How do you stand out from the sea of competition?

Let me ask you this: when you look at the services you provide and how you market them, do you look and sound like other firms in your space? Does your website look eerily like your competitors? Are you blogging and tweeting similar content?

If the answer is yes, then you need to stop right now.

The only way you are going to get the clients you want and the fees you deserve is if you differentiate yourself. Do something that sets you apart from the rest, elevates buyers’ perception of you, and increases your value.

The fact that you have a website, are publishing content, and are active in social media is a great step. But thanks to more and more firms doing the same thing, it isn’t enough to just have a blog or a Facebook page. Now it’s going to take more work. Now you have to publish high-quality content, not just any content.

“You have to say something important, and you have to say it succinctly. And you have to have a strategy for packaging it that makes it something people will find and will want to read,” says Paul Gillin, co-author of Social Marketing to the Business Customer in a recent podcast interview, It’s Time for B2B Firms to Be More Like Publishers.

Firms have to adopt a publisher mentality and use high-quality articles, blog posts, podcasts, and video to demonstrate their expertise and distinguish themselves from the competition, Gillin says.

“Lots and lots of people are in social media right now, and the competition to get visibility to be seen is more intense. That means you have to get better at producing high-quality content,” he says.

Make a Lasting Positive Impression during Sales Meetings

Publishing quality content certainly helps get people to notice you, but how you handle yourself during meetings that occur as a result can make or break a deal. First impressions mean everything.

If it’s a scheduled meeting, you have an opportunity to set yourself as the standard all vying providers will be compared against. You want to do what Vickie K. Sullivan describes as “call the game and then predict the future.”

You want “to show the value of your expertise and to leave the buyer with a different perspective that they will now use on everybody else,” Sullivan writes in her article, Be the Benchmark: How to Become the Buyer’s Best Option.

First, question what’s really going on with your prospect, Sullivan says. Their definition of the problem may be way off base. Work with them to dig down to the root of the problem, go beyond the symptoms. After you do that, ask them, “What will happen if …” and insert their plan of action.

Once you redefine the problem with them, you can brainstorm the criteria needed for the solution, Sullivan says. The trick is to make the criteria very specific so that only you are able to meet it.

“When you contribute to the criteria, you better control the comparison among options. That’s how you can come out on top,” Sullivan says.

Distinguish Yourself during Unexpected Meetings

Unexpected meetings with potential buyers are equally important and possibly more difficult. You could be at a conference or a social event and find yourself face to face with someone who is your ideal client, but the circumstances don’t allow for in-depth sales conversations nor do you have an opportunity to plan what to say to the person.

That does not mean, however, you cannot prepare for such situations. In fact, you must prepare if you want to make a good, long-lasting impression that leads to a second meeting, according to Anne Scarlett in her article, The Best Way to Handle Unexpected Business Encounters.

“You can never be certain of whom you will run into or when,” she says. “Strive to be concise, conscious, consistent, curious, and captivating.”

To do that, you must feel comfortable with the content. You need to know your firm’s top three messages and become skilled at thinking on your feet. Be prepared for wherever the prospect decides to take the conversation.

Sales Success

With your sales process under way, don’t forget to go back and measure your results. Are you meeting your goals? Are there areas that need to be adjusted? Successful organizations do not operate on whims. They make decisions based on performance, striving to continually improve results.

“They review everything from their forecasts to their pipelines, looking hard at important numbers such as cost of sales, percentage of market share, salesperson effectiveness ratios, and customer lifetime value,” says Ken Thoreson in his article, Pay Attention to the Numbers: Using Metrics to Improve Sales Results.

But organizations aren’t just examining the numbers. They’re looking for ways to improve sales results. They combine their goals with individual salespeople’s business plans with a set of metrics designed to gauge everyone’s progress in meeting those objectives. Metrics measured include actual sales activity, win-loss percentages, average order value, and dollar value of pipeline.

