil, we believe it is especially timely that this year's keynote speaker for the Client Advisor Awards is a world-class expert on business ethics. Dr. Paul Voss is President of Ethikos - a business ethics consultancy and he's also an Associate Professor of Literature at Georgia State University. Dr. Voss is an award-winning teacher, gifted public speaker, and published author. He lectures nationally and internationally on ethics and leadership and his teaching weaves the lessons of Shakespeare, Machiavelli, the Renaissance and more into actionable ideas for leading more forthright and successful organizations. Dr. Voss told us recently, "While the immediate future remains fraught with uncertainty and angst, one thing appears clear: Companies that engage in unethical behavior will be punished in the marketplace. Healthy, successful businesses can only become healthy and successful if they demonstrate a steadfast commitment to leadership, integrity, and an ethical culture."

By the way, we think Dr. Voss is so smart and the lessons he instills regarding business ethics are so important to our work with professional services firms and their growth initiatives that we've asked him (and he's accepted) to be a part of our newly launched Advisory Board.

Dr. Voss' keynote speech at the Client Advisor Awards program will focus on ethics in the relationships between professional services firms and their clients. We hope you will join us for Dr. Voss' talk and the Awards ceremony and luncheon that will follow.

Client Advisor Dialogues – Part II

2008-11-13T12:44:00.000-05:00

Last month we introduced you to some of the best practice lessons from the 2007 Client Advisor Summit, part of the Client Advisor Awards. The Summit is an invitation-only portion of the Awards program which involves roundtable discussions among Client Advisor Award finalists, sponsors and select invited guests. As a follow up, here is the executive summary from the second panel of the 2007 Summit focused on how client service organizations are redefining their roles in the market and why this movement is critical to their ongoing success.

Panelists:
Rich D’Amaro, Chairman & CEO, Tatum
Alan Deutschman, Journalist & Published Author
Glen Jackson, Co-founder, Jackson Spalding
John Spiegel, Retired CFO/Vice Chairman, Suntrust

Some of key points shared during the session include:

1. The best professional service firms are revitalizing their roles on behalf of clients in order to avoid commoditization and the pull to be labeled a "vendor" instead of an "advisor." They are instituting behaviors which help them move the nature of their client interactions:

- From reacting and reporting - to being proactive and anticipatory
- From providing arms and legs - to providing ideas and a fresh perspective
- From filling manpower gaps - to filling gaps in experience
- From serving as a compliance officer - to serving as a thought leader
- From a focus on what is broken - to a focus on what needs to be fixed
- From surfacing and fixing client problems - to helping clients avoid future problems

2. Building strong advisory relationships takes time but Managing Partners want quick client development results and Client sponsors want immediate (and low cost) solutions. Successful results stem from strong relationships that are built on experience, knowledge, trust, and credibility. Both client and advisor must allow enough time to create trust-based, not just fact-based, decision-making partnerships. If relationship building is rushed, trust breaks down.

3. Professional service firms need to start small - that is, consider offering a small "sample size" offering - and demonstrate specific - not generalist - expertise in order to stand out from the crowd. "Be famous for something."

4. Professional service firms need to demonstrate their difference and expertise as early as possible prior to being hired - preferably in real-time - to position themselves as advisors.

5. Client professionalism is an essential trend that we should collectively encourage and, perhaps, teach. All clients are not "sent from heaven." Bad client advisor relationships and failed engagements are not always the fault of the professional service provider. Sometimes, it is better to walk away from less than desirable clients. Difficult clients generally are over-served for the compensation provided. They drain and depress your firm's resources. They beat up employees and chase them right out of the firm. They provide poor referrals and destroy employee morale. Focus on retaining existing clients and developing new ones who motivate top performance out of your team - jettison the dysfunctional clients as soon and smoothly as possible.

We hope that you’d find these thoughts helpful and we look forward to seeing you at the 2008 Client Advisor Awards.

The Economic Crisis - Threat or Opportunity for Professional Services Firms?

2008-11-13T12:41:00.000-05:00

by Paul Gladen, President, Muzeview

• How are your clients and your firm being impacted by the economic crisis?
• Is your firm positioned to capitalize on the opportunities that the current economic and financial markets turmoil has created for professional services firms?
• Do you know what your competitors and other leading professional services firms are doing to respond to the economic crisis?
• Are you under pressure to cut marketing or are you looking to refocus your marketing investments?
• In a marketplace characterized by uncertainty and lack of reliable information how are you making decisions about where and how to serve your clients and differentiate from your competition?
A new research report from Muzeview, provides insights that can help you answers these questions. "The Economic Crisis - Threat or Opportunity for Professional Services Firms?" report provides an analysis of the marketing communications and thought leadership outputs of 120 leading law, accounting and consulting firms since September 1, 2008. The report also details a nine-step process that professional services firms should follow to ensure they minimize the downside threat and capitalize on opportunities to help clients.

The report includes the following analysis and charts:
• Summary of the key hot topics
• Identification of eight emerging opportunity areas
• Identification of the top firms by output
• Analysis of marketing outputs by firm type
• Analysis of marketing outputs by industry
• Analysis of marketing outputs by format (e.g. articles, briefing papers, speaking engagements)
• Analysis of the focus areas for the top twelve firms
• Identification of the top professionals featured in economic crisis outputs
• Marketing output levels by week
• The top ten business topics related to the economic crisis
• Listing of the nearly 500 marketing outputs produced by the monitored firms in between September 1 and October 10, 2008

Key findings from the report include:
• Firm outputs increased eight-fold from the first week of September to the second week of October.
• Law firms were dominant, accounting for nearly 50% of the output.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mayer Brown, Deloitte and Clifford Chance were the most prolific producers of economic crisis-related material.
• While financial services was the industry most frequently addressed, accounting for 49% of outputs, firms are beginning to explore the implications of frozen credit and recessionary outlook for other industries.
• Numerous advisory opportunities are being created by the economic crisis and the government's response in areas such as regulation, litigation, strategy, M&A and workforce issues.

Benefits of this Report to your Firm

1. Identify Market Opportunities:
• To focus on new or growing revenue streams.
• To respond to market and competitor action that could threaten existing revenue streams.
• To differentiate the marketing of your firm's capabilities from competitors, thus increasing your lead generation and lead conversion rates (and potentially enabling premium pricing).

