April 1997 Marketer Articles

Unplugged: The Marketing Profession from the
Principals' Perspective

By Hugh Hochberg

CONSERVATIVE ATMOSPHERE

Much to our relief, the national and international economies have largely rebounded during the last three years. Consistent with previous predictions, the business community has not returned to the pre-recession norms and mentality. Business, institutions, and governments are more careful about the investments they make in all respects, including capital expenditures. Lenders are more conscientious abut the financial commitments they make. Clients are more concerned about the price they pay and the value they receive. Competitors are more savvy about how to win clients and how to better serve them.

Our wake-up call rang during the recession years and emphasized what many practitioners in the design community had thought all along: The overwhelming majority of clients buy services from people whom they perceive will be instrumental in the successful delivery of the planning, design, or construction firm’s services. Despite changes in the social, civic, business, and political communities, this realization has not altered with the end of the recession.

SOME BASIC DEFINITIONS

Clearly understanding the seller-buyer relationship, and its effects on roles in marketing, requires buy-in to some basic definitions. Let’s agree that marketing refers to the range of activities that precede, parallel, and follow a client selecting a firm to provide services. Marketing includes such things as:

• Market research.
• Development and implementation of market positioning strategies.
• Preparation and maintenance of tools and materials to support both marketing and selling efforts.
• Lead finding and lead qualifying.
• Budgeting and financial monitoring of marketing and selling activities.

Selling connotes the one-on-one activities that culminate in a client buying our services. Simply stated, selling is what gets a client to buy services from one provider instead of from another.

WHAT PRINCIPALS VALUE

What principals need and value most is having others in the firm who can directly bring in work. Simply stated--individuals who can see or, more accurately, can get clients to buy. Marketers do perform important and valuable functions in guiding, supporting, monitoring, and managing their firms' overall marketing and selling activities. They are, however, rarely capable of having primary responsibility or the success for failure of sales. Astute principals do not expect people on their marketing staff to bring in work, but rather to assist those who do bring home the bacon.

Clients buy services from people--not firms. Principals, in turn, want to provide the biggest value to their clients by having professionals on staff who:

• Can communicate an understanding of, and sensitivity to, clients’ needs and concerns. This contributes value to principals by helping the firm to think like the client.
• Through track record and communication, instill a confidence that they will influence the application of the firm’s resources on the clients’ behalf.
• Possess values that parallel their clients.
• Convey that their firm can provide high value at a fair price.

In a nutshell, clients buy services from individuals in whom they have great confidence and whom they can characterize as “my architect,” “my engineer,” “my consultant.” Individuals who consistently fit this profile are among the most valuable employees of any professional services firm because they are the link to the food source that sustains the practice. Sales professionals command higher compensation than others in the firm because they are harder to develop and more difficult to replace.

At the risk of appearing overstated, one can argue that the rest of the firm’s personnel exist to deliver what the sales professionals sell. More specifically, from a marketing perspective, marketing exists to support sellers in order to allow them to do what brings highest value to the firm.

SAME OLD, SAME OLD

Traditional marketing roles have not changed perceptively since the advent of formal marketing of professional services nearly four decades ago. Irrespective of title, the functions in a firm which is large enough to warrant specialized marketing roles look like this:

• Direction: Develop, articulate, and guide the firm’s business development efforts toward specific goals. This role often includes an overall strategy for pursuing those goals.
• Lead Filling: Identify, screen, connect with prospective clients and bring others from the firm into the process at the appropriate time.
• Pursuit Strategy: Develop the strategies for pursuing specific and general opportunities.
• Coordination: Develop and maintain the tools and systems that support all other marketing and selling activities.
• Paperwork and Tools: Prepare or coordinate preparation of marketing and selling materials including, responses to inquiries, qualification statements, proposals and general correspondence.
• Public Relations: Develop and implement or coordinate efforts to communicate with the firm’s market sectors, community, and media.
• Budgeting: participate in preparing annual or more frequent budgets for the firm’s business development activities and expenses. Solicit input form others whose time will be a budget component.
• Management: Monitor and manage marketing, selling, public relations, and related skill development activities.

  PRINCIPALS’ FRUSTRATION

  “Title creep”--no, that’s not a Saturday-morning-cartoon character. Through my work with principals throughout the country, I have gotten a very different perspective of the value of marketers. Principals have shared their continuing frustration that many marketers in their firms clamor for titles and compensation reflecting advancement that, at times, exceeds responsibilities and level of performance.

