Andrew Sobel runs down the 10 client trends for 2010 firm must pay attention to
The events of 2008 and 2009 will have lingering effects on professional services firms in 2010. Clients are still hunkered down and very cautious, while dealing with the many firms that are competing for their attention. Whom they spend money with will have to stand out among the crowd and offer real value, says Andrew Sobel in this week’s RainToday article, 10 Client Trends to Watch Out For in 2010. Among those trends: clients continuing to seek discounts, increased demand in service providers due to lack of hiring, and competition from the recently laid-off.
As you seek to retain and add clients this year, make sure the systems you employ don’t turn prospects away or cause you to lose clients. In Don’t Let Your Systems Make You Stupid—And Lose Business Barbara Walters Price explains how too often firms hold on to systems and procedures that hurt rather than help them. Take, for example, an accounting firm that required its professionals to fire clients who did not meet a pre-determined fee threshold. It looked at only the present rather than thinking about clients’ growth possibilities, and that ended up losing them clients who later became large businesses.
One system that firms must take a close look at is their lead generation and screening system. As Charles H. Green points out in his article this week—Is Your Lead Generation System Causing You to Lose Clients?—lead generation and screening as it’s usually practiced hurts relationships with prospects and clients. That’s because it’s inherently self-oriented, aimed at the seller not the buyer. In fact, Green says there are only two questions you need to ask during the screening process that will ensure you make good decisions and don’t hurt your relationships with prospects.
Well-working systems, however, can lead to enormous rewards, as architecture firm Ware Malcomb discovered. In this week’s case study, How an Architecture Firm Used CRM and Email to Bring in New Business, Ware Malcomb’s chief marketing officer explains how the firm used a client relationship management system and email to bring in $75,000 in new business in less than a year. While other firms were cutting resources and time spent on marketing, Ware Malomb invested and use the two systems to tell clients about its new services.
When Traditional Marketing Fails
Firms may find that traditional marketing methods no longer work—the content sent to clients and prospects seems to fall on deaf ears. If that’s the case with your firm, then you ought to consider content marketing, says Joe Pulizzi in this week’s podcast interview, Want to Attract New Clients? Think Like a Publisher.
Pullizzi, co-author of Get Content Get Customers, says with this marketing technique you want to think like a publisher and create compelling information that’s educational, not sales-related. Doing so piques people’s interest and draws prospects to you.
Blogs are one type of content you can use to get noticed. In today’s online world, they allow you to create a Web presence and to establish yourself as a thought leader. In fact, a recent HubSpot survey found that businesses that blog have 79% more Twitter followers. People want to hear what those businesses have to say. Do your clients want to hear what you have to say?
