Are your sales and marketing practices as out of date as Polaroid pictures?

Ah, the good ‘ole days. We often have fond memories of times gone by and wish things could always stay the same. But change we must, especially when it applies to business.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, buyer behavior and habits have significantly changed thanks to the Internet and the increasing amount of information available. More often prospects go to the web first to research their options before making a purchase rather than waiting for someone to give them information. That means you have to have a presence there, and you have to offer educational material—no hard sales pitches.

Those are just two things Colleen Stanley points out in her article, You Know Your Sales Process is Outdated When …. Other things to avoid: pestering prospects until they finally relent and say yes and using leading questions.

“Today’s prospects identify leading questions and know the salesperson is trying to lead them to your answer, not their answer,” Stanley says. “The walls go up, and ’sales dodge ball’ begins. Prospects start holding their cards close to the chest, and information gathering gets tighter and tighter. The result is a superficial conversation.”

Genuine sales conversations put the buyer’s interests, challenges, and concern in the forefront. In fact, Jill Konrath advocates treating prospects like they’re already clients. Give them ideas and suggestions to help them solve their problem. This is especially effective when your communication with prospects is part of the RFP process, she says in her article, One Game-Changing Strategy that Will Lead to New Clients.

“To be most effective in sales today, it’s imperative to drop your ’sales’ mentality and start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you. When you do, it shifts your relationship to a whole new level from the very start,” Konrath says.

The RFP process may try to push you away from that, asking you for information about your company, its background, your qualifications, and your clients, but don’t allow it. Provide all of that information in a handout, but use your meeting time to delve into their problem and offer suggestions. It will help you stand out among the other sellers who follow the standard RFP process.

Being well-prepared for your sales meetings will also help you stay ahead of the competition, and there’s a plethora of technical tools to help you do that, write Joseph Riden and Nancy Rossiter in their article, Tech Tools that Enable You to Sell Smarter and Faster. CRM systems help you store and share valuable client and prospect data, email marketing driven from your CRM system will give you targeted emails that get prospects to respond, and webinars can help move prospects through the pipeline.

“You can use such tools to win the day, every day, whether sales is your primary function or one role you fill as a solo entrepreneur,” Riden and Rossiter write. “In today’s challenging business environment, integrating a powerful digital tool set is a key to success that offers you a significant competitive edge regardless of the size of your company.”

We All Need the Human Touch

As you embrace such technologies, be careful that you don’t lose the human touch that prospects want and need. Anything impersonal will be seen as a sales pitch, and they won’t have anything to do with it. It’s that human touch that shows prospects you care about them and leads to greater sales success, says Dan McDade in his podcast interview, Lead Generation: Prospects Need a Human Touch.

“There are so many companies now, and rightfully so, looking at marketing automation solutions and other tools. Those are all great, but remember nothing really happens until somebody has a conversation with somebody else,” he says.

That human element can also prevent firms from losing the many long-term opportunities that get “left on the floor” because the prospect isn’t ready to buy. You need a process that moves them closer to the sale, McDade says.

F5 Networks combined a human touch with technology when it realized its clients were struggling with new changes to their computer networks. New network security protocols had them unsure what to do, so F5 launched a webinar and email campaign to educate them about the new protocol and solutions to help them with the switch.

“The technology leader prides itself on advising customers of issues that might affect their IT departments. Its first step was to approach large financial institutions and web-based organizations that would feel tremendous impact based on this new standard. After explaining a simple resolution that involved BIG-IP settings, these grateful customers urged F5 to share the solution with more customers,” writes Stephanie Tilton in her case study, Webinar Campaign Helps Global Tech Company Expand Accounts and Generate $12 Million in Sales Opportunities.

The company was also careful not to leave any leads behind. Using a CRM system, it developed a process for nurturing long-term leads. At the same time F5’s inside sales team and an external marketing partner reached out to more than 6,000 contacts.

“Our focus was to make all affected customers aware of the issue and how they could address it with [F5's] BIG-IP products,” explains Christine Pomeroy, Director of Marketing Communications at F5.

As a result, the company had more than 3,000 inquiries and nearly $12 million in sales opportunities. “This campaign gave us account expansion opportunities, and provided a very efficient way for our major account teams to reach new contacts within existing accounts,” explains Pomeroy.

