Customer Reviews

Client at the Core: Marketing and Managing Today's Professional Services Firm

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In "Client at the Core: Marketing and Managing Today's Professional Services Firm," (Wiley, 2004) August J. Aquila, based in Minnetonka, Minn., and Bruce W. Marcus, in Easton, Conn., a pair of veteran consultants, combine their considerable experience, skill and insight into a veritable strategic planning operator's manual for today's consulting firm.

From the outset, they acknowledge "the professional world doesn't need another book on how to write a press release or write a brochure or run a seminar."

Instead, they provide a new perspective on the crucial subject of how to keep firms relevant to the needs of the marketplace -- mainly, creating clients and building a marketing culture.

They don't get tied up in ideas like "vision," or "mission."

Instead they talk about the new realities of the 21st Century and professions in turmoil: dot-coms gone bust, a stock market meltdown, and a rash of frauds, defalcations, misuse of corporate funds; and then a reformist reaction, still unfolding, that the authors term "a helter-skelter regulatory rush that was at least as punitive as it was appropriate. It would seem that the regulatory garment was cut to fit all, when all don't wear the same size."

"The time is past when just the presence of the professional was its own comfort factor. It's long been believed that the concept of the professional was so exalted, and so trusting, that people accepted advice unquestioningly. No more. The scandals of 2002 and 2003 seem to have bred a diminished - if unwarranted -- respect for professionals," they say.

"Traditionally, professional services have been a seller's market," according to Aquila and Marcus. But now the tables are turned. "It is now a buyer's market."

For today's professionals, here are six lessons you can take to the bank according to the authors:

1. Clients are more sophisticated. They no longer accept advice without questioning, challenging, demanding more reasoning and detail.

2. Because of the complexity of business today, clients demand that their professionals know more about the client's business and industry than ever before.

3. Professional services always function best when trust is at the heart of the relationship, but the corporate scandals of recent years have eroded that trust. That trust must now be regenerated. And the workings of trust are more important in the new economy than in the old.

4. Once the narrow structures of a profession were sufficient to serve clients. But clients now demand a broader spectrum of capabilities. The more broadly educated and well-rounded professional is the one with the greater advantage in meeting the needs of today's client. Clients demand that accountants know more than the basic skills of accounting.

5. Competition is now a fact of life. Clients know they have a choice.

Clients know the difference between marketing promises and professional services delivery. Today's client demands more real service and solutions -- not just a warm personal relationship.
To Aquila and Marcus, the new paradigm of professional services requires a new demand for partnership with the client and new participatory skills.

As they say: It's a buyers' market. Get used to it.

(...)

This book should burnish the authors' already high reputations for having cogent, jargon-free, and street-smart things to say about what it's really like to try to market professional services. An unusual blend of (clear and lucidly stated) theory about marketing, and real-world insights into obstacles clients can throw up--not to mention the high barrier of internal resistance that "professionals" instinctively erect when asked to be marketers--this should be your starting point if you're facing the complexities of marketing in this environment.

Think that "marketing is just common sense?" Think again; it's both a discipline and an art. Aquila and Marcus will guide your hand at both.

August Aquila and Bruce Marcus reward readers of Client at the Core with an imaginative map for the perilous journey through the twists and turns of marketing and managing today's professional services firm. It is creative and thorough.

August Aquila and Bruce Marcus have written a clear and comprehensive view of what every accounting or law marketer needs to know about this new, unprecedented professional services environment. Their book not only explains the new environment, but it's also a rich primer of practical "how-to" advice on all the marketing tools available to the professional services marketer. Strategy is fine, but I find that few books get down to the step-by-step implementation tactics involved in winning new business like this book does - that's one of its best points of differentiation. After reading it, I bought copies for every one of my regional, industry, service line and national marketing leaders.

In the evolution of marketing thinking over the past two decades, Clients At The Core is an essential blueprint to helping us all take the next steps. This is a well-written book that uses plain language to convey practical, well thought-out ideas. It is your gift in having these two authors (Aquila and Marcus) come together to share their insights. So get your favorite colored highlighter, read this book with an eye toward learning from the masters, and you will see what I'm talking about.

"Meaty and rich with texture. The authors understand the application of marketing concepts to the CPA profession at a very deep level, and communicate clearly and concisely."

"Every page was another 'Yes!' when reading about the application of marketing principles to the CPA world. The authors nailed it."