Marketing To Existing Clients

One of the biggest ways that professionals and professional firms can improve their marketing effectiveness is to think through and make sure that they are actually putting their marketing efforts in places which yield the highest return.

This is actually not commonly the case. Most firms say that they believe that marketing to existing clients is the best source of new revenue. But when you add up all of the non-billable hours that are spent on marketing you often get surprised that a very high majority of it is diverted to chasing new clients.

In this clip, we examine all of the places that marketing efforts can go. We make some very clear recommendations about where the priorities are.

Blawgworld 2007

For you lawyers out there (and those who consult to them) there is a new resource released today: BlawgWorld 2007 -- a collection of 77 thought-provoking essays from 77 of the most influential law-related blogs ("blawgs").

Handpicked by each respective blogger, these essays provide a window into their blawgs, making it easy to figure out which ones merit your ongoing attention.

You can download the 300 page document here.

You can quickly find essays of interest in BlawgWorld 2007 by using an interactive table of contents. From any page, click on the Blawgs navigation tab. From there, two more clicks will take you to any essay.

Rules of Relationships

We all say we want relationships and we want to be good at romance, but we have not all thought through the actions and behaviours that are necessary to create those things. In this video clip, we begin to explore the necessary skills.

Governement Operations as Professional Service Organisations

Here's a reader question:

I work for a government department that has just re-organised into 30 unwieldy 30 directorates (on the recommendation of a famous consulting firm.)

I have been asked to develop an operating model that might help senior management plan for the deployment of the professional human resource at their disposal.

Our working assumption is that we have something to learn from the PSF model (as set out broadly in your articles) but our project is veering towards a model based on time recording (a sort of "billable time" analogue) relating individuals' efforts to one or other of the broad strategic objectives that our management board has designated as a priority.

I'd be interested to know whether you believe the material in your articles is, in principle, adaptable for a government department where the drivers are in many ways very different. Actual profitability is not one, for example, but cost effectiveness and customer experience certainly are.

Other differences are that we have a much more static career structure where promotion and performance pay are often less important than pride, respect and "public service" as individual motivators.

Nor do we really have the types of leaders that seem to be the prerequisite for the working of your model. By and large they are not inspirational or dynamic strategic leaders, but are, more often than not, managers because they happen to have been in the department a while or have reached a certain level of seniority.

Hence, I'm sceptical about the notion that we can solve our problem of improving our effectiveness by developing another administrative layer of resource management. (I've tried unsuccessfully quoting chunks to them of your article on how managers really add value.)

****

Richard replies: I have always had difficulty with the notion that there is such a thing as one unique "PSF model," if that is taken to mean one clear set of policies, practices, processes, structures and attitudes.

Yes, I did try to offer some generalisations and insights that I hoped (and have proven to be) broadly applicable, but there is no one recipe that fits all situations.

I think the closest parallel I've seen to the government situation is the running of in-house service departments inside large for-profit corporations. They face similar issues that there is a more limited career path, they are often not profit-driven, and their mission is often less clear. If I were you, looking for comparable situations, I'd look at companies that have in-house legal departments, real estate or property departments, shared-service accounting departments, etc.

Using the for-profit model will, I think, be completely misleading. Even in the for-profit sector, some of the underlying assumptions that the traditional model was built on (and are described in my book) are proving to be untrue in the modern world.

Take, for example, a topic of promotion opportunities. In the traditional model I described, it was assumed that the vast majority of people hired at junior levels would want to become "partners", and would be willing to work very hard toward that as a primary goal. As a counterpart, it was assumed that the organisation wanted a high percentage to become partners, because what the organisation provided to its market was the fully rounded, fully developed professional.

You point out that this is not necessarily the case in government: not everyone has the dynamism to want to move up, and top management doesn't necessarily want them to.

Here's my point: that's actually the direction that many private practice firms are going in: Firms are promoting a smaller and smaller percentage of people to partners, because they can show more "profits per partner" by keeping partner numbers small. For these and many other cultural reasons, fewer and fewer younger people feel that it is worthwhile or sensible to compete in the "tournament" to become partner.

I would agree with two other points you make. The solution is absolutely not about structures (reorganising) or systems (time-keeping.) You get better efficiency, quality, morale and everything else by having managers in place who now how to manage. Without them, the rest is truly irrelevant.

Romance and Sincerity

In thinking about business development, there are two basic mindsets that must be distinguished. On the one hand, you could focus on trying to win each transaction, transaction by transaction. Somewhat rudely, I call this the mindset of going for the quick hit, or the one-night stand.

The other way of coming to market is trying to build relationships. Trying to get good at romance, where you're trying to persuade potential clients to enter into a long-term relationship with you.

The key point is that we must understand that whilst either can be made to work, there is a crucial difference between being good at one-night stands and being good at romance.

Executive Intelligence

Time for another book by someone associated with an executive recruiting firm. This time, it's EXECUTIVE INTELLIGENCE by Justin Menkes from Spencer Stuart.

