The Marketplace MasterTM is a monthly email publication on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing, LLC. Are you making the most of market research? Attracting and retaining the most strategically valuable clients is high on every professional service firm’s list. But one of the methods for accomplishing this – market research – is frequently underutilized. For this and our next newsletter, we’ll discuss market research in three broad areas: Investigating shifts in clients’ perceptions and needs Discerning changes in the business “landscape” Gaining insight into competitors’ moves. We define client perception research as the qualitative and quantitative investigations of a client’s unmet needs, desires and perceptions. It's done for the purpose of helping your professional service firm (PSF) to target, win business with, and provide optimal benefits to the most valuable clients possible. Suzanne Lowe Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win President, Expertise Marketing, LLC Why Aren’t More Professional Service Firms Researching Client Perceptions? In our studies about this topic, many PSFs told us they DO conduct perception research directly with clients. But the firms that use this kind of “primary” research appear to do so mostly for end-of-project feedback and to identify near-term new business opportunities.

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Unfortunately, many PSFs try to combine client satisfaction feedback with client perception research — a bad idea, because doing so can compromise a client’s articulation of unbiased perceptions. And simply focusing on clients’ near-term interests fails to reveal more competitive, unique and future-oriented strategies and tactics.

Our research has shown that few professional service firms conduct client perception research directly with their current or potential clients. This might be surprising, especially since doing so can be relatively straightforward, and offers a high potential for competitive advantage. There are many tried-and-true research vehicles — such as telephone interviews, focus groups, and even online surveys — that make client perception research more reasonably priced and quick to undertake.

So why aren’t more PSFs using client perception research? After all, perception research has been used extensively and with positive results in numerous other business sectors. We have some theories:

• Fear of looking out— Many PSFs have yet to look outside their business backyards to embrace successful business techniques from consumer products, retail or manufacturing arenas. In these sectors, perception research techniques like projective interviewing, laddering and hierarchical value maps are widely accepted. They are just beginning to be utilized in the PSF arena.
  
  
• Fear of change — A readiness to undertake perception research signals that a PSF is ready to embrace strategic change. Regrettably, many PSFs think that by asking perception questions they might need to make uncomfortable changes. These fears are unfounded.
  
  
• Fear of actually learning something — PSFs over-rely on promotion- and education-oriented marketing tactics. Too often, this amounts to a “tell-our-prospects-what-we-do” approach. A “listen-first” approach requires a willingness to admit we have more to learn about our clients than we already know.

Used right, client perception research can help professional service firms understand the forces that will drive their clients’ needs — and help them be in the right place at the right time to meet those needs.

We talked to two firms about their future plans for using market research to help gain new perspectives on clients.

David Conley, Director of Business Analysis for Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc., told us:

“We already do a great job of ‘after the fact’ customer satisfaction research (that is, after clients purchased our services). This type of research is valuable, but ultimately doesn't help us target customers as strategically as we should. Now we also use ‘before-the-fact’ positioning research and customer segmentation research. We want to know our customer’s intangible needs and benefits sought. We think this type of research, in advance of the sale, helps us bridge the gap between strategy and selling, and also, ultimately, helps them understand our value package more effectively. Strategy determines our growth vector and market research helps us target the ‘right’ customers with an appropriate value proposition. And our selling activity communicates that.”

Gerry Davies, Managing Director of TigerLily, an EMEA-focused analyst relations and influencer marketing firm, gave an example of how her firm uses client perception research:

“In late 2003, we conducted research to understand how industry analysts and other influencers play a role in end-users’ major IT decisions. We commissioned a mix of quantitative and qualitative research in the UK, France and Germany with senior IT and business decision makers in the financial services market. We asked what they understood ‘thought leadership’ to be, who were perceived to be thought leaders in the IT market, and who were other credible sources of information (e.g. business and technical press, academic bodies etc.)

We undertook this research to benefit our clients, who rely on us to verify our ‘anecdotal’ claims with reliable data. Now, we can credibly say, ‘Yes, industry analysts DO influence the IT decisions of major end-user clients.’ We can confidently recommend to our clients the level of investment and resources they should dedicate to this segment. Our research ultimately benefits our clients, and helps us build our own thought leadership on the issues that are important to them. If you want to be a thought leader in the market, you have to do research to determine what makes it tick, to understand, to innovate, and to be prepared to offer benefits to your clients.”

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