What about you? Are your sales and marketing processes current or in need of an upgrade? Are you tapping new technologies while retaining a human touch?

Photo by: Bartek Ambrozik

Earlier this year, we asked you to share your selling services challenges. You flooded us with your challenges and concerns, which included communicating the value of your services, client relationship management, and qualifying leads. In this blog series we identify 12 of the major selling obstacles you are struggling with the most and offer advice and suggestions for overcoming them.

This week’s challenge: turning speaking engagements into new business.

It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? You give people a sample of what you have to offer to encourage them to pay for the full service. Why, then, do people have such a hard time turning audience members into clients?

Target Your Audience

It starts with your audience, says Anne Miller, a communications coach and author of Make What You Say Pay! “My best strategy for selling my training and speaking services is to speak before carefully selected groups so that people can experience what I do,” she says.

That means not taking any speaking engagement for the sake of it. Target your audience the same way you target your ideal client. What are their needs and challenges? Do your services meet those needs? What venues do they prefer–do they like intimate in-person settings or are they partial to online/virtual events?

RainToday Publisher Mike Schultz presents at the ICCA Congress & Exhibition in Florence, Italy

Once you have your audience and venue, it’s up to you to engage attendees, grab their attention, and keep their attention. You do not want to be the speaker that puts people to sleep or has them pulling out their smart phones and laptops to check email.

Appeal to Challenges and Emotions

One way to command their attention is to go beyond showcasing what you know and appeal to their challenges and emotions, says Vickie K. Sullivan, founder and president of Sullivan Speaker Services, which helps professionals with their branding and marketing initiatives.

“The key is to be beyond smart and go straight to urgent. That’s a content and focus issue,” Sullivan says. “Many speakers show they’re talented, but buyers sometimes leave with, ‘She’s great. I’ll work with her someday.’ And someday never comes. Buyers have more priorities than budget, so if your speaking can direct solutions to a problem they are already funding, well, it’s a beautiful thing.”

Strong speakers also have a demeanor that shows they’re comfortable in their skin, Sullivan says. And that allows audience members to also relax and enjoy being around them. Consider, for example, former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, who is currently United States Secretary of Homeland Security.

“I heard her speak at Harvard University and immediately saw why she was so popular,” recalls Sullivan in her article, Clever and Compelling: 3 Traits that Instantly Attract Buyers to You. “This audience of equally powerful people was enthralled because she was so comfortable. Everyone knew she could break some eggs if she had to, and yet she came off as if she were having a fun conversation with friends. Did she say anything in particular that gave us that impression? Not a word. This relaxed confidence permeated everything she said. ”

Interesting and compelling speakers also use their words to paint pictures for their audience members. Metaphors are an important tool in their skill set.

“Metaphors are so important today because we live in a world of constant information that’s coming at people at increasingly accelerated rates. People cannot absorb all of that, and in fact they tune more out than in primarily as a survival mechanism,” says Miller. “You need to get through that stuff so they can see you in a unique light, see the value of your proposition, and want to take action with you.”

Metaphors can help you turn a seemingly boring topic into an exciting one that keeps people talking about it—and you—long after your presentation is over. When used as openers, they seize attention because they’re unexpected, writes Miller in Make What You Say Pay!

Success Story

Linda Rey, whom Miller profiles in the book, discovered the power of metaphors after she gave a presentation at a breakfast meeting of the business council to which her insurance agency belonged. She wanted to make sure she left with more than a stack of business cards, so she turned to her skydiving experience to help grab the audience’s attention and address business’s insurance challenges.

Rey placed an envelope on each table that included pictures of her jumping out of an airplane. When she took the podium, she asked everyone to open the envelopes and share the contents. As they did, they all began murmuring: Was that Rey? Is she crazy? How could she do that?

After everyone settled down, Rey said it was her in the picture, but she jumped only after she had proper instruction. And she said you should follow the same practice when buying insurance—only after you have proper instruction.

Rey told the audience, “As with skydiving, when you don’t know what you are doing, there is a very good chance that you are going to get injured. You could hit the ground really hard, financially speaking. And that would hurt, not only you, but both your family and your business.”

Once Rey had their attention, she offered useful tips on choosing a broker and buying insurance. Eighteen months later, she was still receiving business from that speaking engagement.

