Many professional service firm employees struggle when their responsibilities are expanded to include marketing and sales activities. Here are three common mistakes that may be holding your associates back:
1. Share your marketing plan early and often. – I believe you should share your marketing strategy, your Ideal Client Profile and your Core Message, before hiring a new associate. Your marketing strategy outlines who you serve and how you do it differently than everyone else who claims to do what you do. Hiring the right people plays a big part in fulfilling the expectations you set via marketing.
One of the benefits of having a written marketing plan is the ability to share it with others. We can’t get everyone singing from the same hymnal if the hymnal only exists in the partners’ heads.
2. If you still use timesheets, teach (and reward) the importance of non-billable hours. The focus on billable hours, particularly for new and young associates, can be detrimental to a firm’s long term success. We can talk until we are blue in the face about “marketing is everyone’s job” or “it’s all about the relationship”, but, if at the end of the day the measuring stick is billable hours, then why wouldn’t an associate stay behind a desk, nose to the grindstone?
3. Stop trying to teach associates how to sell benefits to clients. Trying to teach selling benefits puts the focus on the firm when it should be on the needs of the client. Teach active listening. Practice asking open ended questions. Teach the importance of asking follow up questions in order to get to the root of the issue. Learning to listen, probe, diagnose, and share third party stories are the keys to selling professional services.