Here's Menkes' key findings (or assertions, according to taste):

Managerial work can be broken down into three subjects: accomplishing tasks, working with other people, and self-evaluation. Within each of these categories there are identifiable cognitive skills that determine how well an executive performs, such as:

• TASKS -- the abilities to properly define a problem, identify the highest-priority issues, and assess both what is known and what needs to be known in order to render a sound decision.
• OTHERS -- the abilities to recognise underlying agendas, understand multiple perspectives, and anticipate likely emotional reactions.
• SELF -- the abilities to identify one's own mistakes, encourage and seek out constructive criticism, and adjust one's own behaviour.

Though these cognitive skills play a profound role in determining a manager's success, they are not what most employers focus on when recruiting or promoting executives. Instead, nearly everyone fixates on personality type, style, or other irrelevant characteristics.

The book is filled with quotes from famous, successful people, and is not shy about stating firm conclusions. For example: "Not one study has shown emotional intelligence to be a meaningful predictor of job performance beyond what has long been explained by other measures."

Menkes and his other consulting firm (MenkesStark) claim to have a proprietary approach to measuring what they call Executive Intelligence. I don't buy everything he has to say, but it's probably worth your $14.95 and the plane-ride time it will take to examine it.

Living by the Principles

Here's another question I received by email:

"I work for a consulting company (50 people) and have been in the business 10 years. Recently our partners rolled out a list of "guiding principles" for the company. You talk a lot about setting minimum standards of behaviour and strict adherence to group values. So I tried to create a way whereby we could measure if we were living by these principles.

I suggested to the partners that we create a checklist whereby the employees can rate the partners on how well we think they are living up to the standards. This received a lukewarm response -- "We’ll think about it".

For reference, here are our "guiding principles" (by the way, it seems almost impossible for any one human to meet them all):

Trust

We believe that trust is fundamental to success in our business, which means we must be transparent, reliable, accepting and congruent. We must do what we've said we'll do, we must be clear in our expectations and opinions, be accepting of mistakes and limitations of others, and "walk our talk". We must also be sincere, hear and acknowledge others, be candid and straight, and demonstrate integrity and clarity with boundaries.

Accountability

We believe that individuals are the source of who they are, how they feel, behave and perform. We can choose to be a player and not a victim, and can lead with head and heart. We recognise that we can choose to be inspiring, self-motivated and determined. We take on accountabilities out of creative cause, not for praise or credit, or out of burden, blame or guilt.

Perspective

We seek out perspective because we don't believe in "right" answers, just better interventions. This requires us to be thoughtful, self aware, humble and low ego. But we are not afraid to have a point of view on what we believe can work better.

Performance

We judge performance by what is achieved, but in the meantime we assume positive intent. We believe in courage and energy, look for the positive and are future focused. We recognise that performance is situational and some achievements need to be judged over longer time periods. We set high standards, welcome challenge and are honest and transparent about our own performance.

Learning

We are aware of our interactions with the world and the opportunity to learn from our successes and failures. We are comfortable with ambiguity and use an enabling leadership style that allows people to experiment and learn. We don't take ourselves too seriously. We believe upsets are setups for learning.

Externally Open

We are externally curious and understand the value of seeing and acting beyond ourselves. We value the thoughts and suggestions of others and invite them into all our conversations. We actively encourage collaboration and interdependency.

Human

We believe in people. We are supportive, and show empathy and compassion to see the potential in everyone. We understand the importance of meaning at a personal level, and how active appreciation can counteract fear. We believe we engage with the whole of a person, not just their work persona and are sensitive to cultural diversity. We encourage health and life balance. We believe businesses should do good when they're doing great.

Richard, what do you think about such things? If we create these great aspirations but don't hold people accountable what good are they? (Ironically, you'll note that one of the guiding principles is "accountability.")

***

The questioner has answered his or her own questions, right? If it's humanly impossible to live up to the standards, what do the partners mean to convey when they pronounce them? What is achieved by stating your commitments to the unachievable? And if you're not willing to be evaluated on what you say you stand for, what do people think you mean?

Note that I don't think it "immoral" to enunciate principles you're not prepared to be accountable for -- I just think you're fooling yourself as to the beneficial impact of preaching them. My experience says it's even worse than neutral: you train people to see that you cannot be depended upon to act according to what you advocate, and they end up either trusting you less or just ignoring what you preach.

****

What do the rest of you think? Does all this mean that firms shouldn't even try to enunciate their principles? Should they survey everyone each year and publish the results? Internally? Externally? How many firms -- good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, actually do that?

How We Buy

The key to all marketing, selling, client service, and client relations questions is actually not about how do you market, or how do you sell. The thing that we need to understand is, "How do clients buy?" And what follows is my attempt to explain that perspective at a recent lawyers conference.

Earning Trust when there's too little time

Most of us want to be caring trusted advisors, showing an interest in our clients' affairs and staying current on what's on their mind.