Your role in lead generation is like that of a chef crafting a satisfying meal: you must combine elements of art and science.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about online lead generation and the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all tactic. Different things work well for different companies based on target audience, where the prospect is in the buying process, and the company’s abilities.

The same mantra holds true for offline lead generation tactics.

Will cold calling work? What about presenting at a conference? Direct mail? The answer, of course: it depends.

Which lead generation tactics should you use?

Lead generation means finding (or attracting) prospects and building relationships with them to develop potential new business opportunities or “leads” for your services.

Choose Your Ingredients

Your lead generation recipe—which ingredients, in what proportion and sequence—will be based on who you’re serving, their appetites, and your ability to combine everything into a satisfying and delicious whole.

When we asked B2B professionals to rate the effectiveness of offline lead generation tactics, here’s how they responded:

Effectiveness of Offline Lead Generation Tactics

Presenting at in-person events and making “warm” phone calls to existing contacts are at the top of the list of most effective offline tactics. Does this mean these are the only ones you should consider? Does this mean you should stay away from radio advertising? Absolutely not.

That would be like ruling out cilantro from a salsa recipe for your diners because it doesn’t appeal to you personally.

Get Rave Reviews for Your Recipe

I was reminded of this recently when I interviewed a B2B service business owner who’s had success adding direct mail to his lead generation program. Some marketers claim direct mail is dead. However, by adding a fresh ingredient to his recipe, this business owner brought down his cost per lead and now generates 30-35% of his new business from direct mail.

Even radio advertising, which was used by only 15% of our survey respondents, was rated as very or extremely effective by 12.5% of sellers in terms of lead generation.

You have to revisit your target audience, where they are in the buying process, and your abilities to implement a program to figure out the lead generation recipe your company should use. There is no one recipe for everyone. And no one recipe for all time.

The best chefs tweak and adjust recipes to achieve the best possible results.

Happy cooking!

Photo credit: Dev Null

If you were given an additional $200,000 to spend on your lead generation efforts how would you spend it? Would you…

• Hire more marketing and sales staff
• Implement a marketing automation tool
• Run more seminars and events
• Improve search engine optimization
• Launch a new website
• Develop more content
• Publish thought leadership content (articles, white papers, case studies, etc.)
• Increase pay-per-click advertising
• Invest in email marketing
• Add a new CRM system
• Send out a 3D mail campaign
• Build a target list
• Advertise
• Build your social media presence (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)
• Implement sales training
• Hire a PR agency

With all of the various ways to generate new leads, what would you do?

How 636 Service Firm Leaders Would Spend the Money

In a survey RainToday.com conducted in partnership with ITSMA, we posed this same question to service firm leaders. Here are the top six ways they said they’d spend the money.

Top Ways Service Businesses Would Spend Extra $200K for Lead Generation

It’s no surprise that hiring additional staff is near the top of the list, especially since over the past two years we’ve all been asked to do more with less. Whether you’re in a company of one or 10,000, you always feel like if you just had another person to focus on X, Y, and Z, you’d be able to get so much more done.

The other items on the survey takers’ list show a huge shift away from traditional marketing and sales tactics – advertising, cold calling, direct mail, and email – towards content marketing and thought leadership development.

From our experience working with and speaking to professional services firms of all types and sizes, we know that thought leadership and content development help businesses build brand, develop targeted lists, build credibility and trust, get found, nurture leads, improve SEO, and build a PR platform—all of which help generate more and higher-quality leads. In fact, in another research report published by RainToday, we found that behind referrals in-person seminars are the leading way buyers find new service providers.

The move to content marketing and thought leadership development does not mean more traditional tactics are no longer important. In fact, I’d go so far as to say traditional tactics are even more important than these. Think about it:

• If you run a seminar and don’t invite target prospects via mail, email, and phone how many people do you think will show up?
• If you build a new website and don’t optimize it for search engines, send out emails directing prospects to the site, or advertise on Google, will anyone visit the site?
• If you write a new white paper or publish a new article, how are you going to get it into the hands of prospects?

Unlike the field of dreams, if you build it, prospects won’t come knocking.

Firms that attend to marketing basics—traditional marketing—and integrate their tactics online with content see the greatest growth and success.