If you don’t measure, you don’t know how effective you are. But the real route to success is adjusting as needed to improve those results each month and each quarter.

Photo by: flickkerphotos

Don Draper knows a thing or two about communicating with clients

You’ve been invited to a party where you will be socializing with executives from companies you’d like to add to your client list. Do you use the event as an opportunity to pitch them your services? If you said yes, think again.

Even Don Draper from TV’s Mad Men knows it isn’t the right place to give your elevator pitch. As Don said in a season 3 episode to co-head of accounts Pete Campbell, when Pete was drooling over the CEOs present at a party, “Don’t hand out your card.”

There is a time and place for such conversations, and social events are not one of them, agrees Charles H. Green in his article, When to Ditch the Elevator Speech and Take the Escalator or the Stairs. In those situations, it’s better to avoid the Elevator Speech and instead use what he calls The Stairs Speech.

“In this situation, if someone says, ‘What do you do?’ they’re not inviting you to assess their business, much less pitch your own. And remember, they probably don’t care much about your answer. “Their question was a social nicety; they didn’t come to this event looking for business contacts,” Green says.

Keep your answer brief and simple, and “toss the conversational ball back to the other side,” he says. The dialogue is back and forth, taking the conversation one step at a time. If they want to continue the conversation, then do so later—away from the event.

Should the person turn out to be a promising lead, be prepared to nurture that relationship. It can take several “touches” (sometimes as many as 10) before the person decides to purchase your services, John Doerr and Mike Schultz write in their blog post, Prospecting 101: How to Improve Prospecting Success. In addition, each person responds differently to different types of touches, so be prepared to do more than send one email.

“Use a variety of touches to reach out and warm up your prospects—and make sure each touch has value in and of itself,” they say. “When you think about providing value, don’t think only about the value you will eventually provide when the prospect buys from you. Think about the value they’ll get just from speaking with you.”

Conversations with Clients

Should your prospect become a satisfied client, don’t be afraid to ask for a testimonial of your services or to ask for referrals. If you dread cold calling, a referral or testimonial can warm prospects up, giving you an in with prospective buyers.

“Referrals are the preferred way to generate leads and to win new business, yet well over 80% of salespeople just aren’t asking. They worry that if they ask for referrals that they will appear desperate and needy,” says Colleen Francis, president of Engage Selling. “But studies show that 85-90% of your clients, when they’re satisfied with your work, would gladly give you referrals.”

The key is to ask for referrals correctly, says Francis in her podcast interview, Mistakes that Keep You from Getting the Referrals You Deserve. “The key is to be very specific and to give direction and to be directive with your clients,” she says.

The same applies to testimonials, which should be on every firm’s website to help persuade potential buyers to purchase your services. Testimonials build trust and give insight into your company, your services, and you as a professional.

Testimonials, like case studies, demonstrate that your solution works—that others have used it successfully to improve their business. This type of content appeals especially to website visitors who know their business issue and have narrowed down the solution to a handful of providers, says Jon Baer in his article, Offers that Convert Website Visitors into Qualified Leads.

Successful websites should have several offers that appeal to various visitors, stresses Baer. In addition to case studies and testimonials, offer an opportunity to subscribe to your newsletter so people early in the sales cycle can learn more about you. You should also provide an easy way to contact you once they’re ready to speak with you.

Communicate Your Value with Content

You should also provide content—articles, research, white papers, etc.—that communicates the value you offer and pulls prospects to you. More often than not, buyers are turning to search engines when starting the sales process. Having such content on your website will help draw those buyers to you.

Peak Cost Containment greatly improved its lead generation from its website after publishing search-optimized content on its website. It developed case studies, executive briefs, and blog material to spread the word about new developments.

Traffic to the website steadily increased—attracted by the informational content—and those website visitors began to convert to leads, according Van Haas, founder and CEO of the company.

