Great food but poor service

One of my hobbies that turned into a small (but strangely growing) work stream is reviewing restaurants, pubs and clubs for a leading London entertainment portal. What on earth does this have to do with professional services marketing you wonder?

Well, the other day as I worked my way through a rather average meal - yet still found great merit in other areas to commend the restaurant - it occurred to me that a restaurant is rather like a professional firm in a number of ways.

Often, lawyers, accountants and surveyors are focused on delivering the very best technical professional advice. A bit like a chef taking enormous pride in taking fresh ingredientsa and using his or her many years of skill and experience - and perhaps some creativity - to prepare the food. Naturally, the meal needs to be good...

However, what makes a customer return to the restaurant time and time again? The convenience of the location and its decor/atmosphere is important. But the quality and continuity of the manager and waiting staff is really critical. How welcome do they make you feel - whether it is the first time you have stepped across their threshold or returning for the 50th time? Do they know about the menu and wine list? Do they generate an instand rapport with all guests? How attentive are they? Do they show a real pride in the place and seem genuinely happy to work there?

The very best food is sometimes found in some awful restaurants. And some restaurants appear to thrive even though the food is distinctly average. Some restaurants survive on strong brands or past glories.

So. Whilst you pat yourself on the back for being a brilliant chef - is the rest of your team doing their bit to ensure that clients are delighted by the myriad of small interactions they encounter each day? And do your loyal clients keep returning for the very best technical advice or because they know and love and can always depend on the great people that surround you?

Just a thought.

Permission to speak to the client, Sir

At last week’s PM Forum Global Conference there was a panel of real live clients (one or two of them lawyers at Magic Circle firms in previous lives) who talked candidly about their experiences of professional advisers.

It was a refreshing and invigorating session. Senior in-house lawyers and company directors asking for their professional advisers to develop their skills in emotional intelligence, their expertise in particular market sectors and their account management competencies. They even suggested that firms should allow their marketing and business development people to get up close and personal to clients as they had the necessary communication skills to make an impact, get under the client’s skin and strengthen the relationship. Shock horror!

But the real horror stories from these clients were about naïve relationship building attempts from their lawyers (and accountants) – for example, sending out leaflets with the words “training for fee-earners that clients can attend” or starting dialogues with a discussion about “limited liability clauses”. It makes grown marketing folk weep…

And all five clients said that they were happy to participate in satisfaction and other research surveys…and even said that marketing people or independent researchers were more likely to get good quality and extensive feedback on how to develop the relationship. Echoing my own findings from interviewing much smaller client organisations, they also asked for their advisers to “get off the fence” and help them make their pressing commercial decisions in a timely manner.

The conference had started with research showing that many managing partners were frustrated at their marketing and business development teams for not getting more closely involved with targeting, selling and key client management. So if the managing partners and the clients are keen for business developers to move to centre stage in client relationships – what is stopping us? Maybe all those other lawyers, accountants and surveyors who are too busy protecting their clients from us?

And at the end of the day – having listened to my esteemed peers from the cutting edge of professional services marketing and selling on a variety of topic issues, it all came down to one thing really – relationships.

(I am currently writing a full review of the conference for PM Magazine).

What makes a good marketing campaign?

In my capacity as a judge in the MPF (Managing Partners Forum) Awards “Best Marketing Campaign” category (see www.mpfglobal.com) I had the pleasure today of reviewing the short listed entries along with my fellow category judge in advance of the imminent judges’ dinner to discuss the winners in a few weeks time. As usual, the standard of entries – from law firms, accountants, property and other consultants – was impressive.

However, what struck me was that even within some of the most outstanding marketing campaigns of the year there are still some real basics that we must not forget. So my thoughts on what makes a winning campaign are below:

Clear objectives – How can you embark upon a campaign with confidence and assess the relative merits of investing in one initiative rather than another without having defined clear objectives on what you expect to achieve? And don’t those marketing and communications objectives need to underpin the firm’s overall goals, strategic aims and brand positioning? Surely you should have an idea of what results you expect – even if it is in terms of the number of web visits, new contacts made, additions to the database, existing clients contacted, number of appointments generated or the number of proposals submitted. No wonder partners are sometimes disappointed with their marketing teams if objectives are not set that manage their expectations about the quantity, quality and timing of the anticipated results.

Target market – There are occasions (for example, when embarking on general branding and positioning campaigns) when the exact market might not be precisely defined. But in most situations you must surely have a clear definition of the nature and size of the market you are trying to reach? And within commercial markets the number of potential targets – and those where there is an existing relationship – must be limited. What happened to segmentation strategies?

Integrated campaigns – Of course there is a time and place for a campaign that uses just advertising or just PR or just digital marketing. But what happened to integrated campaigns where each marketing communications tool is used to do it’s job through the cycle of awareness raising, credibility building, positioning and differentiation and then creation of an opportunity to meet face to face and then to convert interest into action and then business? And how about blending the wonders of digital marketing with more traditional approaches? I love to see the real skill of a marketer come to the fore in a carefully crafted campaign that blends profile raising, brand building, thought leadership, proposition clarity, targeted approaches and calls to action backed up with a planned sales and relationship development pipeline management approach.

Innovation – There is a lot to be said for tried and tested approaches such as issues based research followed by a report and then media coverage and seminars. Yet there is merit in thinking about unusual and different ways to communicate with your target audience. Like using Second Life, preparing an electronic game, collaborating with an unusual partner or doing something rather daring. Yes, it is particularly difficult within the professions to persuade the partners to try something new but it nearly always pays off. The risk otherwise, of course, is that clients get weary of the same old things and stop taking notice. And innovation plays such a big part in developing new services and entering new markets.

Monitoring and measurement – And surely an essential part of any campaign are clear controls and information systems to monitor the effective implementation and measure the results – even if the sales cycle is somewhat protracted? Doesn’t anyone invest part of the campaign’s budget in measuring results these days – particularly where profile, awareness, branding, new service and new market development are the primary goals.