When it comes to marketing and selling professional services, there’s no doubt that it is significantly different than marketing and selling products. Different dynamics are at play. Thinking otherwise will only lead to wasted time and money—not new clients.

The obvious difference is what you’re selling. You’re selling yourself and your expertise. Many may have the same expertise as you, which means you must do something that makes you stand out from that crowd. One way to do that is to give prospects and leads a taste of what it’s like to work with you. Give them an opportunity to experience working with you, says Anne Scarlett in her article, You Built the Relationship, Now Do This to Close the Deal.

When you finally get to interview with prospects—after weeks, sometimes months, developing the relationship—make the meeting interactive and facilitative, Scarlett says.

Advertising is another area that requires a different approach, says Bruce Marcus in his article, What Works and What Doesn’t in Advertising. Creating ads is more complex than you think, and creating them for professional services is even more challenging. But if you follow certain rules, you can help establish your brand and make sure you’re top of mind when people have a need for your services.

If you choose to market your services at an event or conference, additional guidelines apply. You can’t simply set up a booth and be done with it, says Sharon Berman in her article, Dos and Don’ts for Event Marketing. Work begins as soon as you commit to participating at a show and doesn’t end until well after the event ends. Start early to spread the word about the show, decide how to best work the show, and plan your post-show strategy. Doing so will ensure that you investment pays off many times over.

One thing that is the same with B2B service firms and B2C product companies is the fact that a company’s culture can determine its success, as Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh discusses in his podcast interview, Employee Happiness Key to Driving Profit and Growth. Hsieh further says that if employees are happy, they will deliver great customer and client service which in turn will lead to greater referrals and sales.

Hsieh dispels the long-standing belief that companies can either be profitable or provide good customer service. They can do both. In fact, he says businesses that don’t focus on profits end up being more profitable in the long run.

Missed Sales Opportunities

When firms miss sales opportunities, it’s often due to flaws in their sales culture, writes Mike Schultz in his recent blog post, The Culture That Drives Cross-selling and Up-selling. Specifically, they’re missing opportunities with current clients—not pursuing cross-selling or up-selling opportunities.

According to research by Aberdeen Group, best-in-class firms do this well while laggard firms end up repeating the problems and wondering why they keep missing out. It’s imperative, therefore, that those firms must better train staff on how to understand clients’ challenges and how to match services to those challenges.

With so many tactics to choose from to generate leads, and so little time to decide (if you don’t want to lose prospects to faster-moving competitors), how can you create conversations with the most qualified buyers for your services?

You can speak at conferences or seminars. Take advantage of the many PR opportunities available. Or you can cold call, send direct mail pieces, set up affiliate or referral programs—the list goes on.

Not knowing which tactic to choose and what to expect from your lead generation efforts can be a service provider’s worst nightmare. You have to zero in on what’s going to make the biggest splash in your pool of prospects. But how do you know?

Over the course of 2010, Wellesley Hills Group has conducted research from over 800 professional services providers; they’ve told us what’s worked, what hasn’t, and how they plan to generate leads in the future.

Join us on June 15 as Mike Schultz will be sharing findings from Wellesley Hills Group’s yet to be released What’s Working in Lead Generation 2010 report.

You will learn the answers to those sticky questions such as:

• How can I fill the front end of the pipeline with qualified prospects that will buy?
• Which tactics look good, but don’t work well for lead generation?
• How does lead generation work with other marketing and business development activities?
• Which tactics will work for my firm, given the dynamics of what I sell?
• What are the keys to developing a culture that supports ongoing lead generation success?

When: June 15, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. (continental breakfast and networking begin at 7:30 a.m.)

Where: Newton Marriott – 2345 Commonwealth Avenue, Newton, MA 02466

All attendees will receive a complimentary executive summary to the What’s Working in Lead Generation 2010 benchmark report.

Register for Lead Generation Success for Professional Services>>>

If prospects don't trust you, they won't buy from you (Photo by davedufour)

Are you concerned about converting leads into sales? You’re not alone. According to a poll by InTouch, lead conversion is the number one lead generation challenge for B2B firms.

One reason why that conversion is so challenging is that those buyers don’t yet trust you. You must prove your trustworthiness. And sometimes you might use tactics that you think are good when they’re actually hurting you, says Michael Maslansky, author of The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics, in his podcast interview, You Might Be a Trust Killer—and Not Even Know It.