But there are only so many hours in a day, and many of us have more than a handful of clients to take care of at once.

So what can you do to earn and deserve trust (and a relationship) if you only have a limited amount of time?

The first point I'd make is to ensure that, in the limited few interactions you can afford the time for, you succeed as coming across as sympathetic and understanding. I don't necessarily want a lot more of my doctor's time when I see him or her, I just want to be treated a certain way when we are together.

Second, Getting in contact before I'm needed. ("I'm going to be away: is there anything I can take care of for you before I go?") This is one case where seeking permission (to be unavailable) is better than seeking forgiveness.

I don't know if the metaphor applies, but the situation reminds me of struggling to be a good parent or marriage partner. You can't always give the other person all the time they want from you, but there must be ways to maximise the impact of the time you do have.

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on good practice, since I think building and sustaining relationships with limited time is a common challenge.

What if Your Customers Can't Be Trusted?

I was participating in a discussion with a group of executives, when an insurance company CEO pointed out that, according to their market research, about 30 percent of their customers acknowledged that they would "cheat" on an insurance claim. (He didn't elaborate on the precise details: it wasn't that kind of meeting.)

But assume his research is correct: what is the appropriate company response? In most cases, as we know, companies will then get very suspicious of ALL of their customer claims (they can't know which 30 percent are untrustworthy) and you end up with bureaucracy and MUTUAL distrust, which quickly spirals down.

Insurance companies get a bad rap (Hurricane Katrina, Mike Moore's new film -- Sicko) for too often denying claims. But the fault is not just on one side, is it?

Put yourself in the shoes of being an insurance company executive. Is there a middle ground between over-trusting a customer base which will exploit your goodwill 30 percent of the time, and acting defensively all the time and coming across to everyone as non-responsive?

There's clearly a difference between what you would do as an individual, on-on-one, when you can take it case-by-case. But what do you do if you're a corporation, trying to work across the country or internationally with hundreds of thousands of customers. What policies do you put in place, and how do you train your front-line people?

New book on HOW

One of the advantages (or is it disadvantages?) of being a blogger is that I've ended up as a target for the book publicists, who want to promote their authors' books.

As someone who has tried to get my own business books noticed, I feel sympathetic. So, I'll try to let my readers know what's crossing my desk. I won't always be timely: sometimes it takes a while for reading a book to rise to the top of my to-do pile.

One that I was recently sent is how: Why HOW we do anything means everything in business (and in Life) by Dov Seidman

It's already doing well (Number 389 among all books on Amazon.)

It's got some great stories, but like many modern readers, I want to get straight to the punch-line. Seidman helps with this by providing end-of-chapter tabular or graphical summaries, enabling you to skip through the book and get it's main messages.

One table I liked was this:

The Problem With Rules (As opposed to Values or Principles)

1. Rules are External: made by others
2. We are Ambivalent About Rules (we like breaking them)
3. Rules are reactive to Past events
4. Rules are both over- and under-inclusive (they are proxies, not precise)
5. Proliferation of rules is a tax on the system
6. Rules are typically prohibitions
7. Rules require enforcement
8. Rules speak to boundaries and floors, but create ceilings
9. The only way to honour rules is to obey them exactly
10. Too many rules breeds over-reliance

Thank You for Making This Possible

This is the time of the month when I pause to recognize and celebrate those of you who contributed to this blog. Your efforts and willingness to share ideas do not go unnoticed. I thank you for making possible another month of fruitful exchanges and I encourage you to continue posting comments here. We all enjoy the contributions.

Since the winter months are coming (in the Southern hemisphere), I am going to switch to posting a "Thank You" post like this every three months, instead of every month. That doesn't mean any less (or less frequent) gratitude!

Cheers!

Commentors

Harry Alexander, Jerome Alexander, Alisya, Stephanie West Allen, Wally Bock, Galba Bright, Duncan Bucknell, CA, Daphne Castillo, Alan Chapman, Charlie, Chris, Stuart Cross, Dorian, Bill Dotson, Stephen Downes, David Faye, Geoff, Mark Graban, Charles H. Green, Ted Harro, Diana Hird, Dennis Howlett, Jennifer, Joseph, Cary King, David Kirk, Greg Krauska, Peter Macmillan, Erik Mazzone, Tom Metz, Cristian Mitreanu, Mi, Nancy, Neil, Nick, Mitch Owen, Brad Potter, Laura Ricci, Robert, Frank Roche, Steve Roesler, Ian Scott, Jeff Scurry, Carl Singer, Carl Singer, Shaun Stevens, Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Coert Visser, Susie Wee

Trackbacks

Business Development
Charles Green's Trust Matters
Counsel to Counsel
McArthur's Rant
Software Development and Human Capital
Wally Bock's

What We Hate About Those People

The key to giving your clients a great client experience is to understand what it feels like to be a client. In the following clip, we explore exactly that, by drawing on our common experience of being the patient of a doctor.