2. Focus Marketing and Practice Development Spending:
• On areas that have increased revenue potential.
• On activities that can differentiate you from competitors.
• On activities that address clients' real issues and needs.

To Purchase the Report:
The report is priced at $995.00. The report can also be purchased with ongoing monthly updates for an additional $250.00 per month. Creative Growth Group clients and contacts can receive a 15% discount on the report price and updates. Simply mention that you are a Creative Growth Group client when ordering.
If you are interested in purchasing the report or would like to learn more please contact Paul Gladen at 212-665-0797 or via e-mail: paul@muzeview.com.

Attack now.

2008-09-18T06:11:00.000-04:00

“Markets in Turmoil” reads the boldfaced headline of USA Today. As I step on the elevator, I look up from the paper and see two attorneys entering. They are shaking their heads and looking at each other in worried silence. “How’s it going?” I say. “Not good,” the senior of the two responds. “Depressed,” he says. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did something happen to you or your family?” I wonder aloud. “No. Something happened to the economy. It’s depressed,” he says. Jeez. Why take the elevator, I think. Why not use the window? Professional advisors like us can’t mope our way out of the current economic situation. We can market ourselves out of it.

That’s what the smartest companies are doing. Creative Growth Group, along with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Vantedge Group and Business Wise, just completed a study of demand for professional services among Atlanta companies. Results will be released in October but I’ll give you a head’s up on one of the findings. The largest expected increase in spending on professional services firms over the next 12 months will be for marketing services. You can’t expense-cut your way to success long term. You can sell yourself to success.

I sure hope that the executives at AIG’s, Lehman’s and Merrill Lynch’s competitors are already in the process of aggressively marketing to those faltering financial giants’ clientele. When Arthur Andersen imploded, the big winners were those that gobbled up the clients and talent of the former market leading accountancy. Do not retreat. Attack.

“Disruptions in the business environment cause economic shifts that destabilize industries, companies, and even countries. They allow new entrants or forward-thinking established players to introduce innovations—in products, markets, or processes—that transform the way companies do business and consumers behave.” - Lynda M. Applegate is the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Now is your time. Move forward. Business development is more important now than ever before.

Welcome! You’ve Got Outsourced

2008-09-17T08:18:00.000-04:00

If you still think that being technically competent in your profession is enough, here’s more evidence that you are mistaken. From a recent article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle titled “Shipping Legal Work Overseas”:

• Dan Reed of Atlanta-based UnitedLex – which helps firms outsource legal work to India and similarly low wage areas - says 25% of work done here can be outsourced to a low-cost location.
• $4 billion = estimated value of legal work headed to India by 2015
• 79,000 = number of legal services jobs outsourced overseas between 2003 and 2015

Consider whether your profession may be next. If so, consider your next career. Perhaps there are some good franchises available for you to buy?

How do you avoid professional services career-death-by-outsourcing?

1. Repeat after me, “I am not a vendor, I am not a vendor, I am not a vendor.” Do not accept commoditization. Even if your area of specialty seems like a hopeless commodity, there is hope. A banana is a banana is a banana, right? Well, what about Chiquita?

2. The best way to avoid commoditized is to go beyond mere technical competence (necessary but insufficient) and significantly build your strategic, advisory and relationship management skills. It’s very hard for a client to benefit from a great whisper-in-the-ear advisor when that advisor is located thousands of miles from their actual ear. The best way to grow those skills is to listen, ask questions and to understand the key strategic issues on the agenda for your client’s Board of Directors. Yeah, not just the key issues for your immediate client who may be farther down the food chain (necessary but insufficient). If you can map what you do to helping solve the most vital issues the client faces, you’re bullet-proof.

3. Don’t just be “famous” for serving a specific industry or performing a certain professional skill. Be famous for the types of situations you are most skilled at helping clients navigate. Be famous for the types of solutions you bring to clients who are facing tectonic business shifts. Be famous for HOW you do what you do…not just for what you do.

4. And, yet…solving client problems isn’t enough. Necessary, yes, but insufficient. Become excellent at attracting clients. If what’s getting outsourced is “back-office” than get better at “front office” efforts. It doesn’t get more “out front” than being in the local market winning new business. You don’t have to be a “born salesperson” to become excellent at attracting clients. Increasingly, there are terrific tools like Linkedin that facilitate your outreach. Remember, too, client development in professional services isn’t the same thing as sales. So, many personal styles or – Rainmaker Archetypes - can be effective at making rain and at being a world-class advisor and Creative Growth Group is just releasing findings from a new study that proves it.

Solving Client Problems Isn’t Enough

2008-09-17T07:51:00.000-04:00

Here’s a counterintuitive clue to how not only professionals but their Firms overall can avoid commoditization: stop thinking about business development as the job of your most elite rainmaker.

Imagine the star of a football team. The person that makes all the plays happen. What if the other 10 people on the team simply sat on the bench and waited for the star to work his magic? This is how the majority of professional service firms operate. Rainmaking? It’s up to the star. Here’s the question - What if all 11 people pulled their part? What if more than just the “kingpin” rainmaker in your firm could play a meaningful role in business development? Your revenue per professional would rise. So would your staff utilization rate. And, because you had more partners succeeding, your Partner (and client) turnover would probably decrease.

The cynic’s view on why such a business development vision can never happen is summed up by this oft-repeated phrase, “A leopard can’t change his spots.” That is, if you aren’t a born rainmaker who has already proven his metal, than you won’t ever be one. The good news is: the leopard doesn’t need to change his spots. Professionals do, however, need to understand their natural business development skills and abilities (different for each of us “leopards”) and put them to use in more productive ways. Event better news: The “leopard trainers” at Creative Growth Group and The Berke Group have just completed a study that unveils how to do this.

The Berke Assessment measures key personality traits and natural talents that can have a dramatic impact on advisor and client development interactions. While many commercially available assessments measure personality, the Berke Assessment is unique in its analysis of both personality and talent. The resulting report provides a robust and strikingly insightful snapshot of a professional, particularly when compared to the personality traits and talents required by a given professional’s role. We administered the Berke Profile to hundreds of advisors across a range of professions from January 2005 – August 2008. Recently, we closely examined this cumulative data and ran regression analysis of the eleven factors measured and their links to rainmaking success. We discovered several crucial patterns and unearthed meaningful new insights into Rainmaker Archetypes and how to use them to your Firm’s advantage.