“The subtler versions of lying, cheating, and stealing are what get people into trouble, such as claiming your service is perfect,” he says. “You will lose trust because we as people don’t believe anything is perfect today.”

You also want to keep in mind the “personal principle,” Maslansky says. Remember, it’s not about you; it’s about them—your buyers. Avoid talking just about your services and your firm and focus on your prospects’ needs and concerns.

Your expertise can also help develop trust and make you the go-to person in your field, says Vickie K. Sullivan in her article, Become a Must-Have Expert Everyone Wants to Work With. Buyers use three filters when deciding whether to buy your services: if your expertise will help them with the problem at hand, how readily available your expertise and skills are (do you know something they don’t?), and do they agree with your approach and the way you think.

When you tap into those three things, “not only will we get attention, but we will get the incoming emails and calls, too,” Sullivan says.

Lead Generation Tactics

Before you can convert those leads, you must first find them. You could use cold calling, but if the thought of doing that makes you shiver, there are many other tactics you can use, explains Kendra Lee in her article, Cold Calling Alternatives that Drive in Leads. Ideas include email campaigns, online events, social media, press releases, and conference exhibits.

“Some people love cold calling. But if you aren’t one of those people, relax, breathe a deep sigh of relief and change your prospecting strategy,” Lee says. “Not only will you build your pipeline, but you’ll also create awareness for yourself and your company through consistent exposure.”

If you decide to exhibit at conferences or trade shows, Sharon Berman has some excellent advice in her article, Bright Lights, Booth Babes, or Swag: How to Create the Best Conference Exhibit. In the first article of this two-part series, Berman focuses on the initial research to make your investment worthwhile. She also addresses what makes a magnetic booth that draws prospects to you and how to take advantage of the conference resources available to you.

Conference exhibits is a channel not many professional services firms pursue (or if they do, they don’t execute them well) and yet the lead potential is big. The key is understanding what makes an exhibit work and putting in the effort to make it succeed.

“If you haven’t seriously considered exhibiting before, it may be a tactic to add to your marketing arsenal,” Berman says. “Remember that any tactic is most successful when it is seamlessly integrated into a firm’s overall marketing strategy and viewed as a long-term investment.”

Some professional services providers are so enamored of shiny new marketing tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn that they completely overlook a proven tool for generating leads and educating prospects for a complex purchase.

Now, I’m a big fan of social media. I’m also a big fan of trying new and different approaches. But I’m an even bigger fan of using the tactics that generate results to grow a business.

What if I told you I know from first-hand experience this “weapon” is being used right now, today, by accounting, law, IT services, and consulting firms to generate qualified leads and new business?

You’d probably be interested to know more, right?

But what if I told you it is the humble short (one- or two-hour) in-person seminar? Would you shrug your shoulders and say, “Oh, seminars? Boring.” Or, maybe, “Sounds like too much work.” Or, “No way that will create business for my firm.”

Maybe you’d change your mind if you learned in-person seminars could bring in an additional five-figure client or two or more. Or, add 5, 25, 50, or more highly qualified leads to your pipeline. Would you want to learn how this tactic might work for your firm?

It might be worth learning about, right?

Research has shown that in-person seminars are one of the top ways buyers of professional services learn about providers—preceded only by referrals and personal recognition. In fact, 66% of buyers indicated they initially learn about providers through in-person seminars. And if your target market includes large companies, it’s worth noting that these targets are more likely than smaller companies to identify providers through seminars.

Of course, this approach won’t work for all B2B firms. To make an in-person seminar work for your firm, you need to satisfy some basic criteria, including:

• a significant base of prospects in a geographic area
• a target audience that will attend a seminar
• something valuable to share
• someone to deliver
• marketing support

Take a look at the brief video below to learn a bit more about what it takes to be successful delivering an in-person seminar. At the end, there’s also a short case study about an accounting firm that has added seminars to its marketing mix with great success. (The video is a preview for RainToday’s seminar planning kit, but it’s worth watching even if you’re not interested in getting the kit.)

The in-person seminar just might be the right lead generation weapon for your firm.

