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The
Marketplace MasterTM
is a monthly email publication on professional service
marketing from Expertise Marketing, LLC.
In this final article in our series of aligning professional
service firms’ culture with their go-to-market
strategies, we discuss some of the go-to-market methods
that have been successful for different types of firms.
Next month we'll discuss account management.
To refresh your memory, here’s a summary of what’s
been discussed so far:
February’s
article introduced the concept of aligning your
marketplace strategy with your firm’s culture.
We discussed what we mean by “cultural DNA”
– a firm-wide “personality” that drives
the way your professionals collectively behave –
and that it’s a lot more than articulating warm
and fuzzy platitudes in your brochures. We discussed
our research that reveals how a firm’s cultural
DNA influences how your firm works to attract and retain
clients.
In the second
article in this series, we discussed the various
kinds of “cultural DNA” that can define
how a firm operates and goes to market. Our research
revealed that firms fell into several clusters of go-to-market
methods.
Suzanne
Lowe
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service
Firms Compete to Win
President, Expertise Marketing, LLC
Harness Your Firm’s “Personality”
to Compete More Effectively
Professional
service firms (PSF) that understand their “personality”
can arm themselves with the knowledge to compete more
effectively in their marketplace. What are some of the
go-to-market methods that have been successful for different
types of firms?
When
we look more closely at the various
clusters identified in our research, and the responses
from people at those firms, we find some interesting
results. We asked respondents to rate their own firms
on their effectiveness at getting closer to their clients.
Our research showed that these firms’ rate of
success using certain methods was directly related to
their “personality.”
As
the chart below illustrates, the “Techno-hunter”
firm reported that it was only effective in using new
approaches to compete against rivals. This makes sense,
doesn’t it? The “Techno-hunter” personality
type – aggressive, adventurous, willing to take
risks – is exactly the type that would continuously
try to find new ways to outfox the competition (and
use whatever new tools they can find to do so!).
Methods
where our firm is “most effective” at
becoming more market-driven
|
The “Prepared” Firm
|
The “Flexible” Firm
|
The “Rule-bender”
Firm |
The “Techno-Hunter”
Firm |
The “Accountability”
Firm |
Delivering
services
|
|
x |
|
|
x |
| Managing
a change in our professionals’ behavior |
|
|
x |
|
|
Innovation
|
|
x |
|
|
|
Client
relationship management strategies or tactics
|
|
|
x |
|
x |
| Using
new approaches to compete against our rivals |
|
|
|
x |
|
“Accountability” firms reported that they
were most effective at managing client relationships.
Think about it – this makes sense too. Managing
client relationships requires a great deal of preparation
and performance monitoring. It requires a systematic
communication chain, and the internal processes to support
it. “Accountability” is exactly
the type of DNA required to manage complex relationships
effectively.
The
most telling signal about the importance of aligning
marketing strategies to a firm’s personality was
our finding about the “Prepared” firm. This
cluster of firms reported they were not effective in
any of the study’s methods to attract
or retain clients! Here’s a sure sign that a firm
can align the wrong marketing strategies to its firm-wide
personality! Clearly they need to tap another element
of their personality or cultural DNA around which they
can increase the success of their go-to-market methods.
Does
this mean your firm should abandon marketing practices
that fall into the “Prepared” cluster’s
methods because they don’t appear to work for
this particular group of PSFs? Not at all. Many firms
use these methods quite successfully. The findings simply
highlight that for some cultures, different methods
will yield better results.
Successful
firms will take a deliberate approach to understand
which processes or go-to-market methods appear to be
the most effective for them. Ask yourself where it appears
your firm is very good at attracting and retaining clients.
(“We’re really good at creating fantastic
proposal presentations when we are in heated competition
for a plum assignment,” or “We are very
effective at capturing competitive intelligence on our
rivals.”)
Once
you’ve identified the processes and protocols
at which your firm is instinctively effective, you’ll
begin to see a pattern. From there, you can build other
go-to-market methods that tap those same personality
veins. Our research indicates that if you do this, you’ll
find it’s a lot easier – and that your firm
will be more effective at winning clients – than
it would be if your firm continuously tried to fight
its cultural DNA.
As
marketplaces shift and the competition prepares for
battle, competitively astute PSFs will harness their
firm-wide personalities.
Culture
Case Study Excerpt - Marakon Associates
Marakon
Associates provides another look at the competency of
aligning marketing strategies with culture. It’s
a story about a firm that possesses a unique combination
of competitive effectiveness: an acceptance of complexity,
organizational prowess and even courage.
Read
the case study
Take
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service firm differentiation assessment test for
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right.
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