Subscribe Did a colleague forward this newsletter? Sign up to receive your own copy. News Upcoming Speeches: Measuring Marketing Effectiveness, Control System Integrators Association conference, Sante Fe, NM, April 27, 2007 Convert Your Marketing Role into a Strategic Firm Leadership Position, SMPS-PSMA Build Business 2007 National Conference, Washington DC, August 27, 2007 Articles: Practice Management: Re-evaluate how you evaluate your marketer (PDF), by Suzanne Lowe and Sally Glick for Accounting Today, September 2006 (also published with permission on The Marcus Letter) Why You May Not be Truly Differentiated, Consulting News, September 2006 (available to CN subscribers only) Hallmarks of an Effective CMO (PDF), The Marketer, August 2006 Turning a Marketing Eye Toward ROI (PDF), by Suzanne Lowe and Larry Bodine for New Jersey Lawyer, August 2006 New from the Expertise Marketplace Blog What should be expected of "marketing experts?" Part VII What should be expected of "marketing experts?" Part VI What should be expected of "marketing experts?" Part V What should be expected of "marketing experts?" Part IV What should be expected of "marketing experts?" Part III What should be expected of "marketing experts?" Part II What should be expected from a "marketing expert?" Part I See all the posts at the Expertise Marketplace blog Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed for regular updates. (Need RSS help?) Recent Issues Doing Things Differently – A New Year, A New Direction, January 2007 2006 Thank-You Issue, December 2006 The Problem of Defining Professional Services Marketing Expertise, November 2006 You can order Marketplace Masters from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, your favorite online bookseller, or CEO-READ.

The Marketplace Master^TM is a monthly email publication on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing, LLC.

Doing Things Differently – Showcasing "professional bravery" to get closer to clients

Last month, I began this newsletter's 2007 theme: a series of monthly articles that will highlight real people who have resolved to do things differently regarding marketing and business development, and how it has affected themselves and their colleagues. In that issue, I described my observations of the significant challenges facing professional firms as the services economy continues to mature, and explained my concern that too many firms tacitly agree to "lowest-common-denominator" behaviors in their attempts to drive toward the organization’s overall marketplace goals.

In profiling how individuals are “doing things differently,” I am not trying to advocate the kind of destructive cowboy behaviors that are often observed in professional firms (where overall success literally depends on the group collaboration of individuals pulling toward a common goal). In cases like these, individuals refuse to adopt (overtly or not) a go-to-market or business development protocol that the organization has endorsed as appropriate for the whole.

Instead, my idea is to showcase the "professional bravery" that it takes to buck the trends of doing things the way they've always been done, especially when the opportunity for improved effectiveness exists. And, indeed, the opportunity for improvement is always available, because the marketplace is a continually shifting environment.

With my 2007 newsletter focus, I hope to make the point that real people being willing to do things differently -- and a professional organization’s tolerance to learn from these new ideas -- is a core requirement for firms to grow in competitive effectiveness and to have the chance to achieve marketplace leadership.

Each month, I'll focus on a particular area for professional service firm marketplace success. This month, the topic is "getting closer to clients." My goal was to find an individual who has taken a different path toward more effective business development and client service.

Suzanne Lowe
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win
President, Expertise Marketing, LLC

Setting "Give-up Goals" to Get Closer to Clients

Law firms, whether large or small, are classic examples of the "all for one" environment. The game plan for success is carefully scripted, manifest to everyone and diabolically monochromatic: maintain a significant load of billable-hours and bring in new business. Play the game or run the risk of criticism -- or worse -- from your peers. The expectations for increasing one's work load and revenue contributions to the firm continuously rise.