Three primary skill patterns provide the basis for Rainmaker Archetypes. These showed up most prominently in our assessments of professionals…and they appeared to have the strongest impact on client development. They are:

Problem Solving Pattern: Problem solving is a pattern of talents and personality that enables professionals to analyze and interpret complex client situations and to create new, beneficial solutions. This is a basic pattern for almost all professional service providers. Applied to client development, it can be quite helpful.

Connecting Pattern: Connecting is the ability pattern that enables professionals to build strong interpersonal relationships that lead to positive advisory and client development results. It is a very prominent pattern in successful rainmakers.

Driving Pattern: Driving is the ability pattern that enables professionals to push through obstacles and overcome opposition despite frustrations and setbacks. It is the most predictive pattern for client development success.

Combining the three primary skill patterns produces a total of seven Rainmaker Archetypes:

1. Problem solver
2. Connector
3. Driver
4. Thought leader
5. Cultivator
6. Developer
7. Trimodal

Here’s what the data told us about why Problem solving isn’t enough:

• In general, Professional Service Providers – regardless of their subject matter expertise – are very high on the Problem Solving pattern of abilities. In our study of over 110 professionals, almost all were above average on this pattern and a strong majority (65%) were in the top 25% of the general population.
– Although the Problem Solving Pattern appears to be necessary for the work of professional service provider regardless of subject expertise, it does not predict client development performance. The correlation with rainmaking success was zero. It is necessary but not sufficient.

• On the other hand, the connector pattern of abilities and the driver pattern of abilities are highly predictive of rainmaking success.
– Of those professionals in the study who were very high or high in either the Connector Pattern or the Driving Pattern, 84% were rated in the Top group of rainmakers.
– Of those professionals in the study who were low or very low in both the Connector and the Driving Pattern, 68% were rated in the Bottom group of rainmakers.

There’s plenty more about this study of rainmaking skills and success in professional services including how to apply these findings to your practice and firm. E-mail me “andrew at creativegrowthgroup.com” to set up a personal review of the findings and their applicability to your revenue growth.

Practical LinkedIn

2008-09-17T07:37:00.000-04:00

By Randy Hain, Managing Partner and Shareholder of Bell Oaks

How we build personal and business connections is ever evolving, and in today’s culture and economic environment it is a constantly moving target to keep up with the latest tools and trends. One of the fastest growing connecting tools of the past few years is LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com). According to a New York Times article on Aug. 13, 2008 by Sarah Jane Trimble, LinkedIn has more than 25 million members and is adding new ones at the rate of 1.2 million a month—equaled to about one new networker every two seconds. Consider these statistics:

- All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented on LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees
- More than 1.4 million members self-identify as senior executives
- Most members tend to be between 30 and 55 years old
- LinkedIn is intended to appeal to its average user: the 41-year-old, white-collar professional with an income of $109,000 a year

For the purpose of this article, I make two basic assumptions: you are familiar with the Web site and you are interested in expanding your network for personal or professional reasons. With these assumptions in mind, let’s explore different ways to approach LinkedIn, paradigm shifts among users of the site, and best and worst practices.

LinkedIn Philosophy

“I have a profile, now what do I do?” This is the question I hear most often. Whether you are a job seeker, a sales professional, a recruiter or simply interested in making new connections, you will see your best results by approaching LinkedIn with this mindset:

1. Have a “pay it forward” attitude. Be open and willing to help people connect to your network and accept invitations.
2. Focus on finding people you don’t know. This seems obvious, but it can be easy to fall into the habit of “collecting” contacts you already know. I find the real value of LinkedIn is connecting with people of different backgrounds and capabilities who can help you with your objective.
3. Reach out to those people you don’t know. A majority of people on LinkedIn are open to networking, so don’t be afraid to introduce yourself. Networking is likely why they joined in the first place.
4. View LinkedIn as an enormous spider web. Your direct connections and their connections and their connection’s connections are all part of your network. So, get as many direct connections as possible to ensure that you can run searches within a very large population.
5. Be transparent in your profile and complete it fully. Give clear descriptions of the jobs you have had and always include a bio under the Summary section. Also, I advocate sharing personal interests, charitable causes you support, hobbies, affinity and social groups, faith, etc. We will review why this is important later.
6. Recognize that the Internet does not allow you to hide. In the age of Google, it is practically impossible to hide work and personal information. Utilize LinkedIn to showcase the information you want to share. Therefore with the typically high placement of LinkedIn profiles in Google searches, you are likely to have this seen first by others.
7. Don’t let LinkedIn serve as a substitute for human interaction. Any people-oriented business thrives on relationships and face-to-face meetings. Utilize this tool to make the connection and build a bridge, but follow up with a phone call and a meeting.

These approaches to working with and maximizing what LinkedIn offers have served me well. And it continues to evolve as my needs change and the technology becomes more sophisticated over time.

Paradigm Shifts

I am always keenly interested in how different people use LinkedIn and I routinely ask clients, candidates, friends and peers for their perspectives. The results may surprise you. Here is what I have learned over the last couple years:

- Many of my clients look at a candidate’s profile on LinkedIn before he or she comes in for an interview. Their intent is to gain insight into the more personal side of the candidate as well as to check for resume inconsistencies. Don’t let this scare you! Sharing the right personal information just might give you the edge you need to land the position.
- A number of my friends in professional services utilize LinkedIn to research their client prospects and gain a competitive advantage by being well informed. The ability to discuss different aspect of a person’s professional and personal history adds depth and distinctiveness to the conversation. Candidates often do the same with prospective employers.
- LinkedIn is becoming an excellent way build a personal brand. Be deliberate in how you use this channel to market yourself and your particular areas of expertise.
- Corporate recruiters and executive search firms, including my own, have finally realized that LinkedIn is a rich source of high-quality candidates and use it as a primary recruiting source.
- Company managers are frequently looking at their own employee profiles to learn personal information for a variety of reasons. They also look to see if employees are job hunting, so use caution when checking the box that says you are interested in “Career Opportunities!”

There are likely countless others, but these are the shifts I’m hearing about most frequently. Just to reiterate, there are no secrets on the Internet and you have complete control over the content you share on LinkedIn. You must simply exercise good judgment.