In a case study about the company, How a Consulting Firm Quadrupled Its Client Base and New Business Opportunities in Six Months, Haas says he also used email to nurture leads. He wanted to follow up with prospects in a tactful way with useful information to deepen their understanding of his services and build trust.

The efforts paid off. Visitors who came to the site from organic search had a conversion rate of more than 3% by August 2010. And within six months, Peak gained 130 leads.

When it comes to selling your services, do not underestimate the power of communication. Whether you’re meeting someone for the first time at an event, following up with potential buyers via phone calls or email, or communicating with current clients, what you say can lead to new opportunities or to closed doors.

Is online lead generation relevant to you and your company if you sell B2B services? Or is online marketing just another shiny-new-object distraction?

Rather than building online communities and optimizing your website, should you be making phone calls and attending events? Should you rely on proven, offline lead generation tactics?

The short answer: different lead generation approaches work well for different companies, depending on the target audience, where the prospect is in the buying process, and how well the company implements the lead generation program.

Should you use online lead generation or is it just a shiny, new object?

Sorry to disappoint, but there’s no one-size-fits-all tactic here.

You’ll need to figure out which approaches work for you—based on your targets and your abilities. Who is your ideal customer? How do they buy? Where do they gather? Once you answer those questions, then you can move on to find the prospects for your services and build relationships with them to develop potential new business opportunities or “leads” for your services. In other words, you’re ready for lead generation—online or offline.

Which Online Lead Generation Tactics Work?

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, it’s helpful to see which tactics other B2B service providers use and which ones are proving most effective. Here’s some data from research RainToday.com conducted in partnership with ITSMA (2010).

Top 4 online tactics used.

We asked B2B service providers which online tactics and strategies they used to reach potential leads. Email (90%), social networks (78%), and website search engine optimization (SEO) (used by 76%) topped the list.

Most effective online tactics for lead generation.

But when we asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of these tactics in generating leads for their services, company-authored content published in their own online publications moved to the top of the list—with 27% rating this tactic as very or extremely effective.

In fact, the most effective online tactics are all content driven.

We also found that the best performing companies—in terms of profitability and lead generation success—shared a best practice: the use of content that is relevant (focused on the business issues), provides support for claims (proof points), and builds credibility.

This content can take different forms—based on your service, the audience, and where the prospect is in the buying process—such as white papers, custom content, ebooks, articles, blog posts, videos, case studies, and more.

But, remember, before you jump on board with content creation and online lead generation plans, make sure you have a good understanding of your target audience and their buying process. Map your content to your buyers’ needs based on where they are in the buying process. Then, take a lesson from the best performing companies and build your lead generation around content that is relevant, substantiates your claims, and builds credibility.

And, if the only thing holding you back then is your ability to implement… get help!

What do you think? Do you find your most effective tactics are driven by content?

Do buyers see you as trustworthy or as a snake oil salesman?

Trust—there are countless articles, books, videos, and webinars about the importance of trust when selling professional services. You might think, “OK, OK—I get it. I need to get buyers to trust me.” But are you doing what it takes to establish that trust? Do you really understand what can happen if you don’t have a buyer’s trust? You could see a sale slip away even when you think you’re doing everything right.

That’s exactly what Colleen Francis was seeing when she wrote her article, The Sale That Slipped Away: What Went Wrong? The thing that went wrong is sellers pushed too hard—they oversold their service. And by doing so, they raised doubt in the buyers’ minds. They made them question whether they were genuine and trustworthy.

Charles H. Green, one of the masters of establishing trust in business relationships, has developed a plan to help you increase your business’s trust. In his article, 3 Strategies for Increasing Your Business’s Trust he says there are three dimensions by which you should measure your business’s performance on trust: Are your people trustworthy? Does your organization promote trustworthiness? Do you trust others appropriately? If you want to increase your business’s trust, you must have a strategy for all three.

In this day and age when people have little trust for most things—the government, Wall Street, big banks, car makers, Facebook, etc.—firms must show that they’re trustworthy and perform amazing work that keeps clients coming back for more. It isn’t enough to simply outline your services.

