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Google Profiles – a Must for Professional Service Providers

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Do you have a Google Profile page? If you are a provider of professional services, chances are, people will Google you by name when they are referred to you, hear you speak, or see an article about you in the paper. If you don’t have a Google profile page yet, you should, as it is a great way to make sure people can find you and your different profiles on the web when they search for you by name.

Google recently updated the design of their profile pages. They believe the new design will help highlight the information that’s most important to you, making it easier for people who visit your profile to get to know you. I do think the new profiles have a much cleaner look. And they have a greatly simplified interfaced for editing – you just click on the “Edit Profile” button and then click on the section of the profile you wish to update. It doesn’t get easier or more straight forward than that.

If you already have a profile page, you don’t have to do anything to upgrade to the new format, Google will update it automatically for you. Here is a sample of what the updated design looks like - https://profiles.google.com/billbrelsford/about.

In addition to making sure people will find you when they Google your name, using the link to your profile can be a great way to provide on link that people can use to find all of your different websites and social media profiles. For example, when I give a presentation, rather than having a “Contact Info” slide that contains a myriad of different links, I will often just include a link to my Google profile page. From there, people can decide if they want to visit my website or blog, or connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

If you don’t have a profile page yet, I highly recommend that you create one. To get  started, just visit http://profiles.google.com.

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Categories : Marketing, social media marketing
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Google’s New Place Search

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Yesterday, Google announced Place Search – local search that organizes information around places. Place search returns the familiar map with the locations of your search results along with other relevant information from the web about those results.

Here is a screen shot my search for Kansas City Law Firms:

PlaceSearch

[Click on the image for a larger view]

Google will try to predict when you are searching for a place, but you can also select the Places option from the menu on the left:

Places2

For example, this morning if I search on “Kansas City Accounting Firms” is don’t get the new Places results. However, if I click on the Places option on the left hand menu, here is what I get:

KC_Accounting

We’ve been stressing the importance of local search for accountants, lawyers, financial advisors, and other professional service firms for a while now and it looks like it is only going to become more important in the future.

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Categories : Marketing Plan, Web/Tech
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Your Plan for Turning Away Business

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

As a provider of professional services, you spend time trying to generate referrals from customers and strategic partners. You may even have a referral plan. But do you have a plan in place for turning away business?

Sounds crazy, I know, But we are all guilty of taking on customers who probably weren’t a good fit for our business. Business we probably should have turned away. More often than not, we do a disservice to both ourselves and the customer when we take on this kind of work. In order to build the kind of practice you want AND help those prospects get their problems solved we need to be able to 1) identify who does not meet our ideal customer profile and 2) have a plan to refer them to someone that is better suited to helping them.

You probably have an idea of what your ideal client looks like. You have shared it with your referral partners and at your networking meetings. But how often have you used it to screen out prospects once they contact you? This is a difficult to do as the idea of turning away business goes against our instincts. However, if we want to be known as the “go to” resource in a particular area, we need to take care of our customer list.

One way to resist the temptation of taking on customers you shouldn’t is to have a plan in place to refer your non-ideal prospects to other providers who can serve them. If you do a good job of selecting and staying in touch with your referral partners, this should turn into a “win-win” for everyone involved. You will have helped the prospect solve their problem and you will have taken another step to demonstrating that you are a trusted advisor.

So what do you think? Will you create a plan for turning away business?

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Categories : Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing
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What if you all your business came from referrals?

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

What if I told you I could see the future and that the only new customers you are going to get in 2011 will come from referrals?

If you were armed with that knowledge, how would your behavior change from what you do today? Would the frequency of your communications with your existing customers change? Would the substance of those conversations change?

Would you broaden your offerings to your existing customers? Would you change the way you price your products and services?

How would your networking efforts change? Would you go to the same events or attend the same groups? Would you form your own groups?

Ok, back to the real world – what’s keeping you from doing any of the things you came up with when you thought about the questions above?

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Categories : Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing
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Your key to success – the marketing calendar

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (1)
Monday, October 11th, 2010

Fall is here and it’s getting to be that time of year when we start thinking about finishing the year strong and start making plans for next year. I’d like to spend the next few posts discussing how you can get your marketing system into shape to help you meet your personal and professional goals.

