A most
inconvenient
truth
network
David Packard, one of the
founders of Hewlett
Packard, is credited with
the phrase “marketing is too
important to be left to the
marketing department.” He
was right – it is. This is true
for professional services as it
is for any business in any
sector. Not a new message by
any means but one worthy of
further examination for the
professions.
Now, if you happen to
believe that marketing is only
an operational or functional
role, focused on promotion
and communication, which in
the professions typically
means managing bids, organising events and sending
emails, you may not agree
with this perspective.
But if you view marketing
as the fundamental route
through which you ‘go-tomarket’, you are probably
much more inclined to believe
that marketing should be
focused on creating, deliv-
6
pm | November 2015
This article originally appeared in PM magazine. For further details go to www.pmforum.co.uk
ering and communicating
client value in order to drive
sales and profits. That’s
marketing.
I wager that if you were to
ask most marketers whether
they are client focused, the
answer would be a
resounding “yes, of course,
tell me something new” as
they go back to sending
another email campaign, run
an event or manage a bid for
an intelligent but often
marketing illiterate task
master (the fee earner).
The problem is that
marketing has changed
fundamentally from the standard communications activity
that most firms in the professions employ like a religion. It
means that there is a vast
army of highly skilled
marketers out there desperate
to show their true worth, who
are working long hours to an
out of date playbook, not of
their making, and for whom
the reality of marketing has
become administrative rather
than strategically effective.
If we agree that creating
client value is essential to
marketing then we might also
agree that marketing success
is typically based on the
perceived value the client
places on your service relative
to its price. Higher value
means higher price and
higher price usually means
higher profits. Sound business
if you know you’re winning.
But many firms still don’t
know if they are winning or
losing because the metrics
and measurements used to
derive value (standard in
other sectors) are often inconsistent or non-existent in the
professions which creates a
vacuum for effective management – if you can’t measure
how can you ever hope to
manage?
Leaving aside the fundamentals of sales growth and
profits, even the more prosaic
measurements of opportunity
creation or client retention is
beyond many firms who are
still pursuing more qualitative
measures like “are the fee
earners being supported well
enough?” or “have we had
any complaints?”
This is a wake-up call for
those firms who have little
reason to change direction
given that profits continue to
flow but the question is, for
how long? Like a lumbering oil
tanker whose engines have
long since cut out, inertia can
create the illusion of forward
momentum, a dangerous
place to be in a swell.
If I ruled the world, ‘client
value’ would become the new
marketing. It would be the
rallying cry about which
everyone would organise and
play their part. It would mean
that everyone in the firm in
some way would actually be
in marketing and the leadership of every firm would have
a client value champion within
its ranks.
Understanding what drives
client value and what
everyone in the firm can do
individually and as a team to
that end would be the operational objective, understood
by all as key to achieving
sales growth and profit. Even
those for whom individual
performance is more important than team, client value
would be seen as a path
through which career progression and financial reward can
easily and quickly be reached.
So if marketing is so
important, then why aren’t
marketing teams the rock
stars of business performance
in the professions? The
answer is simple: senior
management do not fully
understand the power of
marketing as a force to create
client value and as such have
not taken the time to consider
how marketing knits across all
aspects of the firm in chain
linked unison with the client at
the centre. It’s a mistake and
for those who don’t get it, the
economic implications are
likely to be punitive.
Clients have more choice
than ever before and your
competitors can reach them,
easier, cheaper and faster
than you probably think is
possible. The way it’s always
been done is no longer a
guarantee of continued
success, the expiration date is
long past.
I say to all firms, think
about the unexplored potential
you have sitting in the
marketing department. Think
about marketing as a pervasive business essential and
not a misunderstood functional necessity. Think about
unifying all your operations
with client value at the centre
and above all reposition your
definition of marketing as the
‘go-to-market’ engine of the
firm in which everyone has a
role to play.
If you don’t, your competition soon will.
David Brady is
CEO of Vuture
Group. Visit
vutu.re