Ian

You bring up great points. First, none of this will work – as you point out – if you aren’t sincere and truly genuine. And I agree much of this does come from internal motivators and it is about hiring the right people and putting them in the right roles.

In fact, you may find this video of interest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y with Daniel Pink on the science of motivation. A great video that talks to your point of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Erica

Really good thinking to extend the customer retention model to prospects.

Just one point I’d kind of quibble with a bit – and it’s perhaps just the ordering.

Law #5 says “Employees do what is measured, incented, and celebrated” – so in other words you kind of have to force people to be nice to prospects. Law #6 says “You can’t fake it”.

There’s a bit of a contradiction there.

My experience is that it’s best to start by not faking it. Help your team to fall in love with your clients (and hire people of that mindset). Make sure everyone has significant interactions with clients – gets to know them personally. So when they’re “doing customer service” they understand the real people behind the calls and the emails.

Work to break down the psychological barriers people have over marketing and business development. get them to see it’s not painful, it works in the clients’ interests as well as the firms, and that they do have the skills to do it.

With a foundation culture that is marketing and client-oriented, then you can introduce measurement to make sure you’re on track and to guide you on areas for improvement.

Incentives for being marketing or client-oriented? In my experience they don’t really work. You need people to be intrinsically motivated to be marketing and client focused. They need to believe that (a) marketing and client focus is inherently a good thing and (b) it supports their and the firms overall goals. Extrinsic incentives can easily “crowd out” their internal motivators and get them focused on satisficing -just achieving specific targets for the rewards involved.

At, the end of the day, they still hate marketing and don’t value client service, then forcing them to do it through incentives will drive them mad, and boy, will it show in their client and prospect interactions.

Ian

Glad you enjoyed and thank you for sharing with others.

Chris

This post was mentioned on Twitter by kimberlyjones1: Is Your Prospect Experience Costing You Sales?: Professional services marketing and selling is all about building … http://bit.ly/8Mtrri…