One of the first things I would suggest is to start building (or strengthening) the habit of living by a marketing calendar.

The key to marketing your professional service firm isn’t finding the “next big thing”; it’s doing a few things very well and doing them consistently.

A great way to build consistency is to set regular appointments with yourself to work on your marketing system. I’ve said it before but I think it’s worth repeating – you must treat these appointments as if they are appointments with your most important customer. That means no interruptions, no checking email, etc.

Many people have success thinking about their calendar in two different time frames. They set a theme for a particular month – such as website month or newsletter month.

Then, they have weekly appointments during which they work on the activities needed to complete that month’s theme. Here is a link to a previous post where I gave an example of a  Marketing Calendar for a Professional Service Firm.

So here is my challenge to you. Set aside 90 minutes every week from now until the end of the year. Use that time to work on some small part of your marketing system. Use your first session to mark your calendar, think about where you want your business to be in 1 year, and write down some measurable marketing goals to work on. Build the habit of using your marketing calendar and I’m certain you will see results.

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Categories : Marketing, Marketing Strategy
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Sales Problem or Marketing Problem

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (1)
Thursday, September 30th, 2010

When it come to improving your business building efforts, it’s important to know if you have a sales problem or a marketing problem. Sales and marketing are often lumped together, but they require different skill sets and tools in order to be effective. Below are some symptoms that may help you diagnose whether the issue you are facing is a sales problem or a marekting problem.

Common Marketing Problems:

  • You don’t receive referrals
  • You are always “hunting” – your prospects are not finding you on their own
  • Your current customers are buying products and service you provide from someone else because they “didn’t know you did that”.
  • The sale is easy once you get in front of the right people – you just need to find more of the right people
  • You compete solely on price.
  • People like you as a person, but they are not quite sure what it is you really do. 
  • “Feast or famine” is a good way to describe your pipeline.

Common Sales Problems:

  • After giving a proposal or submitting a bid, you can never get the prospect to return your calls
  • You get tied up in long cycles of objection -> overcome objection, objection -> overcome objection, etc.
  • You give lots of free advice to prospects who never buy
  • You would rather do anything than make a prospecting call
  • You seem to always get beaten down on price
  • You have a high percentage of back outs do to buyers remorse

These lists are far from complete. What symptoms/challenges do you see in your business?

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Categories : Marketing
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Planning and Tracking Your Marketing Activities

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (1)
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

This is the last post in this series about marketing for the newly promoted. Here is what we have covered so far:

 

Today I want to wrap up by talking about planning and tracking marketing activities.

The starting place for your marketing plan should be your personal goals. A lot has been written by people a lot smarter than me about goal setting, so I just want to make two quick points that have made a difference for me. #1, write them down. Plenty has been written about the importance of writing down your goals. Just try it. Take 5 minutes, write down your goals and put them in a place where you can find and review them in 6 or 12 months. You’ll be surprised, I promise.

#2, make sure you set your goals, rather than having goals assigned to you. Just because a partner assigned a goal for new business, doesn’t mean you can’t set your own goal, one tied to your personal aspirations. The more meaningful it is to you, the more likely you are to achieve it.

When it comes to business and marketing planning, I’m a big fan of Tim Berry, who often writes about how the value from planning comes from the planning process, rather than from producing a document. As Tim says, “the plan is never right”. Whenever you create a plan, it is based on assumptions using the best information you have at the time, so it is important to review and adjust your plan on a regular basis. For example, when you start planning, you may decide to attend 2 networking events per week. After a while, you may find out that 2 is too few, or maybe too many, or maybe 2 events are fine, but you need to be attending different events. Don’t let these unknowns keep you from doing the activities. The plan is never right, so get started and adjust the plan accordingly.

Tracking your activities will also help you make better decisions about how you should adjust your plan.In the past, I’ve written about what I’ve learned about tracking things you have control over, namely, your behaviors rather than raw results. If part of your plan is to ask for referrals, set your goals and track your progress around the number of referral requests you will make. You could also set goals related to the number of referrals you will give. You don’t have control of if and when someone will refer you, but you certainly have control over your own behaviors.

