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The Seven Sins of Professional Services Marketing

by John Doerr, Contributing Editor, Wellesley Hills Group

The science and art of professional services marketing have come a long way in the last few years. It is no longer impossible to find examples of marketing efforts planned well, executed well, and measured well. Yet, in spite of these great strides, I continue to see the same marketing sins committed over and over again to the detriment of the firms and the people steering the marketing ship.

What's frustrating about these sins is that they are all made by intelligent people who have the good sense and ability to avoid them.

Seven PS marketing sins ... Got your number? ... Upgrade or new?

Jack Scharff

John Doerr says that many professional services businesses keep committing the same marketing sins. See The Seven Sins of Professional Services Marketing and learn how to avoid them.

Is your professional service organization trying to introduce major change? With a majority of such programs failing, improve your chances of success by fully engaging the entire organization through leadership. Service Performance Pillars, a new column in this issue, explains how to complete the transformation with success.

Say Customer A brings in $X revenue. Customer B brings in $X. Who brings in more revenue? Hate problem solving? Readers provide advice on how to do the customer math. You'd think customers would prefer to enhance and improve their current services. Instead, they're asking for new services. One reader wants to know: What's the deal? Can you help?

March usually means spring cleaning for many of us. If we need to do newsletter cleaning, please let us know. Share your thoughts, and your name goes into a drawing for a pair of Garmin Rino 100 MP3 GPS. Thanks for reading -- Jack

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Best Practices for Calculating Billable Utilization

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Download the Calculating Utilization research report to discover expert recommendations for the most effective way to accomplish this goal.

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Archive ...

Issue 7.2
February 2009

Issue 7.1
January 2009

Issue 6.12
December 2008

Issue 6.11
November 2008

Issue 6.10
October 2008

Issue 6.9
September 2008

Issue 6.8
August 2008

Issue 6.7
July 2008

Issue 6.6
June 2008

Issue 6.5
May 2008

Issue 6.4
April 2008

Issue 6.3
March 2008

Issue 6.2
February 2008

Issue 6.1
January 2008

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Accelerate Professional Service Maturity through Transformation

Success beyond change management or re-engineering

by Jeanne Urich, Dave Hofferberth and Michael Kanazawa

Professional service organizations (PSOs) provide one of the highest leverage business models to quickly grow revenues and profits, but they are the most difficult organizations to transform and change. David Bowie's song Changes, says it all, "Time may change me, but I can't change time."

Consider the cold facts. Over 70% of major change programs fail to achieve their desired results.

Leading to a More Successful Future
Improve your chances of emerging from recession with success
by Editor - MovingAhead

Are You a Good Leader?
How to draw on key ethical principles
by Bruce Weinstein - BusinessWeek

Last Issue's Dilemma:

Have you done the customer math?

I'd like to ask how many readers have taken action to figure out which of their customers bring in the most revenue, which of their customers are advocates (or provide referrals) and whether those groups consist of the same people.

They might think they know "in their gut," but I wonder if they've gone a step further to examine this important question in an empirical manner. For planning and marketing purposes, do readers have advice on how to best track these numbers, or do they just stick with their guts?

-- Julie, President

Read what others had to say.

This Issue's Dilemma:

Our customers don't want upgrades!

We receive more demand for new things than requests to upgrade current services. Our challenge is trying to balance building new features into our services as opposed to upgrading existing services.

Is the lack of demand for current services based on customers having to invest more in upgrades, or it is because people have moved on and want the next new shiny object? How do you strike the best balance between offering new services and upgrades? -- Pam, President

Can You Help?
Share your experience. You could win a digital camera.

Is Your Customer Base at Risk?
How to protect your existing business in tough times
by Ed Emde - Cincom Expert Access

Eight Tips to Improve Your Relationship with Sales
Building trust between sales and services
by Joe Longo - PSVillage

Why New Managers Encounter Trouble
Preparing an employee for a leadership role the right way
by Dan Bobinski - Management Issues

Creating a Culture of Empowerment
Behaviors critical to building an empowered culture
by Florence Stone - Leader's Edge

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