Professional Service Firm Marketing Tips & Strategies

The Referral Engine - Available for Pre-Order

(disclosure  - I am an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach)

Although referrals are the marketing cornerstone for most accounting, law, and other professional service firms, many still struggle to create a system that consistently generates high quality referrals.

In the follow up book to his best selling Duct Tape Marketing Book, John Jantsch reveals a systematic approach to consistently generating a steady flow of business from referrals.

The book is already generating high praise from industry experts. You can read what they have to say and watch a short video of John explaining why he wrote this book here.

I'll be posting more about the book and how the lessons it contains apply to professional service firms just as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.

The book is scheduled to be released in May. You can pre-order from Amazon here (affiliate link) 

Tom Peters on Thoughtfulness

Over the weekend, I found this short video from Tom Peters where he shares his views regarding thoughtfulness as a key to success. (If you can't see the video, click here)

So what do you think about the role that thoughtfulness plays in your business?

Unfolding The Napkin - Book Review

The Back of The Napkin is Dan Roam’s follow up to his popular The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition): Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures.

The main idea behind Dan’s books is that we can solve business problems by applying the principles of visual thinking and drawing simple pictures.

Rather than being just a sequel, this book is a “self contained four day workshop” where you work hands-on to learn Dan's method of visual thinking and problem solving.  Each day covers one of the steps of Dan's visual thinking process. The days are organized as follows:

• On Day 1, you learn how to Look, or visually collect information.
• Day 2 covers  Seeing or recognizing patterns.
• On Day 3, you use Imagining to discover new outcomes and on
• Once you have new ideas, you want to share them with others. Day 4 covers creating pictures to share you ideas with others.

I find Dan’s 6 x 6 rule very effective in analyzing problems. According to this rule, there are only 6 different kinds of problems, and each type of problem share the same 6 elements.

The last section of the book is a wonderful case study demonstrating how to take a particular solution and use the problem solving framework to present the solution to all of the stakeholders involved in a way that delivers information in a way that is important to them.

Great Webinar - Measure What Matters To Customers

This is pretty awesome, you can watch an 8 hr session of Ron Baker teaching a seminar about the material in his book Measure What Matters To Customers. If you own or work in an accounting, law, or other professional service firm, you owe it to yourself to watch this seminar because you will learn how to really think about your practice, your customers, and your co-volunteers (I've always loved the idea of thinking of employees as volunteers).

Stop reading this and go listen to Ron.

Should law and accounting firms outsource their social media marketing activities?

As more professional service firms use social media as a platform for their marketing activities, the question of whether to outsource those activities will come up with greater frequency. Today  I want to talk a little about how to go about making those outsourcing decisions.

For the sake of this post, let’s divide social media marketing activities into 2 broad categories, creating valuable content and distributing that content so it can be found by those who need it when they need it, with the hopes of leading them back to us so they can hire us to help solve their problems.

The activities in the distributing category can also be broken up into 2 broad categories – getting ready and ongoing. Getting ready activities are things like setting up blog software, creating profiles (Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Biznik, etc.), and creating accounts on social bookmarking sites. It can also include creating listening stations and dashboards.

Activities in the ongoing distribution category are those activities that need to be done whenever a new piece of content is created. Things like:

• tagging and categorizing
• submitting to community sites
• “pinging” your social communities
• repurposing content

In my opinion, the activities best suited for outsourcing are those in the distribution category. These activities do not require the specific expertise of the firm and can be handled more efficiently by a company that has a “factory” set up to handle them.

Creating content that is valuable to your current and future customers is not as suitable for outsourcing. Neither is finding content that others  have created and explaining how it impacts your customers business. Content creation, should favor effectiveness over efficiency.

Of course, some types of content (i.e. eBooks or research studies) that are helpful for your customers may be a prime candidates for outsourcing. However, I believe that blog content, online articles, etc. should be created by the firm.

Many firms struggle through the "getting ready” activities on their own before they ever get to a decision point about whether or not to outsource. If this is you, then you don’t have to worry about this step, although, you may want to outsource these as other professionals in your firm begin to participate in social media.

I often like to compare social media conversations with in person conversations. If you are going to have a conversation with a prospect, it would make sense to outsource things like appointment setting, calling to confirm, making reservations, and even transportation, but you wouldn’t send someone else from outside your company to have the actual conversation with them, would you?

How Buyers Look At Your Website

HubSpot’s recent chart of the day shows the importance of specific website elements according to buyers of B2B services.

I was happy to see that of the 10 elements shown in the chart, 7 are standard elements that we Duct Tape Marketing folks have been recommending folks include in their standard Marketing Kit (and websites) for a while now.

As the analysis in the HubSpot post points out, the top three elements (Service descriptions , Description of industries served, Success stories / case studies) are really expected elements these days, particularly for professional service firms.

The interesting thing about the chart is the level of importance to buyers of such things like a client list (people want to know you help people like them), whitepapers, presentations, etc. (people want you to demonstrate your expertise), and news items (people want to know that others recognize your expertise).

Although not in the analysis, I believe that professional service firms that include more of these additional items on their website tend to update their site more frequently vs. those who build it and forget it. I find these folks tend to have a more systematic approach to marketing because they are regularly creating content (presentations, news stories) and leveraging the effort spent creating them by including them on their web site.

Click here to view the chart and HubSpot’s analysis of the data.

How many of these items do you have on your website?

Need help assessing your marketing materials?

Don't Ask, Don't Sell

When asked, most accountants, attorneys, and other professionals tell me that the primary way they acquire new clients is through word or mouth or referrals – no surprise there. What does surprise me is how often these same folks tell me that they rarely, if ever, ask for referrals. Many of us are hung up on one form or another of “head trash” – we think others will think badly of us if we ask for referrals because (insert excuse here).