Best and Worst Practices

In general, aren’t we interested in learning a better way of doing things? Adopt that strategy with LinkedIn. Nobody has all the answers, so an open mind and willingness to innovate will serve you well when turning this into an effective tool. Here is a sample of the best and worst LinkedIn practices I have observed. First, the Best Practices:

1. Look at LinkedIn daily, especially the Home page to track movement in your network that may benefit you—job changes, promotions, new connections, etc. You can also see if anyone from your school has joined LinkedIn and look at the people who have viewed your profile that day.
2. Upgrade your account to the first level of pay service. The entry level of LinkedIn is tedious if you are using it to make a large number of connections. Pay for the first upgrade level so you can connect to people in your network directly, and not wait weeks for a referral.
3. Have a transparent profile that will attract broad interest. You are screening in and not screening out on LinkedIn and it is important to connect with as many people as possible in the network. A broader sharing of your background is likely to gain more contacts for you and allow you to connect with others with similar backgrounds. Also, list personal and business accomplishments that will help showcase your achievements.
4. Have at least 10 Recommendations on your profile. Recommendations are analogous to a good Seller rating on eBay—you are viewed as credible and more likely to get a call back if a viewer sees that people think highly of you. You can recommend people in your network and they will be prompted to recommend you in return. This is a good “pay it forward” strategy.
5. Do Boolean searches for prospects by keywords relevant to your background. My examples include “University of Georgia,” “Cub Scouts” and “Catholic.” Search any key words relevant and important to you that will help build a connection to someone who shares these words in their profile. Keep playing with key words and companies you are interested in until you find people you would like to meet.
6. Focus on contacts that can help you get to the right person. Don’t focus exclusively on finding the decision maker, you’ll only be disappointed. Look for people in the target organization who share common interests, schools or LinkedIn connections with you. They are more likely to want to help you and make a friendly introduction to the right person—it’s so much more effective than a cold call. However, if you can’t establish common ground with someone in a target company, the cold contact may be necessary.
7. Always offer to help someone BEFORE asking for help. When reaching out via InMail (assuming you now have the upgraded LinkedIn account), never state your desire/need in the opening sentence. The “wall” goes up and you’re not likely to get anywhere. I’ve had success with this approach: “John: I came across your background on LinkedIn and noticed that we both are UGA alums and are involved in Cub Scouts. I run an executive search firm here in Atlanta and am always looking to grow my network. Would you be open to a call this week and perhaps a cup of coffee? I would like to see if there are ways I can help you and maybe we can share stories of our college days! You can check out my firm at www.belloaks.com and I can be reached directly at (678) 287-2000. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks-Randy Hain”
8. Invite every person you meet to join your network. This will help build your list of direct connections and expand your searchable pool. Mention when you meet that you will connect with them on LinkedIn to increase your chance of an accepted invitation.
9. Join Groups to enhance your searches and help you be strategically identified. You can join affinity Groups on LinkedIn in almost every conceivable category ranging from Alumni Associations to HR Executives to Faith Groups. Choose wisely because your profiles are visible to everyone in that network and your choices should not raise eyebrows (like Recovering Shopaholics!).
10. Make good use of LinkedIn Answers to get feedback on tough questions from your network. This usually nets a good response and gives you additional exposure to your network on their home pages.

Now, the Worst Practices:
1. Join LinkedIn, develop a profile and don’t accept new contacts or requests for help. Why go to the trouble if you are not going to use it? It won’t put you on a secret “bad” list, but don’t waste your time if you aren’t willing to utilize the true value of LinkedIn. Also, if the tables are turned one day and you need help, these people will remember.
2. Abuse your network. Be careful not to go to the same people again and again for referrals. They should be open to the request, but too many requests will create negative feelings and burn a bridge.
3. Be afraid to reach out to people you don’t know. This is a common stumbling block. Remember that LinkedIn users are generally open to referral requests and direct contact. Direct connections to people with whom you share something in common will accelerate your business development, recruiting or connecting efforts exponentially.
4. I don’t want my information “out there” on the Internet, so I won’t share much. I hate to tell you, but it is already “out there.” Google yourself and if you are a business professional with any experience, you probably show up. Show your career information and use discretion when sharing the personal information if you prefer. Remember, you control what is shared. This is the direction technology is taking us, so I encourage you to try and manage it!
5. Don’t share access to your connections. If you plan to ask others for access to their connections, you must be willing to share yours. Some people do use LinkedIn as a kind of master contact manager, but I argue that part of the value of the network is open and transparent sharing of information and referrals. If someone you don’t know or trust asks for a referral to one of your connections, simply say “no.”
6. Don’t fill out your profile completely. You can’t make LinkedIn work for you unless you have a profile that legitimizes you as a credible professional. I see many half-completed profiles and I wonder how many opportunities they miss.

There are literally thousands of articles out there on how to use LinkedIn, so I certainly don’t profess to have all the answers. Most of what I do on LinkedIn has been self-taught through experimentation, observing others’ best practices, and logically evaluating what works best for me. Our firm generated 24 percent of our 2007 revenue from LinkedIn client and candidate sources—2006 was about the same. So clearly there can be a significant ROI in utilizing LinkedIn effectively.

Starting today, view LinkedIn as an enormous network of potential new friends but with a word of advice—don’t let it become one of the omnipresent technological devices that make it so easy to hide behind. LinkedIn should be used as a catalyst, not a substitute, for human interaction and conversation.

Employ a “pay it forward” strategy of helping others through referrals and recommendations. Operate out of enlightened self-interest as you reach out to people you want to meet and offer to help them first. Ask for what you want later, after rapport and common interests have been established. Use LinkedIn to promote your personal brand and develop your profile as a marketing showcase that will attract others. LinkedIn has become an effective networking tool for me and I hope it becomes the same for you.

****

Randy Hain is Managing Partner and Shareholder of Bell Oaks (www.belloaks.com), a nationally-recognized executive search firm. He has an established track record of leading successful searches and building teams in diverse industries and functional specializations ranging from individual contributors to C-level leadership. He has played the lead role in hiring, training and developing of one of the most successful search consultant teams in the business, and has earned a reputation as a values-based leader who invests heavily in his colleagues, candidates and clients. Randy’s deep sense of community is reflected in his work and that of the Partners of Bell Oaks. He may be reached at rhain@belloaks.com.

With a nearly 40-year legacy in executive search, Bell Oaks specializes in identifying, attracting and hiring professionals to critical positions with companies across the country. Founded in 1970, the national firm has particular expertise in the areas of sales and marketing, human resources, finance and accounting, information technology, and manufacturing/operations/engineering. Bell Oaks is consistently ranked as one of the leading search firms in the South and was recently named one of Atlanta’s Best Places to Work by the Atlanta Business Chronicle for the second consecutive year.

