Like this article? PLEASE +1 it! Evan Signature
Evan Carmichael Top Header about About Home Profiles articles Tools forums inspirational quotes About facebook Twitter YouTube Blog

managing the professional service firm Tagged Articles



A Nine-Step Approach For Coaches, Consultants, and Business Advisors to Get All the Clients that You Can Handle
Provides a framework for business advisors to generate business.

Other managing the professional service firm Related Articles

“A Strategic Approach To Produce A Strong Professional Services Brand, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach”
A professional services firm, just like other types of businesses, needs to develop a strong brand and a favorable impression in the minds of prospects, clients and stakeholders in their business. In smaller professional service firms, there are limited financial resources for advertising as a primary branding vehicle. Therefore, as strategic approach is imperative to maximize the impact of available resources to rand your professional services firm. How do you influence your market in a strategic way that produces a favorable image of your firm in the minds of your prospects, clients and stakeholders? Your strategic thinking business coach recommends the following strategic approach.
Strategies To Increase Fees Performance From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
Professional service firms are still struggling when it comes to increasing their professional fees & improving their performance. Too many firms are doing business basically as outsourced labor & getting paid strictly on number of hours of billable time plus expenses. The missing ingredient is not getting paid for the “value” they are providing to the client, which should always exceed the cost of the billable time. Some readers are already saying that this billing on “value received” will not work & will not be accepted. With that being said, I will attempt to outline some strategies that I believe will enable a professional services firm to increase their professional fees and improve their performance. Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach offers the following strategies:

Online Marketing For Service Businesses
I know… you have a service-based business, or a professional services firm, and you probably don’t like the idea of marketing (or advertising, or selling). In fact, many service providers, professionals, and technical specialists think that if they need to promote their business to get clients, they can’t be very good. After all, successful businesses are built on word of mouth and referrals, right? And that should be enough to make you a success.
YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER BUT YOU CANT MAKE HIM SELL OR CAN YOU
By Mike Schultz and John Doerr Recently, we presented to a group of firm leaders across a range of service areas on how to sell professional services. During the Q & A session, one leader of an engineering firm asked, “This is all great stuff, but how do you get them (my engineers) to sell? I mean, I have tried everything, but they still would rather do just about anything but sell.” Well, short of walking around with a large stick and a menacing attitude, we suggest you will inspire more of the professionals in your firm to sell by helping them get into the right frame of mind to become a rainmaker. It is not just a question of telling them to go out and sell; you need to take care of the following six areas to get the activity you want.

AVOID THE REVENUE ROLLERCOASTER TRAP WITH CONSISTENT LEAD GENERATION
By Mike Schultz and John Doerr Many consulting, professional, and technology service businesses find themselves trapped in the following vicious, no-growth cycle. The firm is either: Heavily marketing because they don't have enough leads and new business, or Heavily billing and delivering, and thus have no time for marketing, lead generation, and selling. We call this the service revenue rollercoaster. It's a common trap for many professional service companies because when they get busy they can't sustain their marketing momentum...they're too busy with client work. Then, when the client work slows down, they must start marketing from square-one all over again, as all momentum from previous marketing efforts has stalled.

THE THREE R’S OF SERVICE BRANDING: REACH, RECOGNITION, AND REPUTATION
By Robert Croston Think about your most recent branding campaign. Were your television ads as successful as you'd like them to be? Perhaps the billboards didn't create the recognition that you were looking for, but your online ads on Yahoo! and AOL worked quite well. Did you pick the right professional athlete to represent your firm's services? If you're reading this far, and you work at most service businesses, you probably think I'm nuts. You don't do any of this. Well, maybe you're a big firm and you do (kudos to you), or you've tried something here and there. But in most of our service business realities, advertising-as-a-primary-branding-vehicle is not the norm. And it shouldn't be.

GENERATING LEADS, BRAND, RELATIONSHIPS, AND TRUST AT THE SAME TIME
By Mike Schultz Relationships. Trust. Delivery of superb value. These are core ingredients of a successful service firm. Talk to 100 service firm marketers and leaders, and they'll all tell you (and most of them believe it, even if they're wrong) that their firm is in the top of their industry in each of these categories. Why, then, do service firms typically do such a poor job of bringing relationships, trust, and value into their marketing mixes?

7 Secrets to Creating Client Referrals
Ask the proprietor of a professional service firm where they get their business from and most will tell you that over 80% of their business comes from word-of-mouth referrals. What is astounding is that most professional firms do not have active referral strategies. Now while devoting 80% of your marketing budget to referrals is a bit far fetched there are seven killer strategies that don't cost the earth to boost your business.
How to Socially Intelligent Interact with People
One of my law firm Managing Partner executive coaching clients recently shared with me that he was having a hard time influencing several of the firm partners on a new strategy for the firm. We have been working on improving his executive presence including talking less and listening more. He is not great at getting others to cooperate with him, and has a fairly authoritative leadership style.

How to Read and Influence People
One of my law firm Managing Partner executive coaching clients recently shared with me that he was having a hard time persuading several of the firm partners on a new direction for the firm. We have been working on improving his situational awareness and ability to read body language.

Featured Article

Bottom Footer



Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!
Name:
Email:
Popular Articles

Selling with Humor (and a Sorry Butt)

Self Employed Business Ideas

Marketing & Sales tools – going back to basics
Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.