Customer Reviews

The Integration Imperative: Erasing Marketing and Business Development Silos - Once and for All - in Professional Service Firms

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Author Suzanne C. Lowe writes that many professional service firms exist in a state of confusion due to a less than optimal structure for deploying marketing and business development. "Business development (selling) is a one-to-one activity. Practitioners' brains (well, their brain power) are the 'products' clients are considering for eventual engagement. But marketing is a one-to-many activity, and is best deployed from a firm-wide, centralized purview." And "without an optimal structure for marketing and business development, the potential for confusion creeps in when one-to-one fee-earning practitioners want to get involved in the one-to-many aspects of marketing". She continues to write that "any misunderstanding of the optimal scope of the marketing and business development function causes 'disconnectivity' and waste". After a discussion of the structural and cultural challenges to marketing and business development integration, Lowe discusses how individual "doing things differently" efforts within a professional service firm can impede effectiveness if such initiatives do not have integration as a springboard. Lowe's Integration Imperative concept, which consists of the Process Imperative, the Skills Imperative, and the Support Imperative, three interdependent structural frameworks, embeds marketing and business development into the function of every individual within a professional service firm. Through these three frameworks, respectively, the author suggests that professional service firms "broaden the scope of their marketing and business development functions, better balance them strategically, make them more discernible to everyone in the firm, and make them more obviously iterative", "reframe their advancement pathways - for practitioners and nonrevenue-generating staff - to more clearly outline the steps every professional can take toward competency growth in marketing and business development", and "create more formal avenues for function-to-function collaboration, shared accountability, and co-leadership for marketing and business development". The third part of this book presents 11 case studies (from Korn/Ferry International, Holland & Hart, Perkins+Will, Moss Adams, IBM Global Technology Services, Haley & Aldrich, Baker Donelson, Ross & Baruzzini, Jones Lang LaSalle, R.W. Beck, and Randstad) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Integration Imperative when applied to professional service firms, and the frank business leader quotes liberally provided throughout are one of the best features of this book. A quote by Scott Jensen, the first Moss Adams director of sales, illustrates the practicality of these case studies: "I knew our people got the message that there is a difference and dependence between marketing and selling. They understood that we cannot effectively sell unless we market, and that we cannot market unless we sell, and finally that without superior service, both are wasted. Marketing is too expensive without selling. Selling is too hard without marketing...When we market effectively and sell correctly, we establish the basis for serving passionately." Similarly, a quote by Ranstad's chief marketing officer Frans Cornelius: "The key lesson is that it is all a matter of organizing and communicating internally. To win outside, one must start on the inside. One would think that the marketers would be excellent communicators, but sadly this is not a skill that is learned a lot in marketing education. Typically, marketers tend to communicate within their own circles - with agencies, other marketers, seminar participants and the like. Yet marketers must become expert at communicating to general managers and CFOs!" This reviewer also appreciates diagrams such as Figure 9.1 which shows the connection between passive and active aspects of marketing, sales and service along the path from messaging to revenues. The appendixes are also well done, especially the second that includes several templates, including the Skills Imperative template which outlines how associates, consultants, and senior consultants can be involved along with principals/senior managers and owners/management executives in the Integration Imperative. Regardless of whether you read this work in an as-needed "à la carte" fashion like Lowe suggests, or start-to-finish, as a consultant this reviewer expects that all individuals working in professional service and business to business firms stand to benefit. Well recommended.

Suzanne knows the professional services industry inside out. She offers practical advice plus case histories that show how to integrate the marketing and business development functions. These ideas are immediately transferable and will make any business more effective in meeting and exceeding their customer's needs.

I run a business of one, a small consultancy, and didn't figure The Integration Imperative would have much relevance for me. Wrong! The book helped me realize that even at my level, marketing isn't just one component of my business. It's not just a few hours of calls or emails here or there. It fits into all of what I do. I have to get rid of my own silos. Suzanne's thinking has definitely given me not only important ideas for marketing my services. It has led to actual business! I can't recommend the book enough.

Hopefully, Suzanne Lowe's book will finally put an end, or start us down the road toward an end of the silly (and of course ineffective) business model based on dividing professional service practitioners from business development and selling. In fact, "The Integration Imperative" is about just that: why the splitting of functions is counterproductive, not only to a firm's rainmaking but to serving its clients as well. One hand washes the other, though you'd never know it by what you see out there in the so-called real world. The book's subtitle---erasing marketing and business development silos, once and for all--is an aim that would-be successful consulting, law, accounting or other professional service cannot afford to ignore or miss.

Suzanne Lowe is my favorite business thinker. If you regularly read her newsletter, blog, articles and research studies, you probably agree. She is always thorough in her research, provocative in her thinking and spot-on in her analysis of what's needed to move a professional services forward. The Integration Imperative is Suzanne's best work to date. It is well researched; the case studies keep your attention; her insights have highly practical applications; and it is fun to read. If you truly want to put an end to the marketing and business development integration issues in your firm, read this book now. You will be glad you did.

This is a thorough and insightful look at what ails business development and marketing in PSFs and B2Bs, and what can be done to cure the processes, the skill sets, and the attitudes that cause the disease.

I can see keeping my dog-eared, underlined, and highlighted copy around for years. A very useful and thought provoking book!

Suzanne Lowe's new book is chock full of useful information about getting rid of silos. It will be an eye opener for firms that are looking for practical ways to work smarter.
Katharine Esty

The Integration Imperative points out a fundamental problem in professional services firms: their marketing and selling are not connected. When they do learn to connect these functions they not only improve their sales and marketing, but they also improve their value to their clients.

Lowe clearly identifies three structural and cultural frameworks that firms can use to overcome their disconnects. The book's case studies help hammer home the concepts and show that real-life firms can truly benefit from her advice. Especially given the economic circumstances firms are in today, this book should be required reading for any professional firm that wants to grow its business and break out of the pack.