Client Advisor Dialogues

2008-09-17T07:29:00.000-04:00

One goal of the Client Advisor Awards is to celebrate the impact of the professional services industry on the economy. Each year, as part of the program, finalists and sponsors are invited to attend a content rich Summit session. For those, who didn't make the exclusive circle, here is the executive summary from the 2007 Summit dialogue about the societal impact of professional service firms on our City and State.

A panel of prominent local executives: Randy Hain, Managing Partner, Bell Oaks, Andre Schnabl, Atlanta Managing Partner, Grant Thornton, Dave Sutton, Founder/Managing Partner, TopRight, and Bill Viehman, Chief Marketing Officer, Perkins+Will, provided a broad perspective regarding how and why professional service firms are a vital part of a market like Atlanta. Here's how these firms have a substantial positive impact on the economy, the community and the environment:

1. Professional services firms play an irreplaceable role in the community. They attract bright, highly educated people who are well compensated and help fuel the local economy. They give back to the community by committing their time money and expertise to local organizations that provide services to improve the quality of life. Professional Service Firms tend to lead the way in fostering work cultures that encourage respect without regard for race, religion, nationality, or sexual preference. They are friendly to the environment as they fill office complexes, not factories. And, professional firms (for instance, Habif Arogeti & Wynne) have led the way in terms of moving to paperless offices and (in the case of Perkins+Will) in encouraging all of their stakeholders to behave in a similarly responsible manner.

2. Professional service firms are good corporate citizens because it is good for their business not just for sake of altruism. Improving quality of life is important for enhancing their ability to attract the best and the brightest. They bring business processes to the non-profits they help which make those community organizations more effective. They are politically active and connected to be well positioned to bring the public and private sectors together for the overall good of the community. McKenna Long’s ranks, for instance, are stocked equally with Democrats and Republicans and the entire organization has positioned itself as a leader in public-private exchange and partnership.

3. Professional services firms most often work across many different industry segments and are typically not as deeply affected by the economic cycles of one industry. They can quickly shift industry focus as changes in the economy bury some opportunities and create new ones.

4. Professional services firms help improve the business and economic environment by working to improve the quality of life, assisting in attracting new business, and encouraging top talent to relocate here.

If you meet the Trusted Advisor on the road, kill him

2008-07-30T18:36:00.000-04:00

Not literally, of course. But, if I hear one more professional or firm anoint themselves with the label of "trusted advisor" I may reconsider.

I am continuously amazed at how many professional services firms flatly and loudly label themselves as trusted advisors. This, they proclaim, is their differentiation. “What makes us different is that we are really a client's trusted advisor," they say.

The term "trusted advisor" is now so over-used, that it is at risk of becoming a meaningless buzz-phrase. Tossing out jargon like "trusted advisor" doesn't build trust, it builds barriers. Substituting a catch phrase for details about what and how you perform better than other professionals may, in your mind, speed up the conversation but in reality it eliminates the substance necessary for a prospect to really understand how you can help. Besides that, what is your reaction to a stranger who says with a smile, "Trust me"? Chances are you don't.

It is one thing to aspire to trusted advisor status and yet another to publicly label yourself a trusted advisor to others. Trust is an attribute we must continuously earn, not self-proclaim. David Maister is a leading consultant on the management of professional service firms. Back in 2001, Maister published the book, The Trusted Advisor, in which he explored, in his words, "the relationship between trust and successful advice-giving, the key components of trust and the way it can be nurtured in a relationship." One of the key concepts in trusted relationships is that the advisor doesn't get to choose the criteria by which he is evaluated. Trust, that is, is in the eye of the client.

*****

Andrew Dietz is Managing Partner of Creative Growth Group,Inc. and, you can trust him…really.

Time to Think

2008-07-30T18:28:00.000-04:00

By Randy Hain, Managing Partner and Shareholder of Bell Oaks

As busy professionals with compounding responsibilities, isn’t it becoming more and more difficult to find time just to … think? Commiserating with colleagues and friends, we share how our work days are filled with an almost obsessed focus on getting as much work done as possible, countless meetings and squeezing every bit of air out of our schedules. In our other (and most important) roles as fathers/mothers and husbands/wives, we’re faced with another harried stretch of time each evening filled with family dinner, kid’s activities and the myriad other things that families require. Weekends are more of the same.

Clever vernacular such as “perpetual hurry syndrome” and “time poverty,” are beginning to circulate when describing this phenomenon, but I simply choose to call it alarming. We make decisions all day long, but how much of it is reactive and responding to what others throw your way? Taking time to think strategically, be creative or even pause to ponder an issue before responding is a growing challenge. The fact that many of us view time to think as a luxury is a sad indictment of the culture in which we live.

We are addicted to background “noise” and connecting with others through computer and PDA screens. I’m not opposed to technology, but recognize how I’ve allowed it to exacerbate my challenge with finding quiet time to think. What used to be a leisurely drive to work a decade ago is now crammed with phone calls. Waiting for appointments to arrive, stops at red lights and elevator rides are now opportunities to respond with my “Crackberry” to the barrage of emails I receive daily. In an effort to become more efficient, I am sacrificing thinking time.

Research for this article uncovered these insights into our penchant for technology and predisposition for interruption:

• Last year, AOL’s third annual “Email Addiction” survey revealed that email use on portable devices has nearly doubled since 2004. Findings from the company’s release include: The average email user checks mail about five times a day, and 59 percent of those with portable devices are using them to check email every time a new message arrives. Forty-three percent of email users with portable devices say they keep the device nearby when they are sleeping to listen for incoming mail. With or without portable devices, 15 percent of Americans describe themselves as “addicted to email,” and many are even planning their vacations with email access in mind. About four in 10 email users say it is “very” or “somewhat” important to them to think about email accessibility when they are planning a vacation, and 83 percent admit to checking mail once a day while on vacation.

• The Wall Street Journal’s Sue Shellenberger writes in her article, “Multitasking Makes You Stupid, Studies Say:” A growing body of scientific research shows one of professionals’ favorite time-saving techniques—multitasking, can actually make you less efficient and, well, more stupid. Trying to do two or three things at once or in quick succession can take longer overall than doing them one at a time, and may leave you with reduced brainpower to perform each task.

