ALISTAIR MARSHALL
It is now more than a decade since the Great Financial Crisis yet many professional firms are doing exactly the same things as they were back then when it comes to trying to grow their practice. The buying and selling of Professional Services has dramatically changed in these intervening years and now so must you if you wish to stay relevant.
Technical ability is no longer a guarantee of financial success. How do I know this? Well I see very average people driving supercars and excellent practitioners struggling to make ends meet. So there has to be something else at play.
What hasn’t changed in a world of change is that without sales you will go out of business. Nothing happens if nothing happens and you can no longer just tell people you are better than the next professional and expect them to believe you. They won’t. Unless you take a number of actions which are highlighted here in this ebook.
Most professionals tell me they grow their practice with word of mouth referrals which is great as they are free and generally convert at better rates than other marketing leads. However, you can only grow your practice at the rate that others are prepared to talk about you and that is dangerous as you are not in control.
When working with firms on why they win work, I tend to get 3 stock answers.
- Price and value – Nonsense, there is always somebody prepared to go cheaper than you.
- Quality of the staff. Nonsense, very hard to prove, most professionals have the qualification certificates. I have never heard a business leader tell me their team is poor. (Well I have but not in public).
- Quality of service – Ah the ubiquitous service line. But most don’t measure it, so it is very hard to prove.
In any case, a client will only benefit from these 3 outcomes AFTER they have made their purchasing decision which is too late in the buying process to change the decision.
The financial performance of any professional business is dependent on only two things.
Operational Competence multiplied by marketing. In other words, how good you are at what you do multiplied by how good you are at telling people about how good you are at what you do. Most professionals are not good at the second bit and so that is the greatest area for improvement and subsequent driving of growth.
Read on to find out how you can gain competitive advantage…