Tom Bennington

This story, shared with me by my business associate Larry Bodine, is about Tom Bennington, a 41-year-old partner in the business and real estate practices at Chicago-based Chuhak & Tecson. In 1987, Bennington simultaneously finished law school, married, and began his career at the firm (clearly, this man can multitask). In his first five years at the firm, he billed an astounding 2400 hours a year; from 1992-1998 he billed in excess of 2250. Beginning in 1998, with the support of his law firm colleagues, he began what has now become multiple terms as an elected DuPage County (IL) Commissioner (with about 950,000 residents, DuPage is one of the United States’ largest counties).

Bennington’s billable hours went down, as his involvement with his community activities went up. Today he spends 20 hours of each 70-hour work week in the County. His role requires significant activity on numerous County committees. He has also pursued involvement in other volunteer organizations including, with his young sons, Boy Scouts, and the United Way (which named him Volunteer of the Year in 2006). Each activity, on its own, represented the possibility for increased visibility for Chuhak & Tecson (although potential ethical conflicts with his County work required him to recuse himself from some legal work).

But overall, the picture wasn’t pretty. And so, even acknowledging the personal rewards of his dedication to community service, Bennington began to realize he was becoming stretched too thin. He was finding it increasingly challenging to succeed at getting closer to his clients, much less generate revenues from new clients.

Setting “Give-up Goals”

In June 2005, he looked to identify important marketing and business development activities. He created a list of eleven activities that he would implement for the rest of 2005 and through to mid-2006:

1. Increase contact with a particularly valuable referral source.
2. Increase contact with a second referral source.
3. Meet more accountants (referral sources, again).
4. Work with Chuhak & Tecson’s HR director for referrals.
5. Become more involved in a particular board whose membership included many suburban entrepreneurs.
6. Meet with some suburban attorneys, and offer to relieve them of their business conflict work.
7. Start a non-profit legal blog.
8. Develop several entries per week in that blog.
9. Become involved in a local chamber of commerce.
10. Get involved in an acquaintance’s entrepreneur marketing group.
11. Enhance his relevancy to a few of his partners to do additional work, client sharing and cross marketing.

It didn’t take long for Bennington to realize the inevitable. He had committed to too much. He couldn’t do it all. He told me, “I realized I had to do things differently.”

With encouragement and guidance from his colleagues and outsiders, he analyzed all his activities with three filters:

• Does this activity provide a distinct benefit for my family and me?
• Does this activity provide a distinct benefit for my community / political career?
• Does this activity provide a distinct benefit for my law firm?

Each criteria had to be weighed equally against Bennington’s potential activities. “My decisions on activities had to meet all three criteria,” he said. From this, he determined to narrow his list of activities from eleven to six. This was the “give up” part of his attempt to do things differently.

Next, he turned over his calendar over to his assistant. It was her job to set up multiple meetings back-to-back in the same location, cutting out any of Bennington’s wasted time. “I used to do my own scheduling; now, my assistant has made my days more consolidated. This gives me more time to focus on serving my clients and building new business.”

Next, he gave himself permission to rely more on technology than he ever had before. “I now work from my house as well as from our office; it cuts down significant time that used to be given up to commuting.”

Finally, he wrote a personal marketing plan composed of activities he enjoyed doing, became comfortable asking for referrals, and began asking prospects for their business.

The results? Within nine months Bennington had doubled the revenue he brought in over the previous period. He has gotten closer to current clients and has had new successes getting to know new ones. He said, “I feel like I am benefiting my organization and doing a better job.”

It pays to tackle the problem head-on

California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting high fives for his “through, not around” approach to the state’s environmental and stem-cell research obstacles. While I’d wager that Bennington can’t bench press as much as Arnold can, he gets my applause for tackling his obstacles head-on.

He said, “Things had to change because of necessity: I was getting burned out. Being a worker bee was no longer workable for me.”

Bennington did have to defend his “give-up” goals to his colleagues. But he did so with a clear-eyed focus, a conviction that something had to change, and a dedication to benefit the entire firm.

The keys to Bennington’s success were focus, delegation, and a new perspective. By having the professional courage to decide to do less, he wound up achieving more.

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