• A study by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce published in the Harvard Business Review states: Forty-five percent of high-earning managers are too tired to converse with their spouse or partner after a long day at the office. This strain is wreaking havoc on family and personal lives.

• From a TIME magazine article titled, “Help! I’ve Lost My Focus:” In a study of 1,000 office workers from top managers on down, Basex, an information-technology research firm, found that interruptions now consume an average of 2.1 hours a day, or 28 percent of the workday. The two hours of lost productivity included not only unimportant interruptions and distractions but also the recovery time associated with getting back on task. Estimating an average salary of $21 an hour for “knowledge workers,” Basex calculated that workplace interruptions cost the U.S. economy $588 billion a year.

• “Crackberry” was named the 2006 Webster’s New World Collegiate Dictionary New Word of the Year.

Baroness Susan Greenfeld, well-known British author and Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford, said in a World Business article titled, “How Technology is Changing the Manager’s Brain:” “We’re already seeing the impact of the IT revolution on the workplace. Working on the screen is having a massive impact on the way we think and process information. The screen culture is not conducive to taking time to think—everything is instantly available. The result is iconic thinking, quick fixes and short attention spans.”

Have we relinquished much of our ability to think strategically and creatively to the onslaught of increasingly sophisticated technology? Has the technological age, which was supposed to herald a time of increased leisure, in fact enslaved us? We are almost always reacting to television, the Internet, e-mails and phone calls. This forced diet of (other people’s) information may be a necessary evil, but consider the real possibility that we have swung so far in that direction, we aren’t generating and sharing enough of our own original thought. In her book, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, author Dr. Margaret Wheatley writes, “The single most revolutionary act you can do these days is to find time to think.”

Time to think, time to pray, time with family, time with friends—these are the components of the fuller and richer lives we all want to lead. Work will always demand as much of our time as we allow. But is technology the real culprit? Probably not. We have the freedom to choose how we spend our time and should take this responsibility onto ourselves. Remember that technology was intended to serve us, and not the other way around.

So how do we create these respites of time we so desperately need? It’s the little things; the small steps that will help us find our “thinking time.” I’ve shared some ideas here:

• Start your day on a different note
Don’t run to your computer and turn it on! Rather than checking email or reading the overnight news the moment you wake up, designate the first 20 minutes for reflection, reading, journaling or prayer. Have a cup of coffee, sit down and think about your day. Or perhaps reading or exercise stimulates your brain. Whatever it is, make it your time—it’s the one part of the day when clients aren’t calling and nobody is making demands on your schedule.

• Put it on your calendar
You know the saying that if it isn’t scheduled, it will never happen? Try blocking out small windows of time each day for reflection. I borrowed an idea from the Jesuits called the Daily Examen where I schedule five-minute blocks of time throughout the day to reflect on my actions and think about the future. Schedule these time blocks around travel, meal and bed times. Keith Conley, an EVP with Document Technologies in Atlanta, offers this insight: “In an effort to force myself to sit back and spend time on the big picture, I have found what works best for me is to schedule 90 minute blocks of open time on my calendar twice a week. This creates an opportunity to focus on business strategy, evaluate progress towards business goals and to do a reality check on how I’m spending my time.”

• Introduce simplicity into your life
Try reading a book versus listening to the audio version. Spend time with good friends who will challenge you. Listen to beautiful music or watch a classic movie. Take a long walk with your spouse. Do something outside with your kids every day. Embrace their natural curiosity and be grateful they want to learn new things. Make an effort to teach them something about the world and how to think for themselves. Get some time for yourself on the weekend and make sure your spouse does as well.

• Don’t feed your compulsions
As a practical measure, turn off the ‘ding’ when new email arrives. It can wait! Don’t feel compelled to answer immediately. Do the same on your PDA. Turning off the audio or LED notification and checking for emails at the appropriate time can add to your ability to concentrate in a conversation or other thinking assignments. Look at other areas that feed tendencies which negatively affect thinking time and make some simple changes.

• Hold mini-retreats every quarter
Take a day off once a quarter, if not more frequently. Use this time only to relax and plan. Explain to your loved ones that you need this to collect yourself and get re-energized. The toughest challenge with a mini-retreat is to turn off your PDA and cell phone. Computers are okay if you are trying to capture your thoughts, but don’t plan on checking email.

• Schedule/participate in more open discussions and strategy sessions
It can be as formal as inviting your team to a meeting where you throw a problem on the white board for discussion, or as casual as inviting a few friends to lunch to debate politics. When in the presence of your team, colleagues or friends ask thought-provoking questions. In an effort to break free from simply sharing regurgitated ideas and information, ask “Why” more often. Regardless of how you do it, this open debate and discussion is healthy and will feed and stimulate you in important ways. And by the way … turn off the PDAs! “In meetings where everyone is checking email, opportunities for collective creative energy and critical thinking are lost,” says Nathan Zeldes, a senior engineer at Intel and a leader of the nonprofit, Information Overload Research Group.

• Designate certain windows of time as “gadget free”
Choose times in the day (car rides are ideal) when all electronics are turned off, even the radio. This will take discipline, but imagine the car as your safe haven and “thought incubator.” Lori Swope, an Account Manager with Watson Wyatt in Atlanta, has a balance in her life that I admire. She says, “I set aside certain times of the day for thinking and focusing on the people I love the most. Early morning is reserved for prayer, reading and exercise. The morning ride to school with my daughter is our time together - no Blackberries or phone calls. Dinner with my family means no interruptions or other distractions. It takes discipline, but these are my priorities. And my work is always finished!”

• Surround yourself with personal advisors
Pat McNulty, former SVP of Allied Waste and president of Barton Protective Services, has found that a “personal” Board of Advisors—consisting of friends, family, colleagues and clergy can stimulate you to think, calibrate, verify and validate; provide a valuable sounding board for decision-making; ask the tough questions; and provide real inspiration. Periodic and informal “values check sessions,” give us much-needed pause. He continues: “Learning to drive, we are taught to look in the mirrors and gauge the short distance immediately in front of the car. We’re also instructed to regularly take in the long-range, ‘big picture’ view. In everyday living, how often do we pause, breathe and take in the wider, more meaningful view?”

A good friend recently gave me a beautiful leather writing journal. This thoughtful gift has prompted much of the thinking for this article and initiated a significant change in my daily routine. I enjoy writing and used to email myself ideas or leave myself messages at work—adding to the volumes I already receive. Now, I take the journal with me everywhere and find I’m reaching for it instead of my technology enablers. Actually writing by hand provides me a few precious moments between appointments or in the early hours of the day to gather my thoughts on a number of topics, and the process has been rejuvenating.

