Are you tracking down the right leads for your firm? (Photo by Borghetti)
Leads—they’re always important and good ones are often elusive. Professional services firms have a variety of strategies in their arsenal for generating them, but according to research from The Shattuck Group five are most preferred. In the podcast, Preferred Lead Generation Tactics for Professional Services, Randy Shattuck says email marketing rises to the top as the most preferred tactic, followed closely by thought leadership.
All of the techniques focus on pulling prospects and leads to you, Shattuck says. And to ensure you’re pulling the right people, you have to first identify them and target your efforts toward them. A general blanket email blast will not give you the results or the clients you want, stresses C.J. Hayden. “The universe is simply too big to market effectively to everyone in it,” she says in her article, Do You Know Who Your Clients Are?
When you choose a target market, you can get to know that market better, position yourself in the marketplace as a specialist, save money and time, and attract clients to you. When your client definition is too general, your client universe remains overly large and your efforts and message will be diffused.
Lack of focus is just one reason why salespeople fail, says Colleen Stanley in her article, Top 9 Reasons Why Salespeople Fail.
“A poor producer can work very hard. Lack of sales isn’t from lack of effort; it’s that the effort is focused on the wrong prospect, activity, and partnerships,” she says. “Top producers have clearly identified their ideal client and have built a strategy around meeting, influencing, and creating value for that specific client. They are very clear on to whom they will sell and what they will sell.”
Sales tools and client relationship management (CRM) go a long way toward helping salespeople focus their strategies. In fact, recent data from Aberdeen Group shows that firms that employ such sales tools sell significantly more. That’s because such technologies allows representatives to gather more information about their prospects and clients and gives them more ammunition to get the job done, according to Aberdeen’s report Sales Intelligence: Preparing for Smarter Selling.
Social Media Strategies
The Shattuck Group’s surveys did not name social media as one of the top five lead generation tactics, but several professional services firms are having success using it, including Shaev & Fleischman LLP. In Law Firm’s Blog Leads to More Clients and Coaching Opportunities, Gwen Moran writes about how Shaev & Fleischman gave up traditional high-priced marketing techniques and started writing a blog. That blog has evolved into a hub for bankruptcy advice and information that accounts for 70% of the firm’s business.
In addition, the social media success of the firm’s partner, Jay Fleischman, led to a new consulting practice. The great results the firm saw as the result of using social media tactics caused many other firms to ask how they, too, can succeed with it.
If Twitter is your social media channel of choice for marketing your firm or your expertise, there are a few rules you should follow, says Eric Rudolf in his article, Dos and Don’ts for Using Twitter to Grow Business. In this follow-up to his 5 Twitter Rules Firms Should Never Break, Eric Rudolf offer five more rules businesses should follow, including being cautious of what you tweet. Competitors are always watching, he warns.