If you want to grow your business or practice, you must get over this. You must learn to ask for referrals and to ask for the sale. If you are providing a valuable service, and I assume you are, then people are not going to think ill of you for wanting to help more people.

I think for most of us, learning ask for business is less about technique and more about attitude and creating new habits. Technique is important, but if you don’t get over the hurdle of actually starting the conversation, all the technique in the world isn’t going to help. Here are three approaches that you can use to overcome your reluctance and build the habit of asking for referrals:

Join a networking group – groups like BNI can help because they will teach you how to ask, give you a place to practice asking, and set the expectation that you exchange referrals with members of your group. The more you think that sounds like you won’t like it because you will be uncomfortable, the more likely you need to join.

Ask who can can refer to them – as an accountant or attorney, you probably know a lot of people. Practice being a referral source for those you meet. End every meeting and phone call with “is there anyone I can connect you with to help you with your business?”. Give without the expectation of receiving, BUT, when someone does ask what they can do for you, have a specific answer ready, for example “Thanks Bob. You know, I like working with dentists and I’m always looking for practices with 3 or more dentists. Do you know anyone that you would feel comfortable introducing me to that has a practice like that?”

Blame me – if you don’t feel comfortable with any of the approaches outlined above, do this. Blame me. Here is how that sounds - “Ok, Joe, is it ok if I ask you one more question before we finish (our meeting)? I”m a little uncomfortable asking you this, but this marketing coach named Bill is harassing me to get in the habit of asking for referrals, so I have to ask, do you know anyone else who may be facing similar issues in their business?”

I know you are going to ask for at least 2 referrals today, so come back and leave a comment - let me know how it worked out for you.

Referral Marketing Programs for Professionals

Learn how to generate a flood of new business without spending one dime on advertising. Available as a Self Study Program as well as group and individual coaching programs

Advanced Advance Searches in LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great tool for searching and connecting with prospects and strategic referral partners. Most people know that you can use the Advance Search feature to narrow you search by criteria such as location, industry, title, etc. While LinkedIn does not support wildcard searches (such as show me everyone who's first name begins with "br"), there are a number of search operators you can use to construct complex searches.

Quoted searches - use quoted searches when you want to search for an exact phrase, such as "estate planning attorney"

NOT searches - use NOT to create a search that includes one or more keywords while excluding others. For example, you could search for attorneys that do not practice estate planning law by entering the following criteria in the keyword box - lawyer NOT "estate planning"

OR - helpful when the position you are searching for may have a number of different titles - CEO OR Partner OR President

AND - going back to our estate planning example, I could search on lawyer AND "estate planning" in the keywords to find an estate planning attorney in my area.

Parenthetical - use to build complex searches, for example, to find a CPA or a partner in a law firm - CPA OR (lawyer AND partner)

Try using some of these search operators to help you find connections faster in LinkedIn.

Need help with LinkedIn?

LinkedIn for Professional Service Providers

Inbound Marketing - Book Review

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media)

The internet and other technology has made a profound change in the way that companies market their businesses.

The world is moving away from interruption based marketing towards a model of "getting found" by customers when they need our products and services.

Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah call this new model "Inbound Marketing". In their book by the same title, they give a thorough overview of how you can move from the world of expensive and increasingly ineffective interruption based marketing, to one where your ideal customers find you.

If you are new to inbound marketing, or if you have been wondering what all the hubbub about social media marketing is about, you definitely need to take a look at this book. Even if you have experience with inbound marketing, I think you will find some nice nuggets and reminders in this book.

Here is a quick list of the what you will learn in this book:

1. How to turn your website into a marketing hub
2. How to create remarkable content that people want to read and share
3. How to get found on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, etc.
4. How to track your progress
5. How to convert visitors into leads and leads into customers
6. How to use the data you collect to make better marketing decisions

By now, you've probably figured out why I like this book - this is the same stuff we help business owners with in Duct Tape Marketing.

And when you are ready to dig deeper into inbound marketing, make sure you visit the web site of the co-authors company, Hubspot. It is chock-full of great information and a great example of inbound marketing in action.

Tax Practice Marketing - create a volunteer sales force

Most tax professionals rely on word-of-mouth, or referrals to grow their business. A good network of referral partners is like having a volunteer sales force.

People love to give referrals, but it is important to make it easy for them to do so. You wouldn't send your paid sales force out into the world without the knowledge and tools to do their job, so why would you do that to your volunteer sales force?

Since most of the people you know are probably too busy to attend your 1/2 day seminar on "how to work as a salesperson for no pay", you need an easier way to give them the information that they need to help you out.

Create a one page sheet that gives them all of the information they need to refer you properly. Having a written description of who makes an ideal prospect and how your referral system works is a powerful way to get more qualified leads. Your description should include the following:

1. How to spot your ideal customer - this will help cut down on the time you spend chasing referrals who end up not being the type of people you want to work with.
2. How to explain what you do - make sure your referral sources are communicating your core difference rather than just your title.
3. How your referral process works - what happens once your receive a referral.

Having this information in writing accomplishes several things. It is a more effective way to ask for referrals than the typical "do you know anyone that needs what I do?". Your services will be described in a more consistent manner by your referrers. It shows you are organized and professional.

Explaining how your referral process works will also help alleviate any hidden fears people may have about referring you. No one wants to be the person who referred Uncle Joe to the "salesperson from hell" who calls every evening at supper time.

Bottom line - give your volunteer sales force the information they need and start receiving more qualified leads.