Relationships Key to Firms Surviving Today's Changing Marketplace

The following is adapted from Bruce Marcus's new book, Professional Services Marketing 3.0.

The emerging relationship between professional and client, and between the marketers and the professionals, is further complicated by the changing nature of the professions themselves, in which several phenomena are redefining the nature of the professions.

In planning for both a firm and its marketing program, there are three factors that should be understood.

• The nature of the professional firm, static for so many generations, is undergoing radical change. This process is influenced by a vast array of factors, many of which are new, some of which are unforeseeable.
• Where once professionals were isolated from marketers and marketing, they are now becoming active participants in the process, and many of them—lawyers and accountants—are becoming astute marketers.
• The driving force of this evolutionary process is the need to compete, imaginatively and innovatively. It’s enhance and accelerated by technology, which is in a constant state of innovation and flux.