Part 3 (1/2)

For exaht conduct a seminar or webinar and want to fil the rooenerate little or no attendance Or you enerate so content that wil help you connect with potential clients (Try a hard-sel approach; most decision makers real y despise that) Then you can ruin your fol ow-up by not doing it, doing it too late, or doing it poorly

Maybe you set out to support lead generation and client communication with a web site; but you end up with a web site that no one can find, no one can use, is hard on the eyes, provides no value, is not client focused, and general y reflects poorly on your coeneration and generate no response-with no idea why it didn't work, and no way to find out!

Leave out the tactical expertise, and the terribleoutcomes you can achieve are endless

Look Only at Your Own Industry and Coy to never reach beyond average, make sure you look only at your own industry and co fir fir, technology, and consureat way to ies, and possibilities Plus, if you look only at your own industry for inspiration, you'l never be a leader Being late to the gay

Make sure that, when you're studying the co, you look only at your direct co exa firm outside of New York City Focus only on otherwhat KPMG LLP or PricewaterhouseCoopers are doing, and don't worry ht be up to

They're too big for you to care about, and you don't want to get too roel or are larger than you

Don't Create an Environment of Fervent Execution

Even if you al ow your leaders to craft the corowth plans and if you have the tactical expertise to get things done, by fostering a culture whereand business development are second fiddle, you wil stay in the land of terrible et started here is to set action steps and goals and not hold people accountable to the nice and not wanting to stir things up when so and business developht think this is a tactical versus strategic issue It's not Coists and leaders must make sure the environmental factors that support perforive feedback, don't make tools and resources available, and don't put incentives and consequences in place to guide people's behavior (Or, dear CIA disinforuide the wrong behaviors See what that does) To end up with the terrible strategy, it's also contingent upon leadershi+p to ensure that the people tasked with executing do not have the skils and knowledge, are not ht people for the job

Execution ic priority by leadershi+p-if it's not a priority, your y has a chance to be not only terrible, but tragic It's a fantastical y terrible and deviousin place that could al ow it to succeed, and then fails because no one gets it done These kinds of good intentions gone bad warist Bril iant tianizational Change

Professional services firms are products of the col ective behaviors of the people within them That's a mouthful; but, in essence, it siies are most powerful when they are bold, venture into uncharted territory, are creative and new, and require lots of energy and enthusiasm to be imple strategy's success is contingent on soe, be it evolutionary or revolutionary

Regardless of what you set forth in your plan, if the strategists and leaders aren't bent on e happen, you'l end up with the sa different than what you have done in the past is soy

For Committee, Then Take The a nice afternoon playing doested, ”Let's take a trip to Abilene for dinner” No one real y wanted to go, but they didn't want to seereeable; so they hopped in the non-air-conditioned car and made the two-hour trip to Abilene

Five hours later the family returned, tired, sticky, cra cafeteria reat trip,” one of theood time but her The o but you al seemed to I didn't want to spoil everyone's fun, so I didn't say anything” It turned out no one wanted to go, even the father-in-laho suggested the trip, but they al hopped in the car and went to Abilene anyway7 Service firms tend to employ sh in on i coet nice and big, two things happen

First, innovative and interesting ideas get squashed before they can gain et everyone to agree, and it's easy for people to say no and poke holes in ideas The tired, less exciting ideas re 20 people to agree on the saet excluded for this reason or that

Everyone ends up withas a salad

Second, people begin to agree atered-down and uninspiring ideas because they think other sree with the committee discussion, and actions eventual y need to be taken They also know better ideas won't make it very far, so they publicly s the pil and declare, ”I agree Let's go!” Privately they think, ”This is a terrible idea, but I guess it's where everyone wants to go”

In other words, the committee decides to take the firm to Abilene and doesn't look back, sometimes until they've spent a year and a half on the trip

What you're hoping for here, if you want your terrible e pluralistic ignorance, the phenoree with the nor because they think everyone else agrees Since no one says anything even when they disagree, even if everyone has second thoughts, the rooet spot nuies that could be good can becoies if you set yourto do what you must to keep innovative ideas off the table, let other companies exploit opportunities in the anization to stifle frank discussion, commitment, and execution, you'l be able to coies on the block

4

The Seven Levers of Lead Generation and Marketing Planning

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus

-Alexander Graham Bell

Over the past several years we've seen a shi+ft in thinking about howdol ars are spent at professional services firer is the quarterly ad spend or the ”we have done it every year” trade show getting auton-off The question asked more andon eneration, is: ”If I spend X on thistactic, what should I expect in return?”

Unfortunately, too -in both dolars and time-is stil wasted in professional services firms In the same vein as ”Who Was the Ad Wizard?” in Chapter 12, if you were to open up your local business journal, without a doubt you would see advertisened, so to TEN TACTICAL MISTAKES MADE BY PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FIRMS THAT GOOD PLANNING CAN SOLVE

1 Spending onactivities that don't produce ROI or that are vanity exercises (eg, over-the-top graphic design and i unrealistic expectations for whichtactics can produce which results

3 Not i (co i up too soon

5 Relying on one tactic to do the job

6 Poor i copy, poorly designed web sites, or poorly targeted ca to nurture leads

8 Not co the various eneration-al the steps in the process

”generate awareness” While there is nothing wrong with using anizations are generating awareness a tens of thousands of readers who are not likely to be the best targets for their services The funds to create such an ad and to run it week after ould surely be eted pool of, say, 1,600 prospects the fir on ads like this is a waste, as are soendeavors Il -conceived advertising cans are, of course, just one exans It's easy to waste a lot of ht leadershi+p development, business development, public relations, and virtual y any other tactic you can think of

How does any coet rid of this kind of waste, whether it be inor in other parts of the business?

The coes its business as processes with inputs and outputs Your eneration efforts should be no different

Make Outcomes assu calculations based on what you know about your firm's typical pipeline success For an example, consider the ”Metrics of Services in Demand” chart we use with Wel esley Hil s Group clients

assu activities yield 2,000 prospective clients hom you'd like to work

Over the course of a year, you irans, not just a single effort) that yields 160 leads, or 8 percent of 2,000

Of those leads, 30 percent, or 48 prospects, are qualified (ie, they're the right coht person, they have needs, they have the financial ability to buy, etc)8 You close 30 percent of the qualified leads, yielding 14 new clients Therefore, 9 percent of your initial leads close for this example9 METRICS OF SERVICES IN DEMAND-EXAMPLE 1

Client Data

Average revenue per client per year: 150,000

Retention of revenue from year to year: 60 percent