Small Business Marketing Strategy | Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success Reviews
September 29, 2010
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Posted by Brian
Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success
- ISBN13: 9780470438992
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Praise for Professional Services Marketing “This book is that rare thing: simultaneously wise, practical, readily accessible, and data-driven. A necessary addition to your reading.”
—David Maister, author of Managing the Professional Service Firm “Professional Services Marketing will certainly become the bible of the field in short order! Without a doubt, the most useful compendium of marketing insight for the practicing professional services firm executive…BRAVO!”
Rating: 
(out of 19 reviews)
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Review by Ian Brodie for Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success
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Review from the Selling Professional Services Blog at [...]
One question I get asked every now and then is “Can you recommend a good book on marketing professional services?”.
And to be honest, my normal answer is “not really”.
For sole practitioners and small consulting firms, Robert Middleton’s Action Plan Marketing material is an excellent resource. For larger firms there’s very little on marketing that I find helpful, so I usually point them to the relevant chapters in more general works like Maister’s Managing the Professional Service Firm, Harding’s Rainmaking or Denvir & Walker’s Growing Your Client Base.
Well, now I have something to recommend.
Professional Services Marketing is Mike Schultz & John Doerr’s new book focused on helping professional firms build strong brands, create a “lead generation engine” and develop effective business development cultures.
Here’s the difference with Professional Services Marketing – it’s based on what really works in professional services.
As well as running their own professional service firm, Schultz and Doerr advise leading law, accountancy and consulting firms. And as the founders of [...], they have access to the most recent research on lead generation methods, client buying criteria, fee rates, etc.
The impact of that experience and research comes through loud and clear in the book. What you won’t find here are unsubstantiated theories or concepts from product marketing crudely adapted to a services environment. Instead, it’s based on practical, real-world-tested ideas.
Example: In Chapter 6 – Don’t Worry About Your Competition, they debunk a number of myths hung-over from product marketing. “You must be a first mover” – nonsense. “You must be #1 or #2 in your market” – pish. “You must have a USP” – yeah right. I come across these myths frequently (and unfortunately, I hear them repeated by too many trainers and consultants who should know better). Schulz & Doerr demonstrate here and throughout the book that they’re not afraid to break with conventional wisdom and to “tell it like it is”. Using research and experience they show how these ideas are not only wrong for professional service firms, but that by following them they can damage your business.
OK – so here’s what the book actually covers:
* Marketing Planning
* The Key Levers of Lead Generation
* Options for Fees & Pricing
* Competition
* Culture
* Branding
* Uniqueness (and why it’s a mistahe to think you need to be unique)
* Thought Leadership
* Marketing Communications
* Lead Nurturing
* Targeting
* Selling
* Networking
* “Hustle”
No book is perfect, of course. The chapter on selling has some excellent ideas (particularly about the importance of surfacing client aspirations as well as problems) – but isn’t enough on it’s own to turn a stumbling accountant or brash lawyer into a competent salesperson. I’d have liked to have seen pointers to more detailed resources in this area like Let’s Get Real or SPIN Selling.
But overall – how highly do I rate the book? Put it this way: I got a free electronic version of the pre-release version of the book – but I’ve stumped up my own cash to add a hard copy version to my library for reference.
Review by Michael McLaughlin for Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success
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There’s an awful lot to like about this newest book on marketing professional services. It’s research-based, it provides insights on every aspect of marketing services, and it’s well-written.
Among the insights in this book that will have wide appeal to service providers is Schultz and Doerr’s discussion of uncovering your firm’s key brand attributes. The nine questions that guide the reader to their true value proposition is worth the price of the book.
It’s hard to go wrong with this book. Highly recommended.
Michael W. McLaughlin
Author, Winning the Professional Services Sale
Review by Ken Lizotte for Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success
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This book has got the goods on everything you need to move your firm ahead: the very best know-how from two of the very best practitioners and biz thought leaders on the essentials of professional success, steeped in vital topics like branding (all facets), lead generation, setting fees & prices, ID’ing your “key brand attributes,” intellectual capital, relationship nurturing, “bad marketing advice,” targeting, passion and much, much, much more. The writing itself sets the correct tone, one all too typically forgotten (or ignored) by even seasoned entrepreneurs. Chapter 6 is an example: “Don’t Worry About Your Competition… Let Them Worry About YOU!”
To skip thru common business blunders and get right to the core of your business value and success, open the pages of this book and get going. Recession or not, as author of a similar book, I can personally attest that this knowledge gem by Schultz and Doerr can empower you to leave loserville far behind.
