Golden Practices

Use RSS to Follow Client Industries

Make news and info come to you and enhance perception of the depth of your specialty.

You may already subscribe to blogs, but do you subscribe to "searches"? Subject search results can be amazingly informative.

Using Bloglines or another blog aggregator, search (top right of page in Bloglines) for key words related to an important client’s or prospect's industry (e.g. tool and die, over the road trucking, funeral homes, veterinary services, apparel, importing, etc).

Add the search results to "your feeds" and skim for five minutes per day--occasionally forward items of interest to your client.

So What?

A powerful question, isn't it?

Barbara Walters Price on her Marketing U blog picked up on the thread about marketing experts (or not) that David Maister started Who Are the Marketing Experts in Professional Businesses? and she mentioned my first response to David's post.

I took exception with the premise of David's post because I believe that most firms don't do cool marketing things not because they don't get innovative suggestions from their marketing professionals, but because they don't accept those suggestions or allow the marketing to move forward for one reason or another. In other words, they are often too conservative.

Barbara's post, PSF Marketers: Experts or Irrelevant? is strong. In it she challenges my list -- not its accuracy, with which she concurs, but its relevance. And she's right. So what. She wrote:

Michelle's top ten list is pretty much right on the money yet, again, so what? You sign on as a marketer for a professional service firm and you mostly know what comes with the territory. You do your best to get better every day. If things don't work out for you or if you're not valued, then you work like a dog to change your circumstances or you go elsewhere. I know it sounds harsh, but it's true.

I think firms are the first to admit they live in a state of complacency. Marketers tend to be change agents. When they first start in a firm, they have their greatest advantage and should set expectations appropriately for the sort of support, infrastructure (budget) and creative license they will want and need to be effective and to stay intellectually/creatively stimulated in the process.

Should the position deteriorate to anything less, then that is something that the marketer should take responsibility for and address. The most successful professional service firm marketers do this from time to time as necessary.

Unfortunately, most of the rest would be the first to tell you that they sink to a level of being less effective than they'd like...adapting to the firm's complacency rather than counseling the firm out of it.

Thank you Barbara for challenging the complaint list. So what, indeed.

Team Building IS Marketing

5-Minutes to Market Today?

Remember that your co-workers/team members (will refer to them as "colleagues") are essential to your service ability as part of your team, but they are also potential referral sources who can choose to, or not to, refer people specifically to you or to your firm in general.

To this point, remember these three things you can do to build the team and build trust in you. Take 5 MINUTES NOW to do one of these things and then try to do them all more frequently.

1. Thank a colleague for his/her excellent contributions a recent project.

2. Compliment a colleague on a talent they have and tell them you're glad to have them on the team.

3. Invite a colleague to collaborate with you to brainstorm how to add value to a client because they "have great ideas" and you value their input.

Measuring What Matters

Those who've read me for awhile probably know that I'm a strong supporter of the writing, research and theories of my brilliant colleague at VeraSage Institute, Ron Baker.

Well, he's done it again. One of the messages Ron has been delivering to professional service firms, since long before I met him in 1999, is that timesheets measure the wrong stuff in professional service firms.

"If I don't use timesheets, how will I know how much to charge?" That's the first question we PSFs ask Ron, literally, every time he speaks. 

The next question asked is:

"But if we don't use timesheets, how do we 'measure' productivity?"   

People argue: "I cannot manage my people if they don't fill out timesheets--I won't know what they are doing."

There are several issues at hand in answering these questions. First, let's admit that there is a successful business or two out there that, without timesheets, seems to inspire and intellectually stimulate their human capital to be highly effective. That's the bottom line firms want, too, right? Effectiveness.

Then there's the question I have: if using timesheets to manage people helps us to be better managers, why are there so many partners and managers with very poor people management skills? (Could it be they are letting timesheets be the 'managers' in lieu of them?)

And, last time I checked, timesheets tell someone what somebody else did yesterday (lagging indicator). Not what they should be doing tomorrow (leading indicator). Shouldn't management focus on directing future results more than reading about past inputs?

Further, in a value pricing environment (one in which we aren't considering hours as a factor in price) we need to assure we are delivering value to our customers in accordance with the expectations we set and the prices we ask. To accomplish this, we need a means of assuring we do the 'right things' (usually client-oriented things as opposed to our own 'realization') to meet those expectations.

So how do we make sure we and the people we manage are doing the "right things tomorrow"?