Change is Needed

Firms must also realize that a couple rainmakers are not enough to help a firm grow or even survive, says Lisa Nirell in her podcast interview, What Firms Must Do to Achieve Sustainable Growth. A firm’s success depends on everyone in the organization working together to attract and retain clients, and you need a plan for doing that.

Marketing plays a key role in that plan. Increasingly firms are turning to inbound marketing tactics such as blogs, search engine optimization, and social networks. One attraction is the lower cost per lead compared with outbound marketing tactics. But with so much online activity from firms, you must develop a plan that helps you stand out and you must test various tactics, says Jasmine Sandler in her article, The Secret to Online Marketing Success.

Firms are also thinking creatively when it comes to networking to develop new business partners and generate referrals. Doing so has become a necessity when traditional golf games and mixers fail to produce results. CPA firm Piercy Bowler Taylor & Kern followed this path and created Table for Four marketing lunches. The lunches were a big success, immediately leading to referrals and a six-figure deal. And what helps you get referrals? Trust. The events gave the firm’s partners an opportunity to develop relationships and build trust.

So, what are you doing to build your business’s trust?

Did you know search engine marketing matters to professional services firms more than ever today? Even if you rely on referrals for new business, your prospective buyers are visiting your website before deciding to engage in an initial discussion with you. According to our research, How Clients Buy Professional Services, 80% of buyers typically visit a service provider’s website before buying. And, as Mike Cooch said in a recent RainToday webinar, Search Engine Marketing 101 for Professional Services, “If you’re not marketing online, you’re not marketing.”

But getting started with search marketing can be overwhelming. How do you know the keywords buyers use to search for your services? How can you beat out large companies with well-known brands and big budgets that top the search rankings? How do you get people to read and link to your thought-leading content?

Search Engine Marketing Tools and Resources

To help you get started with your search engine marketing efforts, Mike shared his favorite tools and resources:

Google Analytics: This web analytic tool allows you to track how visitors get to your site and what they do once they arrive. In search engine marketing, data is everything. Google Analytics allows you to see what people are responding to and where visitors spend their time.

Google Alerts: This tool allows you to monitor conversations on specific topics that are happening on the web. You simply create a list of keywords such as your company name, keywords related to your services, your name, and the competition. Then anytime these words are used online, you receive an email with a link to that online appearance. This allows you to stay on top of who’s talking about you and your company, monitor what your competitors are doing, and see who is talking about important topics in your space. It gives you the opportunity to respond and join the conversation.

Google Reader: As a professional services provider, you’re expected to be an expert. But it’s hard to stay on top of all the current trends. Google Reader allows you to subscribe to all your favorite sources of information and collect them in one place. You can quickly and easily keep up with what’s new in your industry. It also allows you to share the content with others through Twitter and commenting.

Twitter: Twitter remains a controversial and misunderstood tool among some B2B marketers. Many professionals dismiss it right out of the gate. At the same time, more and more people are signing on to Twitter and seeing it as a good source for quick bites of information. Twitter is a great tool in your search engine marketing arsenal, as it is a quick and easy way to send people to your thought-leading content. You can link to blog posts, articles, white papers, and presentations. It’s one way of letting your audience know you’re on top of all that’s going on in your industry, and it drives traffic and links to your website.

Facebook: While Facebook started out as a college thing, it’s now taking over the online world. It has grown amazingly fast—professionals, businesses, and colleagues (and even my mother!) are now on Facebook and use it on a regular basis. Don’t write it off as a thing for college students—there are many businesses with thriving Facebook fan pages these days.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is probably the most common social media tool used by professional services providers. It is also one of the least optimized. Too many professionals (and I’m a victim of this) create their LinkedIn profile and forget it’s even there. Years go by without any updates. LinkedIn is not a one-and-done tool. Use it regularly to promote new content and events. Use it to find prospects and seek recommendations and endorsement. There is more power to LinkedIn than simply posting your resume online.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool: This free tool from Google allows you to identify keywords for your search engine marketing campaigns. You just type in the keywords you think your audience is searching for, and it will show you how many people are searching using those terms along with suggestions for other relevant keywords. This allows you to quickly and easily determine which keywords prospects use to find services and content like yours.