Photo credit:

As the purveyors of excellent content on marketing and sales for professional services, we here at RainToday attend many events and see a lot of presentations—both live and online. Over the years I’ve seen some really great presentations, and others that have downright put me to sleep.

RainToday Publisher Mike Schultz recently took the stage at the ICCA Congress & Exhibition in Florence, Italy

What do the most successful presenters do differently? And what can you do to keep your next audience from falling asleep? Here are eight presentation tips that are sure to improve your skills and get you delivering powerful presentations like the pros in no time.

8 Presentation Tips

Tip #1: Give examples and tell stories. Nothing brings a presentation to life more than stories. Stories demonstrate to the listener how he can take the information you are sharing and apply it to real life scenarios. Stories inspire. What’s more, your attendees are much more likely to remember a story than a 10-step process.

Tip #2: Keep the audience engaged. No one wants to attend a presentation and listen to a talking head for 60 minutes. Boooring! Engage the audience by asking questions. To get the juices flowing at the beginning of your presentation, ask the audience a poll question and rather than having them raise their hand, ask them to stand up. This will energize them and you.

Tip #3: Keep the mood light. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Be professional, yes, but also keep the feeling light. Insert humor. Consider sharing a YouTube video. Pick on an audience member (gently). Pick on yourself.

Tip #4: Practice, practice, practice. You should know your presentation inside out. Nothing puts an audience to sleep faster than someone standing up and reading from his PowerPoint slides. You should know your presentation well enough that if your computer broke the presentation could go on. Or, as some very high profile keynote speakers do, don’t use PowerPoint or a computer at all.

Tip #5: Bring the energy. In live presentations, you feed off the energy from the audience. Online presentations are quite a bit more difficult, as you cannot see how your audience is reacting to you and your presentation. If you are doing a lot of online presentations, consider having an audience in the room with you when you deliver. This will help keep your energy level high.

Tip #6: Use your body. No one likes to watch a stiff person stand anchored behind a podium, nor do they like to watch someone pacing back and forth on the stage. Especially if you are nervous, there is a tendency to either use the podium as a crutch or become fidgety. Be aware of this and use your body language and motions to emphasize your points. Use hand gestures when you speak. Use inflections in your voice to make points stronger. But don’t overdo it.

Tip #7: Slow down. Even when you think you are talking slower than molasses in January, chances are you’re talking too fast. We all speed up when we are nervous and, frequently, let our voices trail off at the end of sentences. Keep a slow pace. Trust me, you are going much faster than you think. If you have a trusted partner in the audience ask him to give you signs if you need to slow down or speed up.

Tip #8: Record yourself. You’ll learn a lot about yourself and your presentation style from watching a recording of yourself. When you watch the recording, see how you do on the other seven tips. You may be surprised at all the areas for improvement you uncover.

Follow these presentation tips and you’ll be giving keynotes like the pros in no time at all.

For more presentations tips along with presentation habits to avoid, don’t miss RainToday’s upcoming webinar with Tim Wackel on January 19, Become a Polished Presenter: Keys to Delivering Powerful Presentations.

In-person seminars, presentations, and seminars help you nurture prospects and close new business.

Are you investing resources in running in-person seminars, presentations, and webinars to nurture prospects and close new business? Congratulations, you’re on the right track! Benchmark research conducted by RainToday (How Clients Buy 2009 Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing & Selling from the Client Perspective) shows buyers of professional services use in-person seminars (66%), presentations at a conference or event (62%), and webinars (45%) to initially identify and learn more about service providers.

But which marketing approaches should you use to reach prospects to let them know about these events? As it turns out, buyers learn about in-person seminars and presentations in relatively similar ways. Direct mail tops the list, with roughly three-quarters of buyers learning of seminars and presentations via an invitation or brochure they receive in the mail. The majority of buyers who attend these events also learn about them from a colleague or via an email sent directly to them from the service provider.

Buyers learn about webinars differently: three-quarters of buyers learn of these events from an email sent by the service provider, the most common publicity method. Roughly 42-44% of buyers also learn of webinars from a colleague or via direct mail from the provider.

Paid advertising—whether in print or online—fell near the bottom of the list. Not surprising.

Source: How Clients Buy 2009 Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing & Selling from the Client Perspective

If you use in-person seminars, presentations at events, or webinars in your services marketing plan, which outreach methods best work for you?