We must align individual efforts with the goals of the firm which, for optimal firm success, should be aligned with the objectives of the client and establish Key Predictive Indicators for the firm's success through meeting customer expectations and needs.

Ron's newest book entitled Measuring What Matters to Customers: Using Key Predictive Indicators covers this in excellent detail, yet it's an easy read at only 200 pages. You can buy it from Wiley at VeraSage Institute's preferred pricing. (If you don't see -15% applied at checkout, enter code aff15 in the Promotion Code field and click the Apply Discount button.)

Ron's other books including three FREE PDF books can be found at VeraSage's website. The PDF books are: Trashing Timesheets, Burying the Billable Hour (on the move to Value Pricing) and You Are Your Customer List (on customer selection and DEselection).

Full disclosure: I am a Senior Fellow of VeraSage Institute but I do not benefit financially from the organization or any book sales.

Need Ideas for Cool Gifts?

My company, Golden Marketing, helped a client out with some ideas for a special congratulatory gift. We thought we'd share our suggestions here, too, because sometimes it's hard to think creatively about a business gift or something for that special person who has everything.

We came across a nice list of potential presents that would work well for holiday or other gift-giving occasions. From traditional to contemporary and in every price range from $17 to $285. Hope we can help you shortcut your search for cool gifts! Enjoy...

• Parthenon Horse (really cool!) $59
• Crystal Globe with Bronze stand $58
• Navigator's Terrestrial Globe $119
• Solitaire Di Venezia, 25mm hand-blown Venetian glass Marbles - Historic Game Classics $63
• Really cool wood puzzles from $17 to $184
• Historic sports stamp collections (baseball or football) $135 or less if member
• Murano glass aquarium $199 or less if member
• Mother of pearl globe $299 or less if member
• Bulova® Marlborough Mantel Clock $235 or less if member
• Handcrafted glass wireless weather forecast beacon (must see this) $185
• Stellanova(TM) Titan Metallic Silver Levitating Globe w+Silver Base $80
• Giant star cluster wood puzzle $160
• 18 Dutch Mills puzzle $60
• Arabesque wood puzzle $65

Do You Have 5 Minutes to Market Today?

I'm starting a new series of quick marketing ideas. I'll put them all in this new "5-Minute Marketing" category (see sidebar).

Here's the premise...and the first five ideas. Can you find 5 minutes in your day, today, for marketing? Really. That’s all it takes.

In just 5 minutes you can do at least one of these things to develop your practice:

• Write a note to a friend, acquaintance, colleague, or prospect.

• Call and invite someone to lunch for next week--even if they cannot go, spend a few minutes "just catching up."

• Scan the “promotions” section of your local business journal (or the on-line version) and jot a little note of ‘Congrats’ to someone you recognize.

• Look through yesterday’s work records and pick one additional item (opportunity) you can follow up with a client about.

• Call someone whose project you'll be starting in the next two weeks and tell them you're looking forward to seeing or working with them again. Ask how they've been.

Many to come!

The World In-House Marketers Live In

Over at David Maister's blog is a conversation about PSF marketing people and their sophistication (novice versus expert) called Who Are the Marketing Experts in Professional Businesses?

I have some pretty strong feelings about the topic of in-house marketers, having been one, and from being in very close contact to hundreds of colleagues in my present business and 11 years with Association for Accounting Marketing. Maybe it's just me, but the conversation seemed to be missing a large part of the picture of the world in which in-house marketers work. I added a very long comment that I am posting here (with some additions). And I'm very interested in the feedback of other marketers.

Also, if you're a leader of a firm, see if you can spot some of these problems in your firm...

____________

Where to begin...as a former in-house marketer in both accounting and law firms, and as a member (and leader) of Association for Accounting Marketing since 1995, I think I have some perspective on this that hasn't yet been shared.

