As a provider of professional services, you spend time trying to generate referrals from customers and strategic partners. You may even have a referral plan. But do you have a plan in place for turning away business? Sounds crazy, I know, But we are all guilty of...
When it come to improving your business building efforts, it's important to know if you have a sales problem or a marketing problem. Sales and marketing are often lumped together, but they require different skill sets and tools in order to be effective. Below are some...
This is the last post in this series about marketing for the newly promoted. Here is what we have covered so far: How to talk about what you do Understanding what your customer really buys Understanding your customers buying process Cross selling – spotting other...
Sales and marketing are often lumped together. This is easy to when marketing and selling professional services because both roles are often assigned to the same person. Sales and marketing are different roles, both with different goals, and requiring different skill...
Why would a series of posts about marketing for the newly promoted include a discussion about turning away business? Mostly because it’s one of those things that everyone seems to learn the hard way. You are probably going to prefer to learn it the hard way yourself,...
As professional service providers, most of our new business probably (should?) comes from our existing customers. Whether you call it cross-selling, up-selling, or anything else, being able to identify additional needs and sell services to meet those needs is an...
Do you understand the process your customers go through when making a purchasing decision? For most of our customers, buying professional services is process, not an event. Therefore, it makes sense that we have marketing and selling processes that match their buying...
Yesterday, I posted about talking about what you do. An important part of talking about what you do, and marketing your services in general, is understanding what your customer is really buying. People don’t want to buy insurance. They don’t want to buy legal or...
I think everyone, newly promoted or not, struggles with this one at some point in their career. How do we talk about what we do and talk about it without boring ourselves and everyone around us to tears. The default, of course, is to fall back on your title – I’m a...
Last week I posted a little about using personas as a tool for marketing your professional service firm. I mentioned that I first ran into personas in the software development world. Today I thought I would share a lesson that took me a little while to learn back...