Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success (Hardcover)

~ (Author), John Doerr (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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!"
—Leonard A. Schlesinger, President, Babson College, and coauthor of The Service Profit Chain

"It's no longer sufficient to be a good 'expert for hire'—you need a brand and a powerful marketing engine behind you. Professional Services Marketing is a gold mine of research based strategies, best practices, and specific techniques that will help you consistently win in the client marketplace and outshine your competition. It's thoughtful, funny, and filled with the how-to so often missing in business books."
—Andrew Sobel, coauthor of Clients for Life

"Schultz and Doerr offer tactics and information in an easy-to-read, concise, and enjoyable format. Professional Services Marketing should be a required resource in every professional marketer's tool box!"
—R. Granville Loar, Executive Director, Association for Accounting Marketing

"This book is an excellent resource for anyone involved in professional services. It is especially timely in our current challenging economic conditions, and the ideas and guidance are relevant for the better times to come as well."
—Josh Lee, Partner, Monitor Group

"Smart. Practical. Comprehensive. This is the one book that won't collect dust on my shelf."
—Kevin McMurdo, Chief Marketing Officer, Perkins Coie

"Professional Services Marketing is the first book to directly address the challenges of the professional services marketer. This book is filled with practical wisdom and research on best practices and processes specifically for this industry. A must-read for anyone in a professional services firm!"
—Paul Dunay, Global Director of Integrated Marketing, BearingPoint

From the Inside Flap

In the old days, professional service firms could survive without much marketing effort. Put together a team of good people, deliver strong service to clients, and you might get by just fine on repeat business and client referrals. For many, those days are gone. While repeat business and referrals are still necessary to grow, they're no longer enough to succeed. You need smart, effective marketing and a culture of business development success to bring in a steady stream of clients to grow your business.

Professional Services Marketing gives you the field-tested, research-based approaches and tactics your organization needs to succeed. It helps you sort the wheat from the chaff among the many and varied marketing strategies and tactics, allowing you to make the best possible decisions for you and your business while avoiding the common mistakes unique to professional services firms.

The book covers five key areas your firm can't grow without:

• Creating a customized marketing and growth strategy based on what will really work for your firm
• Establishing a brand and reputation that leads to market leadership, frustrated competitors, and happy clients (and more of them)
• Implementing a marketing communications program that will keep your firm front and center in decision-makers' minds
• Developing a lead generation strategy that brings in more new clients than you will know what to do with
• Winning new clients by developing rainmakers and a culture of business-development hustle, passion, intensity, and success

Professional Services Marketing includes case studies that illustrate the successes and failures of other firms, as well as firsthand stories from well-respected industry professionals. It helps you make the right decisions about what to do, what to spend, and how to place key people in the right roles to maximize their time and energy. Plus, it will help you avoid dreaded mistakes that lead to unproductive marketing efforts and keep you up to date on the latest thinking in the industry.

Centered around primary research on the way clients buy and reliable insight from successful firms, this is the perfect guide to growing your business for consultants, attorneys, technology professionals, accountants, engineers, and any other professional services provider.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (July 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470438991
• ISBN-13: 978-0470438992
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #32,665 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Right to the Core, August 2, 2009

By	Ken Lizotte "author of 'The Expert's Edge' (M... (Concord, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't put this on your book shelf. Keep it on your desk., July 19, 2009

By	Michael McLaughlin (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive, clear & common-sense, August 5, 2009

By	Ian Brodie (Manchester, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.