1. Most firms don't know what to look for (skill wise) when they hire marketing professionals. Most are hiring one because their competitors did. Most marketers weren't hired for a particular job description. Many don't even have job descriptions. Some don't even know to whom they actually report (a committee). And many report to people who have no idea how to utilize or measure their efforts, evaluate their recommendations, and no authority to approve their initiatives until the "next partner meeting"...whenever that might be.
2. Firms (since the early 1990s at least) tended to hire over-qualified people given the low complexity level of (approved) projects and budget they gave these people to work with. In other words, they hired people with very creative ideas and they proceeded to stifle them by rejecting the most innovative ideas, failing to provide dollars to fund the initiatives, and not allocating support persons to help the pros--then they were surprised when these people left...
3. Then firms began replacing those "first" directors--more experienced persons--with less expensive new marketing grads or hiring folks from the other low paying industry: non-profits. To this day, the marketing salaries in accounting firms lag $30-40K/yr behind comparable positions in law firms. In fact, avg salaries for marketing people are still between $45-75K for both professions. These numbers are way behind corporate marketing positions.
4. Now firms are again hiring more experienced people, and paying a little better (not much), and even approving some slightly more creative ideas. But veteran PSF marketers are presently leaving firms in record numbers and going to more progressive industries.
5. Budgets for the marketers to work with (if they are even formalized) are ridiculously low compared to all other industries. The average firm allocates only 1.5-2.5% of PY gross revenues for the subsequent marketing year. This amount includes many items that the marketer tells the firm will have little or no ROMI such as obligatory sponsorships, sporting tickets used mostly by employees and friends, etc. -- usually expenses over which the marketer has little or no control or input. And many marketers don't even have access to their firm's financial information including revenues by sector and historical or projected marketing expenditures.
6. Marketers get sucked into non-client activities in the firm such as party-planning, morale building, and recruiting (not that marketers shouldn't be involved in marketing the firm to new employees, too, but it is a distraction from new biz development).
7. Marketers in law firms are less micromanaged, less required, on a daily basis, to "prove your worth" than in CPA firms, but both positions operate in environments in which feedback of any sort is scarce, written marketing plans and budgets are the exception and not the rule, and getting "face time" with decision-makers is not easy or timely.
8. Most firms consider and approve marketing initiatives as they arise rather than planning them in advance. But these approval processes are often long and tedious. In many cases, the optimal timing for the initiative is long passed by the time partners get around to approving them.
9. Partners, managers and key team members have little or no incentive or motivation to participate in marketing efforts because they are rewarded for production over all else. I don't care how good a marketing professional is, he or she can only do so much on his or her own to market IN LIEU OF the firm's practitioners. Many of the initiatives approved that involve partner/manager time (such as those great suggestions in Trusted Advisor) fall flat due to capacity constraints and other organizational barriers including lack of prioritization of, and accountability for, these things.
10. Firms stop listening to their in-house marketers and will celebrate the same advice from an "outsider" that they snubbed from their own marketer. I see this often and experienced it from the inside, too. It is astounding.

I could go on and on. Basically, there is little alignment between (or forethought about) what a firm wants versus what it needs both with regard to marketing talent. And it's just as great a problem when firms hire high level people and hamper their abilities as it is when they hire newbies and expect them to be Coca-Cola level marketers (without the budget, of course).

__________

Those are my thoughts...what are your thoughts?

__________

For resources on salary, see my prior posts on why are CPA marketer salaries so far behind law? and CPA firm marketer salaries:

For resources on how to identify what type and skill level of marketer to hire, and what to expect from him or her, see my website for Top 10 Marketing & Sales FAQs.

Blame Avoidance. Why it's a Fatal Error.

Pleasing the customer is the main goal in client service, right?

When a client airs a problem or complaint, it is often our first instinct to explain why it happened. Don't do it.

The client doesn’t really care WHY it happened. They just want acknowledgment of the problem and then they want amends.

1. Resist the urge to explain. Never, ever explain who dropped the ball or offer any excuses about why. Here are three reasons to skip the "explanation":

• your explanation cannot help but demonstrate to the client areas in which your systems and processes are weak--they will think less of you
• blaming others (or processes over which you should have some control or authority) reduces the impression of your personal integrity and effectiveness--they will think less of you
• lastly, the explanation does not serve to correct the problem in any way

Worse, these three things will almost certainly further aggravate clients. Why? Because it makes them question, and doubt, their judgment in hiring you.

2. Own the problem. Even if it is not your fault. Especially if it's not your fault. Do not pass the client to "someone else" to deal with it. Even if they caused it.

The first thing the client should always hear is a sincere apology. It's actually quite liberating to apologize on behalf of yourself, others, or the organization. Just say "I am so sorry this has occurred."

Immediately following the apology, state directly that it is your intention to solve the problem or make up for it, as appropriate. Say, "I will do everything in my power to correct this and take steps to assure it does not happen again." If necessary, you can add, "and to make up to you for the inconvenience." 

Almost always, these two statements will diffuse a client’s anger or frustration. You can then either propose a solution or ask what the client would like as a remedy.

