By Bruce W. Marcus, Contributing Editor
RainToday.com Note: This is part two of a two-part series on differentiating your professional services firm. In part one, Bruce introduced the hurdles associated with marketing and differentiating a services firm and offers some advice. Here he offers more specific advice on the best strategies to demonstrate your value to prospects.
The Value Of Your Professionals
Recognize that the real difference between you and your competitors depends more upon the individuals in your firm than on the firm itself. It's the individuals who do the work and who have the skills and experience to address and solve the client's needs.
It's the individuals who make the firm more valuable to clients, not the firm. It's the individuals who ultimately define the firm more than the firm's culture defines the value of its individuals to clients.
The Value Of Your Firm
At the same time, the firm brings a context that helps define the environment in which the individual professional functions. The kind of firm you have helps define the way individuals practice – and certainly how they serve and relate to clients. Take the time, then, to recognize the distinction between what the firm brings to client service and how individuals serve the practice.
Leverage Your Value In Your Marketing
Use that difference in strategic marketing and marketing planning. A good example is in the difference between the advertising of two accounting firms. The first major firm's advertising theme is "Accounting is our passion," which is more self serving than helpful in distinguishing itself from competitors and in understanding what distinctive values the firm offers its clients.
The Jefferson-Wells advertising campaign pictures an individual and focuses on that person's expertise and experience. (If accounting is your passion, enjoy yourself. But what can you do for me?)
One Jefferson-Wells ad shows a picture of an attractive and bright looking woman, with the headline, "Pragmatism shows." The copy spells it out. "Let's cut to the chase. She's tackled multiple Sarbanes-Oxley engagements in the past two years. Fifteen years of audit experience before that. There's no learning curve. She knows the processes, the rules, the regulations, and the most efficient way to get it done. So does everyone on her team. Pragmatism comes with experience – and it shows."
A masterpiece of copy writing. If positioning may be surmised from the ads, it's that Jefferson-Wells brings experience and expertise to serve the client, a simple but effective message. Does it differentiate? That's not the point. It focuses on the firm's ability and does it better than most.
Remember To Think From The Client's Perspective
Remember that even the most sophisticated client has trouble assessing the skills of one law or accounting firm compared to those of another. The broad reputation and name recognition of a firm helps – but not as much as the profile and experience of the individuals in the firm that the client perceives to be best able to solve the client's problems.
Don't Worry About Branding
Don't get caught up in the myth of branding, an often misused and misunderstood concept which, in professional services, is often used to represent name recognition and reputation.
Branding works in products because of the reliability and the consistency of quality of a product, and the perception of probity and skills and integrity behind the product. This is almost impossible to do in a professional firm. There have been exceptions in the professions, such as the famous and now defunct Arthur Andersen. A lesson in the fragility of branding.
Don't be persuaded that a logo or any other graphic design can differentiate your firm's services from those of your competitors. It can enhance name recognition and memorability, and while that's not insignificant, it says nothing about your ability to deliver services and serve your clients' needs. In product marketing -- in any marketing – the best graphics and the best advertising can often represent the worst products and services.
Recognize How Clients Choose Service Providers
Client surveys and other studies indicate that, given an acceptance of substance and capability, clients choose a firm on its ability to demonstrate its grasp of the client's needs and problems, and the capability to serve those needs, or its reputation for success in similar projects and matters, or the personality match between the client and the service team, and sometimes -- unfortunately – in price.
Ultimately, the sale is made not by reputation, nor by virtually any other aspect of marketing. Marketing's role is to pre-sell, and ultimately, to get an audience with a prospect. It's in a face-to-face context that the selling is done and the sale is made.
Show Clients Why You're Different
There are two ways, then, to make this approach to marketing professional services work for you. One is to do it before your competitors do. The second is to do it better. And if your competitor knows how to do all this, then it's even better yet, because the selling battle isn't between sales people being slick – it's between two professionals, one of whom is going to succeed in demonstrating superior skills and capability.
The differentiation, then, is not in saying you're better, but in showing that you're better.
Are there other ways? Probably. Certainly, reputation helps, particularly if it's based on reality. And reputation should be fostered, preferably a reputation for solving client problems. Having a highly visible and successful track record helps, but only if it can be shown to be relevant to a client's needs. In many respects, yours are, no doubt, distinctive.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to make those differences credible to a prospective clientele. It doesn't matter. Clients just want to know that you're capable of serving their needs.
The motto, then, is "Don't speak of love – show me." It works.
In the final analysis, perhaps the enthusiasm for differentiation is overkill, as more and more firms find that differentiation is not as important as simply projecting that your firm and its individuals are strong where the clients need strength. That says more to distinguish yourself than all the differentiation schemes in the marketing arsenal.
Bruce W. Marcus is a Contributing Editor for RainToday.com. Bruce is an author and consultant based in Connecticut, and co-author of Client At The Core: Marketing and Managing Today's Professional Services Firms. He is editor of The Marcus Letter on Professional Services Marketing and The Marcus Perspective. E-mail Bruce at marcus@marcusletter.com.
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