When it comes to tracking your behaviors, the simpler the system the better. If you try to wait until you have the ultimate CRM system in place, you are going to end up working on the CRM rather than asking for referrals. Keep it simple but collect enough data to know how much input goes into producing a result – how many requests for referrals do you typically make before your receive one? How many connections at networking events lead to one-on-one meetings? How many one-on-one meetings lead to clients? This is the information that will help you adjust your plan.

It will also give you a heads up when things start to change. If you suddenly have to go to twice as many networking events to get a meeting, what does that mean? Do you need a new networking group? Are you hiding in your comfort zone and failing to meet new people? Is there a change in the economy? Figure out the real reason for the change in your numbers and adjust your plan accordingly.

To recap, here is your 4 step process for planning and tracking your marketing activities:

  1. Set your goals (In order to meet my personal goals, I need $X, which translate into Y amount of new business)
  2. Estimate the activities needed to achieve those goals (number of calls, number of requests, etc.)
  3. Track your performance of those activities
  4. Review and adjust on a regular basis

That wraps up this series of posts about marketing for the newly promoted, at least until I remember something else I wanted to add <g>. Hopefully you have found some helpful tips in this series, even if you are not newly promoted. If you have other tips that you have found helpful, please leave a comment and share them with me.

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Categories : Marketing, Marketing Plan
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Marketing vs Sales – Knowing which role you are in

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (1)
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Sales and marketing are often lumped together. This is easy to when marketing and selling professional services because both roles are often assigned to the same person.

Sales and marketing are different roles, both with different goals,  and requiring different skill sets. Having a clear idea of the which role you are in at a particular time will give you a better chance of successfully achieving the goals of that role. A clear vision will also help you identify where you need help improving your skills necessary for success in each particular role.

When in your marketing role, your activities are designed to get people to Know, Like, and Trust you. You are trying to be found (or attract) by people looking for the services you provide and to help them feel comfortable starting a sales conversation with you.

When you are in your sales role, you are trying to help a customer 1) define their problem 2) determine how much the problem is costing them  in order to 3) determine if your services can help solve their problem at a price that makes sense, for both you and them.

When you are in your selling role, you want to get a decision as quickly as possible. Even if the answer is going to be “no”, wouldn’t you rather know that sooner than later? Being able to get to a yes or no answer quickly, while still maintaining a respectful, professional relationship takes skill – skills that can be learned through training.

At the end of each sales conversation, you have learned more about this customer. Take the time to re-evaluate whether you should continue marketing to them or not. Your solution may not have been a good fit for them this time, what about next time? Do you want there to be a next time? There will certainly be cases where you will discover that a particular person will never do business with you (you may not want them to) and they never refer others to you either. Does it makes sense to keep marketing to them?

A common mistake I see made by people who don’t think of sales and marketing as two separate roles is they stop marketing once the sale is made. They just finished the sale, successfully I might add, so they are done, right? Wrong. That particular sales conversation has finished, but if you want to have more sales conversations with these same people, then keep marketing to them.

On the marketing side, it is very common to make the mistake of trying to sell directly from our marketing materials. Rather than trying to sell, our marketing materials should educate and help people move to the next step in their buying process, moving them closer to having a sales conversation.

Start thinking about sales and marketing as two separate roles and see how your thinking and your conversations with customers and prospects change.

What do you think? Do you see any benefit from identifying sales and marketing as separate roles?

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Categories : Marketing
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Networking for the newly promoted

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (7)
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Continuing the series on marketing for the newly promoted, today’s post is about networking. Networking is another one of those things that we are told to do, but we aren’t given a lot of instruction on how to do it effectively.

Much of what I’ve already written in this series of posts applies to networking. To be effective at networking, you certainly need to be able to talk about what you do in a clear and concise manner. You must understand what your customer really buys and the process they use for making purchasing decisions. The ability to listen and being able to connect people by giving referrals will certainly improve the results you see from networking.

As professional service providers, we are often told what not to do at a networking event – don’t try to make a sale at a networking event. Well, what is it that we should be doing?

The Goal

In most cases, your goal is very similar to the goal of cold calling – to set an appointment. Not make a sale, but to determine if there is enough reason to get together for a meaningful conversation.