Google Local Business Center: Whether your business is primarily local, national, or international, Mike recommends getting listed in the local search directory. You can compete against larger brands with bigger marketing budgets and develop more relevant ads. It’s a great tactic many companies have not taken advantage of yet.

To claim your spot, visit the local business center and search to see if you’re already in the database. If you are, you can claim your listing and update it. If you don’t find your business, there’s an option to submit your information to the database. For the best results, tailor your message to the local audience.  For example, Mike’s company, Everon Technology Services, has offices in Boston and Denver. For the company’s Boston listing they use a “Wicked Smaht” headline, and for Denver they include pictures of mountains on the landing page. Each of those speaks specifically to the local audience.

Search engine marketing is no longer just about loading pages with keywords and trying to get inbound links to your site. Google has gotten more sophisticated and rewards those who publish relevant content and join the conversation. These tools and resources will help you get started, but you’ll still need to do the work to make your firm and your content valuable to people.

Are you doing enough to stand out from the crowd? (Photo by talk2frank)

Over the past few years, a lot has changed with direct email. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 laid out enforceable rules for content, sending email, and unsubscribing from lists; more lists became available for purchase; and email became the marketing tool of choice for many firms.

One thing that hasn’t changed, notes Eric Rudolf, is the quality of email. Businesses continue to make the same direct email mistakes that they were making a decade ago, he says in this week’s article, 5 Rules for an Effective Direct Email Marketing Campaign. They write bad subject lines, don’t put the important information in effective places, and bombard subscribers with too many email messages—among other things. All of those factors lead to receivers automatically deleting email, not to mention wasted time and money.

Email done well can be an effective tool for nurturing leads. You can update prospects with information about your services and send prospects articles and other resources to help them with issues they’re dealing with. But the most important things you need when nurturing leads and trying to turn prospects into clients is patience and persistence.

You must be willing to pursue the relationship; do not give up easily, says Peter Bregman in his article, The Key to Becoming a Sales Star (It May Surprise You). Prospects push back, cancel meetings, and reject proposals. The key is to stay the course and continue to reach out to them. The more you do it—just like anything in life—the better you will get.

Don’t Push

Bregman’s advice is similar to what Jill Konrath advises new sellers in her article, Sales Basics: Top 5 Tips for New Sellers, particularly her tip to slow down to speed up sales. Do not be too eager to close sales quickly, for if you try to rush things, your prospects will become more resistant. “When I learned to slow down, parcel information out over multiple meetings, and simply advance the sales process one step at a time, suddenly my sales increased,” Konrath says.

You can speed up the sales cycle slightly with effective search engine marketing, points out Mike Cooch in his podcast interview, How Search Engine Marketing Can Improve the Sales Cycle. That’s because when you do that well, you don’t have to take as much time to educate prospects about the services you offer or sometimes even what it’s like to work with you. Prospects already have that information. When you have a strong online presence that includes quality content (articles, podcasts, and video), case studies, descriptions of services, social media, and paid search engine ads, prospects are prepared to talk about the details of how you can help them, Cooch says.

In fact, those are many of the things buyers look for on a firm’s website, according to a recent RainToday survey. They want the staples, but you need to give them the extras if you want to stand out.

You can also take some of the content on your website and create booklets or downloadable PDF documents with them. Nancy Juetten, founder of Main Street Media, did that, and her booklets quickly became a hit, as she says in this week’s case study, PR Maven Turns Free Services into a Six-Figure Business. The booklets feature a collection of tips and are sold during her speaking engagements. Those who buy the booklets, she says, often engage her services.