The two-step approach, instead of causing clients to doubt their judgment in hiring you, reassures them that they hired someone of integrity and honor.

Mistakes will always happen--they are part of life and business. What matters to your customers is how you handle them when they occur.

*Note - these approaches are as effective internally as they are outside of your firm

"When you blame others, you give up your power to change." -- Dr. Robert Anthony

The Safety Net of Hourly Billing

Allison Shields has a really good post on shifting from hourly to fixed pricing. Think about how her paragraph, below, illustrates a way in which hourly billing has become a serious "safety net" -- but at the expense (literally and figuratively) of the client! And not without negative impact on your client relationships, too.

"Often lawyers [sub: accountants] take on a case without fully investigating or exploring not only the facts surrounding the matter, but the client's specific expectations and values. One advantage of changing the pricing structure is that these longer and more detailed conversations will likely help lawyers pre-qualify clients better, alert them to potential problems earlier, and help them weed out ‘nightmare’ clients before they become a headache."

Skipping these important conversations and the subsequent thinking about project depth and scope is only made possible because hourly billers know they usually won't "lose" no matter what since they'll bill what it actually "takes."

This lack of communication on the front side results in our lack of understanding/planning and the high likelihood of our client being "surprised" with an unknown bill amount (usually higher than what we or they would have anticipated) is an absolute service faux pas.

Of course this shift of all risk to the client (from us) means the client loses in every way because they go into the project even more blind than us. Some clients will certainly object to the final price, but with hourly billings, you won't know until AFTER you've done the work--when you're on the defensive and they've received the benefits of your service. Some "nightmare" clients wouldn't be nightmare clients at all had they been given the opportunity to make a more informed purchase in the first place.

Allison also makes some strong points about setting up more complex projects in phases or stages and determining/articulating the value of the work you are doing as opposed to our typical default conversation about "how long it takes."

Without discussing project scope/intensity and value up front, you cannot possibly set expectations. If you cannot set them, you sure as heck are going to have a hard time meeting them!

Think about this:

With many legal and accounting services, the client is facing unknown processes (or at least processes outside of their comfort zone) with unknown--an largely unguarantee-able--outcomes.

Shouldn't the client at least be able to count on a pretty well-defined price (at least phase by phase) and clear communications from the professional, in advance, about the same?

Hourly billing's 'safety net' has encouraged professionals to withhold the few assurances you can actually provide to them.

Add "The No Asshole Rule" to Your Book List

Two great bloggers, Guy Kawasaki and David Maister, have been talking (on their respective blogs) about a professor, Bob Sutton, and his new book: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn't.

Author, Bob Sutton, has his own blog that is quite good called Work Matters. In a recent post on this blog, Bob appreciates David's take on his book's concepts. Bob writes:

I was especially struck by his thoughts about the situations that turn typically civilized people into temporary assholes. See his post for the complete set of comments, but it is worth repeating his initial list below. As I went through it, it certainly described the times when my inner jerk has reared its ugly head.

And Guy Kawasaki writes a nice piece sharing Bob's "dirty dozen" list of "everyday asshole actions"

1. Personal insults
2. Invading one’s personal territory
3. Uninvited personal contact
4. Threats and intimidation, both verbal and non-verbal
5. Sarcastic jokes and teasing used as insult delivery systems
6. Withering email flames
7. Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims
8. Public shaming or status degradation rituals
9. Rude interruptions
10. Two-faced attacks
11. Dirty looks
12. Treating people as if they are invisible

and then he proceeds to describe how to avoid being one in the future.

Bob's, David's and Guy's posts (linked to above) are all worth the read...

Where in the World is....

Several weeks away from the blog... and it's been tough to resist the urge to blog instead of meeting customer expectations.

Note to bloggers/future bloggers: downside of having blog your clients read is that your clients can see when you aren't working on THEIR stuff....  :-)

I believe I have concluded my Summer/Fall '06 world tour. Literally, have been speaking publicly or presenting to clients nearly every two weeks since July. Very different for me because I don't normally travel that much. Not all hard work as you'll note from the pic taken in a Dublin pub. (note the Guiness in the really cool mic-stand-drink-holder behind my head...man, who says the Irish aren't innovative!!)

If anyone has great Road Warrior tips (i.e. how to stay productive and focused despite changing time zones several times a week) I'd be very appreciative as I have a feeling this is going to become more necessary for me to master.

At any rate, glad to be back with you...