That means you need to determine:

  • Does this person appear to be the type of person that your serve?
  • Do they know people who fit your ideal customer profile and are they willing to introduce you to those people?

You don’t have to pull out a 4 page “fact finding” questionnaire in order to do this. It really boils down to 2 things – listening and not being afraid to hear “no”.

Listening

When you and your conversation partner were introducing yourselves, did you get a clear understanding of what they really do? Most people aren’t very good at explaining this in their “30 second commercial”. It’s going to be hard to help them if you don’t get a clear understanding of their needs.

Also pay attention to how they react when you tell them about your business. Do they seem to identify with what you are saying? Are they looking for an excuse to get away? Do they ask follow up questions that make it clear that they didn’t “get” what you just told them?

Go For the No

My sales coach, Dan Stalp, is always teaching us to “go for the no”. In essence, what is teaching us is that it if someone is going to tell us no, it is better to hear about it sooner rather than later.

In the case of networking, if there is no chance that you will be able to work with someone, wouldn’t you want to know that sooner than later? In order to do this, we need to have a little guts and ask questions that allow someone to tell us “no” and be willing to hear that without feeling like they are rejecting us as a person.

How do you “go for the no” in networking? One way to apply this is right after you explain what you do for a living, ask a question similar to this – “Is it ok if I ask you a question? If you or someone you know ever had a need for what I do, does someone come to mind that you could turn to or recommend?”.

I find that a couple of things typically happen if you ask this question. First, it is common that the other person may suddenly realize they only have a generic idea of what you do and they will start to ask you more questions in order to learn more. Second, they will generally tell you if they already have someone they work with, they are not the decision maker, or they don’t have someone like you in their network and they would like to learn more.

If you think it makes sense for you to continue the conversation, then you must ask if they feel the same way. Be clear about what you want to happen in the follow up conversation. Remember, as much as you don’t like hearing no, people are just as uncomfortable telling you no. Unless you work together to really figure out if you can help one another, you are going to have a lot of nice coffee and lunch meetings that don’t lead to any business. 

One last note – just because someone initially tells you they already have someone they would turn to, don’t be afraid to find out if they ever feel the need for having more than one person as a resource – a backup to turn to when the first choice isn’t available.

Following Up 

At this point, I hope it’s clear that what we are working to do is to get permission and set the expectation for a follow up call or visit. Hopefully, it goes without saying that you must follow up if you want to see results from your networking efforts.

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Categories : Marketing, Referral Marketing
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Knowing which customers \ business to turn away

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (3)
Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Why would a series of posts about marketing for the newly promoted include a discussion about turning away business? Mostly because it’s one of those things that everyone seems to learn the hard way. You are probably going to prefer to learn it the hard way yourself, but here goes.

This is one of the things that I typically get the most push back on when working with customers – narrowly defining who you serve. Their brain tells them that they will be leaving money on the table and that this is bad. Particularly with the recent economic conditions, it can be very difficult to turn away business that we really shouldn’t take.

If we want to get past competing solely based on price, if we want to be known as the “go-to” resource in our area of expertise, then we must learn what business not to take.

We spend a lot of time thinking about the characteristics that make an ideal customer. Can you readily identify your non-ideal customer?

If you are newly promoted, talk with the managers and partners in your firm. I’m sure all of them have stories about clients and projects they wish they had turned down. Learn what makes a non-ideal customer. Were they over demanding? Always complaining about price? Disrespectful to employees (yours and theirs)? Did they ignore advice?

In order to make this conversation more than just a bitch-fest, talk about any early warning signs that were ignored. Usually, there were plenty. Everyone who has is responsible for bringing in business has an “I should have known…” story.

Once you learn how to identify your non-ideal customers, have a plan for how your will deal with them. Most of us do not like to tell people “no”. We don’t want to be the bad guy. You can still help them by having people that you can refer them to – people better suited to meeting their needs. It’s much easier to say “I want to help and I think this other firm would be a much better fit for you”. Whatever you do, don’t take work just because you feel too uncomfortable to say “no”.

Did you already learn this lesson the hard way? Care to share so we can all learn?

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Categories : Marketing
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