Recognizing that people learn in different ways, Juetten also reaches out to people using various media. She created audio files and a live workshop, and she launched a blog. As a result of these efforts, Main Street Media has become a six-figure firm and brought in as much revenue in 2009 as it did in 2008, a time when many firms saw revenue drop. It clearly found a way to stand out in an ever-growing crowd.

Blogging is no longer optional

There was a time not very long ago when a business blog was optional.

My, how times have changed.

I’d argue a blog is no longer optional for any B2B professional services firm; it’s a must-have. Buyers are increasingly relying on Internet search to identify and learn more about firms with which they wish to do business. And a blog plays a substantial role in firms being found online by these buyers.

If you stick with it, a business blog can deliver big results. In Technorati’s 2009 State of the Blogosphere Report, 71% of respondents who blog for business reported they increased their visibility within their industries through their blogs, and 56% indicated their blog helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within their industry.

There are many success stories of professional services firms that have successfully leveraged their blogs for media coverage, business development, and client relations. For two examples, check out these case studies published on RainToday.com (if you’re not a member, the free trial gives you access to download): FirstRain’s Market Mine blog case study and Harris & Moure’s ChinaLawBlog’s case study.

Still wondering what a blog can do for your services firm?

Here are 5 benefits your firm can realize from blogging:

1. Extend your network. A blog is great way to develop relationships—it allows you to share your persona  (firm leaders, associates) with an audience of clients and prospects and helps to build trust.
2. Establish two-way communication with prospects and influencers. With commenting enabled, you leave a door open for prospects, colleagues, reporters, analysts, and others to engage with you in a “safe” environment (i.e., on their terms).
3. Expand your firm’s reach and strengthen your brand.
4. Gain a vehicle to publish and distribute thought leadership.
5. Increase website traffic. Blog content (when optimized for search engines) can drive traffic to your firm’s website and increase its search engine ranking.

Make Blogs Part of Your Internet Marketing Strategy Firms must pull prospects toward them with inbound marketing tactics, says Brian Halligan, co-author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. > Listen to “Internet Marketing Strategies Professional Services Must Adopt”

And, if those benefits aren’t enough to persuade you, Google’s recent move (12/7/09) incorporating real-time updates into search results adds another compelling reason to push your blogging initiative forward. As Shel Holtz explains on his blog:

As of Monday, Google began incorporating real-time updates into its search engine results pages (SERPs). Within seconds of posting, tweets, Facebook status updates, blog posts, and updates from news sources will be indexed by Google and made available for searches. This change has been anticipated ever since Google and Twitter announced the relationship, but it’s unlikely that most organizations have considered the implications or made adjustments to their SEO efforts.

Companies that have delayed or rejected social media nevertheless invest resources in search engine optimization (SEO). After all, we function in an era of what one writer called “survival of the optimized.” With luck, nobody reading this blog needs to be convinced of the importance of search.

Now, with real-time updates mingling with search results from static pages, if your organization doesn’t have a presence, you’ll be crowded out of the first page of results by those who do.

If your professional services firm isn’t blogging yet, take a look at what other service firms are doing. These can give you some ideas on how you can approach implementing a blog for your firm.

Some professional services blogs worth checking out:

• Accenture (consulting)
• Edelman’s Authenticities (PR)
• Foley Hoag (law): http://www.lawandenvironment.com, http://www.emergingenterprisecenterblog.com, http://www.massachusettsnoncompetelaw.com
• Forrester Research (market research)
• LexBlog (law)
• PriceWaterhouseCoopers (accounting)

Maintaining a blog remains a major time commitment; it certainly is not a silver bullet. When you launch a blog—beyond writing—you should also commit to participate in the blogosphere by reading and commenting on other blogs in your niche and provide marketing support (through linking, keyword optimization, and so forth) for your blog.

But, it’s a commitment you need to make, if you want your B2B services firm to thrive. If you’re not publishing a blog yet—what’s holding you back?