Dan King, Chief Administrative Officer for Allconnect in Atlanta, offers this advice for creating thinking time: “I’ve discovered that three things are needed for me to think creatively – a topic, time and place. During the course of my workweek, I keep a pad to jot down topics that require deeper thinking, business-related or personal. A couple of these topics go with me to my ‘think space,’ which happens to be a quiet café near my home, once or twice a week. This practice has made me a more valued contributor at work and what I hope is a better husband and dad.”

As many of us 40-somethings have a tendency to do, I am taking stock of what’s important and am determined to find the time I need for God, family, work and me. Dr. Ron Young, CEO of TROVE, a national leadership development and coaching firm, recently provided me with this insight: “There are many different types of thinking. In today’s competitive, adrenaline-addicted world, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that we do not have time to think. Living on autopilot or “living on fast forward” is the quickest way to rushing into inefficiency, errors and hollow living. Research tells us that we can save between four and eight hours for every hour we invest in planning.”

He continues: “We need to make time for big-picture thinking to look beyond ourselves and gain eternal perspective. Without time to think we are unlikely to question popular thinking, to be creative or strategic. Getting outside of ourselves and the rush of our day-to-day lives allows us to reflect, think unselfishly and remember why we are here. Making time to think allow us to connect with deeper needs of meaning and belonging. It allows us to recall that we are human beings, not task-driven robots.”

In conclusion, we give the important areas of our lives our best effort when we’re calm, rested and thoughtful. We own the responsibility to make the necessary changes to give ourselves what we need. Author Dr. Margaret Wheatley also said, “Don’t expect anybody to give you the time to think. You will have to claim it for yourself. If we want our world to be different, our first act needs to be reclaiming time to think. Nothing will change for the better until we do that.” What part of your schedule will you reclaim today to get some thinking time? You read this article and I hope it made you think—that is a good start!

*****

Randy Hain is Managing Partner and Shareholder of Bell Oaks (www.belloaks.com), a nationally-recognized executive search firm. He has an established track record of leading successful searches and building teams in diverse industries and functional specializations ranging from individual contributors to C-level leadership. He may be reached at rhain@belloaks.com or (678) 287-2031.

Keeping the Flame Lit for Life

2008-07-30T18:23:00.000-04:00

By Mike Wien, Partner Creative Growth Group, Inc.

Lessons Learned from a Competitive Triathlete about Avoiding Burnout

As part of our client development coaching at Creative Growth Group, we are often asked to help professionals who are feeling burned out. The volume of opportunities to “seize the moment” and the ability to be connected 24/7/365 has helped create pressure cookers for many of our high performing professional advisor clients.

One of the metaphors I like to use in addressing executive burnout is lessons learned as a competitive Ironman triathlete. A critical factor in successfully training for this type of event is having the ability to take on an increased amount of activity without burning out in the process. So as a sampler of the many lessons learned, here are the three most basic ideas for starting an effective fitness program, or for maintaining peak performance in a job – keeping the flame lit for life.

Set a pace that is comfortable, sustainable and avoids pain. The most common mistake is that most new runners start out too fast. This results in a high level of discomfort and a challenge to the sanity of this commitment. It is better to start out at a pace and distance that will keep you motivated to continue the program, than to start out too fast and force early burnout. The best way to determine the right pace for you is to start running or working at the fastest speed you can maintain while still being able to hold a conversation with someone running with you. It is that simple.

Find an environment that is enjoyable. If you are going make the commitment to put in the time on a regular basis, pick a venue that will encourage you to continue. For me, it is running on a route that has beautiful views or interesting things to look at and explore. It might be running on a path along a river, through a nature preserve, or through a well landscaped neighborhood. Some might even find a treadmill with a television set enjoyable. Remember, you want the environment to support and encourage positive behavior.

Include others in your journey. Running can be a solitary activity. It is a wonderful opportunity for many to find some time to relax and have time to think random thoughts. However, especially for a new runner or someone who has a big dream of running in a marathon or competing in an Ironman triathlon, the solo approach is not such a good idea. Big journeys are better traveled with at least one companion. Take someone along to share both the joy and pain. Someone who can encourage and help celebrate the little victories.

Now, how does this apply to executive burn-out other than maybe encouraging some of you to make a commitment to a healthier lifestyle? Well, these three principles can also be applied to the business environment.

Set a pace that keeps you moving toward your ultimate goal and still allows you to maintain balance in your life. Make sure the pace avoids pain and lets you keep a balance in life beyond just your work.

Make sure the work environment is enjoyable. Work with people and clients you like. Avoid working with people who do not share your same values. Be attracted to or create a work setting that feels
comfortable and is fun.

Finally, don’t go solo. Be a part of a team. Share your ideas with others. Ask for advice and suggestions for improvement. Celebrate the successes with others. Be generous in sharing credit.

*****

Mike Wien is a partner at Creative Growth Group, an organization dedicated to working with executives at professional service firms in the area of business development. In addition, Mike is also a world class triathlete, having placed 5th in his age group in the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii in 2006.

How to Think about Thought Leadership

2008-07-30T17:39:00.000-04:00

By Paul Gladen, President of Muzeview

Does this scenario sound familiar?

You’ve noticed a handful of clients asking questions about a particular issue - say healthcare clients concerned about counterfeit drugs and devices or consumer services clients wanting to become more “green”. Thinking about these requests you figure it would be a great idea to write an article or host a breakfast meeting on the issue, and you ask your marketing team to get on the case. And so follows a couple of weeks of activity behind the scenes to pull together and place an article on the issue you’ve identified.

The topic or industry may be different and the request might be for a whitepaper or a webinar - but in our experience this situation occurs time and again in professional services firms. In essence, a handful of anecdotal data points are used to trigger a chain of activities (and costs) that may or may not deliver tangible marketing ROI. We believe professional services firms need a more rigorous approach to thought leadership development.

Can you imagine a manager at Coke walking into a marketing manager’s office and saying “hey I just saw a bunch of folks giving away Pepsi t-shirts. We should give away Coke t-shirts”. You know that if the idea was given any kind of consideration it would first require drawing upon some in-depth market and competitive intelligence to determine the potential impact of giving away free t-shirts.