  A second frustration that many principals experience is that marketing staff, more than others in the firm, have a steady eye to identifying their next employer. Indeed, some principals cite marketing organizations, the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) included, as being more valued by their members as a network for finding their next job than as a resource for performing their current job better.

  EIGHT STEPS TOWARD INCREASING VALUE

  Following these basic eight steps could lead to advancement and, more importantly, increased value within your existing firm.

  1. Reduce Role Confusion. Recognize that in many firms, principals and others have unrealistic expectations of people in marketing roles. They expect marketers to bring in work. Engage in discussions and document roles to clarify that, the marketing roles can orchestrate, support, and fulfill asks that increase the likely sales success of others, but people in true marketing roles do not directly bring in work.

  2. Increase Collaboration Effectiveness. Just as a good hunting dog needs an experienced hunter to bring down the prey, so does a good marketer require a skilled seller to bring in the client. Marketers and sellers who meet regularly are likely to heighten awareness of each individual’s role and what each needs of the other. Whether meeting in formal or informal settings, the effort will result in increased individual effectiveness and, greater sustained success.

  3. Clarify Goals. Too often, the lack of clearly defined goals leads to “volume of work” as the primary measure of marketing and selling success. With clearer goals, energies will be focused on getting the right clients and projects. As obvious as this may sound, professional services firms are notorious for rationalizing pursuing, and then struggling to serve, clients who are clearly misfits. When a client’s values, goals and expectations are inconsistent with the firms that are trying to serve them, this mismatch is guaranteed to occur. Every energy expended serving the “wrong” client is a lost opportunity to serve the “right” one.

  4. Develop and Adhere to Business Development Budgets. Professional practices are, after all, business that provide professional services. Principals realize that it takes investment to establish and sustain a position in the marketplace. Strive to develop and gain consensus on budgets that are realistic with targeted sales--not targeted sales versus current revenue. Further refining budgets to reflect client and project categories will increase principals’ confidence that the firm is benefiting from its business development expenditures. Being realistic about the changes in costs--sustaining a position in a sector in which the firm is mature and recognized will vary greatly from the costs of entering a new sector, or aggressive efforts in an evolving and expanding market. Having a firm handle on budgets will assist the marketer in responding to the concerns of many in the firm about where the business development dollars really go.

  5. Understand Clients’ Worlds. Even practitioners working closely with their clients every day do not adequately understand the factors, trends, opportunities, and concerns that shape their clients’ present and future. The most successful firms will have tremendous insight into the worlds they serve. Anything that marketers can do to increase their own, and their firms’, understanding of those worlds will bring tremendous value to the firm. Following clients’ media, their industry and professional organizations, will elevate the status of marketers in the firm. If you are not already doing so, research your client’s environments, and institute or participate in dialogue within the firm to benefit from others' insight.

  6. Develop Strategies. Benefiting from your new-found knowledge about the firm and about the clients’ arenas, push to play a greater role in developing marketing strategies. Make sure that these strategies are consistent with the direction in which the principals want the firm to head.

  7. Avoid Technology Overkill. Graphic, communication and other technologies can significantly increase efficiency and effectiveness. When new technologies are introduced into the firm at a faster pace than the skills to utilize them are developed, there is the potential for frustration and even disaster. Encourage refinement of existing technologies and addition of new ones that are consistent with the potential benefit to the marketing effort.

  8. Stop Job Searching. Marketing roles may be perceived as the most mobile in professional practice. Spend more time broadening and improving skills in your current role, thereby increasing credibility and value to the firm.

  WHAT’S NEXT?

  Despite predictions of another domestic economic downturn, the allure of foreign markets will continue to be strong. Communication enhancements and international collaboration will increase opportunities in the global marketplace. In response to these changing market conditions, personal rapport will be the foundation of the marketing and selling of professional services. Clients will continue to want to have high personal knowledge of, and confidence in, the practitioners who will serve them. Principals in successful firms have not lost sight of this prerequisite and will seek marketers who help and encourage this connectivity. Recognizing your importance to the firm, and serving as that vital cog in the wheel, will continue to make your role as marketer an essential to your firm’s success.

  HOW TO INCREASE YOUR VALUE

  • Reduce Role Confusion
    
  • Increse Collaboration Effectiveness
    
  • Clarify Goals
    
  • Develop and Adhere to Business Development Budgets
    
  • Understand Clients Worlds
    
  • Develop Strategies
    
  • Avoid Technology Overkill
    
  • Stop Job Searching