Customer Reviews

Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win

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Lowe's book is hard to ignore. It's a fact-based, in your face assessment of how poorly most profesional service firms market themselves. The data for Lowe's work was developed over a five year period, and she created an imperative for service firms to embrace the concept of Marketplace Mastery--and a way to do it.

Using a series of case studies, and research data, Lowe suggests that success for professional service firms requires a market-driven infrastrcture, which she maps out in the book.

Lowe is entering marketing territory that most professional service firms are just beginning to embrace, like data mining, the use of culture to compete and embedding innovation.

The book is well-written, but it's not a beach read. There's a depth of thought and analysis that practice leaders should review and find the parts that fit into their market strategy.

This is information that deserves to be widely heard in the market. I think the publisher and amazon should get together and find a way to offer a discount on this book, like they do for so many others. If they did that, the book would fly out of the warehouses.

Michael McLaughlin, coauthor with Jay Conrad Levinson of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants.

This thorough and well-researched book addresses the Achilles Heel of most professional service firms: how to successfully market themselves. It dispels the myth that rigorous, systematic marketing disciplines cannot be appropriately and effectively applied to professional service firms. The eleven competencies are well-detailed, researched, and supported with credible data. The case studies should provide almost any PSF with a peer company to whom they can relate. This book will help you focus on real solutions to the unique challenges of marketing professional service firms.

"Hard hitting and compelling reading, it offers a brutally accurate assessment of the Professional Services Industry, as well as a cure."
Tom Markert , Global Chief Marketing Officer , ACNielsen

"Any professional services firm that makes the corporate commitment to embrace the practical concepts detailed in this book will leapfrog ahead of its competition by better understanding its markets and clients. The factual research and case studies eliminate the excuses for avoiding that commitment."

George Friedel, Senior Vice President, Director of Strategic Sales, Parsons Brinckerhoff

Finally, a marketing book written about a subject (competition) that has been brushed aside by professional service firms for way too long. Lowe's call for firms to adopt a market-driven infrastructure is right on. "Infrastructure" is a mouthful, but this concept is exactly what our company needs. Lowe's book is refreshingly different in its specificity (tells us exactly how we can compete more effectively) and its practicality.