Professional services firms need to learn from other industries in beginning to build effective market and competitive intelligence capabilities. Effective intelligence would enable them to have answers to the kind of questions triggered by the partners request in the scenario above:

· What evidence is there that “green” is a significant issue for healthcare organizations?
· Are there other more critical issues we should be focusing on instead?
· Which clients have we already talked to about this issue?
· Do we have something interesting to say - a clear point of view or a call to action?
· Do we have viable solutions to this problem?
· What are our competitors saying and doing?
· Do we still have something interesting to say that’s different to what our competitors have said?
· Is an article the best way to communicate our insights to clients or should we run a seminar or both?

Answers to many of these questions are available to those that choose to seek them. For example, using publicly available information from firm websites the chart below shows the relative levels of “green” thought leadership material analyzed by industry that has been produced by the 10 firms most active in addressing “green” issues in 2008.

The chart suggests that, to date, discussion of green issues in the consumer services industry has been relatively light. This may be an opportunity - or an indication that this sector isn’t yet focused on the issue. This would suggest further exploration of client interest, or perhaps review of industry media coverage would be worthwhile before proceeding. Conversely if the focus had been on Utilities, it is clear this is a very hot topic and the firm would need to evaluate the significant amount of material already produced to determine how it can contribute something insightful and differentiated to its clients thinking.

This kind of analysis can be helpful in focusing or pushing back on new thought leadership ideas and in the process potentially eliminating tens of thousands of dollars worth of wasted time and expense. The real benefits however come from systematically gathering market and competitive intelligence in order to shape and drive strategic and marketing plans. Effective intelligence can help firms anticipate hot topics and emerging trends as well as spot “white space” opportunities. This in turn enables firms to build market leadership and often to sustain premium rates.

Intelligent thought leadership is as much about the intelligence that goes into selecting the topics as it about the know-how that goes into the thought leadership deliverable.

*****

Paul Gladen is President and Founder of Muzeview LLC a market and competitive intelligence firm focused on the professional services sector. Paul also authors the blog “The Big Sky View” which discusses strategy, marketing and innovation in professional services. Paul has 20 years experience in professional services including 14 years with Arthur Andersen where he was a partner in the Technology, Media and Communications Industry practice and a founding member of Andersen’s Center for Research & Innovation. Paul is a UK Chartered Accountant. Paul can be reached at 212.665.0797 or paul@muzeview.com

Become Habit Forming to your Clients

2008-07-30T17:32:00.000-04:00

By Dr. Neale Martin, author of Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore, and founder and CEO of Ntelec, Inc.

In my new book, Habit: the 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore, I make the counterintuitive recommendation that instead of getting your customers to love you, the ultimate marketing goal is to get your customer to repurchase without even thinking about you. Habit updates marketing theory and practice based on recent finding from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Much of our most basic marketing assumptions turn out to be wrong.

At the core, the problem with marketing is the mistaken assumption that customers think about their purchase decisions when most of the time they operate on autopilot. Not only do they automate most of what they buy, they also use products and services without thinking about them. Marketers spend most of their effort working to win the conscious mind when the unconscious mind is in control as much as 95% of the time.

To work with the unconscious mind, companies need to understand how their customers are actually interacting with the world. Most of us are overwhelmed by decisions and information. We are trying to make good decisions amidst uncertainty and lots of noise. Our brains evolved to help us survive in a harsh and dangerous environment, and we use the same mechanisms to survive in the modern world. Key to this is that we ignore unimportant information and strive to automate whatever decisions we can.

For those in professional services, the implications are profound. A client engagement represents a statement that a particular project, or type of project, is something the client does not want to deal with. By hiring a consultant, the client takes this project off her plate and puts it on yours. Your job is to make sure she doesn’t have to think about what is now on your plate.

To achieve this, the consultant must achieve a high level of trust. Trust has two primary components, competency and integrity. Establishing trust is a process whose importance cannot be overstated. If the client does not trust the consultant, she cannot take the project off her mental list. This cognitive cost negates the reason behind the engagement. If the client still has to think about the project, why is she paying you?

This does not mean that you don’t want the client to forget you entirely. Indeed, successful branding and positioning are essential for the consultant/client relationship. Clearly articulating your value proposition means creating a space in your customer’s mind for easy classification—one more way for you to help your client to be cognitively efficient.

To create and maintain a relationship with your clients, it is important to understand how the habitual mind operates. Relying on feedback mechanisms, this part of the mind learns through experience and repetition. Those things that make a behavior more likely to occur are called reinforcers. Think through all of the steps your clients and potential clients must go through, and then structure reinforcements at each step. This means constantly creating value for your customer at every contact point, not just when you are delivering final results.

A good way to think about this is to look at your daily emails and phone calls. Which emails do you open right away? Which names on your caller ID make you want to pick up the phone? Likely, you have two categories of people who you respond to quickly: 1. Clients (that represent revenue) and 2. People you like. The people you like got that way over time by being friendly, funny, helpful, or some combination of all of those things. You don’t consciously evaluate this process—but the interactions have been reinforcing so you are more likely to want to repeat them.
However, you probably also have emails and phone calls from people you would prefer not to receive. Why not? More than likely, at some point in the past this person has done something unpleasant making it less probable that you will want to interact with them again.

Professional services are by their vary nature insubstantial, yet relationships are the strongest materials to build upon. By thinking through every interaction, you can make sure that your clients begin to use your services more frequently and more consistently because doing so is habit forming.

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Dr. Neale Martin is the author of the widely acclaimed new book, Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore. He is also founder and CEO of Ntelec, Inc., a marketing, consulting, and education company. He has helped companies adjust their strategic marketing in the face of rapid technological change since 1995. For the past several years, he has worked on updating the principles of marketing in light of research from cognitive psychology and neuroscience that suggests that most of human behavior is under the sway of unconscious habits. Neale developed early insights into the power of habits as a counselor and program director for alcohol and drug addiction programs. After spending a year as a hospital administrator in Texas, he returned to school to earn his Ph.D. in marketing from the College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology. Neale’s insatiable curiosity across diverse subjects illuminates his work as he connects ideas and insights from science, technology, psychology, history, philosophy, and dog training. He lives in Marietta, Georgia, with his wife, Diana, his daughter, Miranda, and three border collies.

Order a copy of Neale’s book here: http://800ceoread.com/products/?ISBN=9780131357952