Review by Paul Mccord, Author, Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals for Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success
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Mike Schultz and John Doerr with Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success (Wiley and Sons: 2009) venture into an increasingly crowded area–the marketing and selling of professional services.
For full disclosure. I am mentioned in the book along with dozens of others as a contributing author to [...], the online marketing magazine edited by Mike Schultz. I do contribute to the site. Contributing to RainToday and working with Mike has not influenced this review at all. However, since there is a slight relationship here, you be the judge (the best way to be the judge is buy the book and determine whether my review is accurate or not).
A growing trend in the sales and marketing training/consulting industry–and consequently for authors of books–is targeting professional service providers. The sector has been viewed as potentially profitable and underserved. It’s a market where underserved is no longer the case. Amazon has over 2,350 sales and marketing books listed that target the professional service provider and most of these have been published in the last five or six years.
So in such a crowded marketplace that has exploded in such a short period of time is it really reasonable to expect that Schultz and Doerr have contributed much of anything new? It might not be reasonable to expect, but they did create a work that does contribute substantially to the subject.
They lay out for themselves a massive task. According to the front flap, the book covers these five areas:
1. Creating a customized marketing and growth strategy based on what will really work for your firm
2. Establishing a brand and reputation that leads to market leadership, frustrated competitors, and happy clients (and more of them)
3. Implementing a marketing communications program that will keep your firm front and center in decision-makers’ minds
4. Developing a lead generation strategy that brings in more new clients than you will know what to do with
5. Winning new clients by developing rainmakers and a culture of business-development hustle, passion, intensity, and success
That’s a massive undertaking. In essence, Schultz and Doerr intend to present a comprehensive strategy for marketing and growing your professional services firm including turning each of your practitioners into strong business producers.
Impressive if done. Let’s see if they did it.
Schultz and Doerr come from a background entrenched in the real world of marketing professional service firms. They own one themselves, the Wellesley Hills Group, a consulting company working with professional service firms. As consults to professional service firms, they see the good and the bad, what works and what doesn’t.
Professional Services Marketing isn’t a marketing text; it’s a marketing implementation guide. It isn’t filled with theory but with practical guidance and real world experience. It doesn’t come the ivory tower but from the trenches because the authors live in the trenches. Theory is great fun to discuss but when it comes to building your firm, you want real, workable, applicable, predictable strategies and techniques, not pie-in-the-sky maybe’s.
One of the most frustrating aspects of marketing and sales tips, guidance, and advice for professionals who have had little exposure to and are fearful of marketing and sales is that the guidance and advice is given in a plastic, sterile manner–there’s little or no context to put real flesh and bones to the concepts. Consequently they float in the ether, there to be seen and admired, not to be used.
Schultz and Doerr understand that concept without context renders it virtually useless. They turn what for many would be pretty trinkets into useable tools–that itself more than justifies the price of the book.
More importantly, they tie all the aspects of creating and implementing a marketing program into a consistent whole. Rather than having a number of disparate pieces of “marketing,” Professional Services Marketing shows the user (not reader, this isn’t a book to be “read,” it’s a book to be implemented) how to coordinate and synchronize the various parts of a marketing, branding, and sales program into a unified whole.
Glowing praise? Yes.
A book without any weaknesses? No.
From a marketing and branding standpoint, Professional Services Marketing is in a class by itself. It does, however, fall short in one area–turning an accountant, attorney or engineer into a salesperson.
The authors give good advice. They give real world guidance. They can help move a professional who is mystified by the concept of business generation into one who can snag a client here and there. Unfortunately, no book is going to create Rainmakers out of non-sellers. It would have been nice to see an extensive list of sales skill resources, in particular coaching resources, and the admonition to seek out and hire a quality coach.
But no book is perfect.
Whether an individual practitioner, practitioner within a small or large firm, or partner or manager of a firm, get a copy and implement it. If you’re a partner or manager of a firm, purchase a copy for every member of your firm–managers, practitioners, staff. Get everyone on the same page–and these are the pages to get them on.
Review by S. Lisauskas for Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success
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In today’s difficult economy, successful professional services firms must be guided, and must target their scarce marketing resources, based on detailed research backed by real-life professional experience. The reader will get both from this book. Schultz and Doerr have been successful practioners and successful consultants for many years, They aren’t academics, so the book is accessible while also being valid and relevant. This book is a must-read as we all work to make maintain and grow our market. You will add value to your business by reading this book.