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Old English Sheepdogs line up at the 2008 Westminster Dog Show. Big cuddly dogs. How do they see? How they must shed! Spoken from a woman who owns a german shepherd - a breed that sheds 365 days a year. Credit: Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse. Getty Images.
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You and the firm's leadership team should have brainstormed a plan of action. Now is the time to organize to put that plan of action into action.
Focus on a bottom-up strategy, meaning get the junior folks involved and contributing ideas. You've got to have everyone involved in the effort and give people the opportunity to be a part of the plan.
Make sure your industry teams are functioning properly. Who is paying attention to the different service lines? Do people feel responsible for revenue? If not, organize it such that they do.
At Mercer Capital, we have four service groups which are charged with driving revenue for their service line. We have industry teams charged with creating opportunities for the firm in those industry niches. All of our financial analysts are involved. We're all attempting to pull in the same direction.
Admittedly, these efforts are firm-wide efforts. That's okay. Face-to-face business development is part of the strategy and we'll talk about that in a future post. Yet, the firm as a whole has to be ready to move.
How does this organization start? I would suggest that you, as the marketing director, need to work with the managing partner to make it happen. If the managing partner isn't moving, find a champion on the leadership team and win him/her to your side. Sometimes the managing partner isn't moving because they are afraid. See Part 1 of this series. Remember that action creates momentum. Momentum creates opportunity. Opportunity offers the chance for success. When faced with this dilemma in 2001, I was the one who first took action and our leadership team responded. I say that not to toot my own horn but to tell you that it can be done because I've done it.
Begin today to get everyone involved. Organize to act. Then act!
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Eva Lang, aka BV Girl, is now blogging at AccountingWeb.com. For all things business valuation, make certain you visit her blog and visit often.
For those few of you out there who don't know Eva, she has been blogging on business valuation topics since 2002. A member of the AICPA Business Valuation Hall of Fame, Eva discusses hot topics, practice management concerns, and technology issues that affect business valuation and litigation support practices. Her book, "The Best Websites for Financial Professionals," established her reputation as a scout for cool internet sites and search tools to help the CPA. Eva's day job is managing the Financial Consulting group, the largest organization of business valuation firms in North America.
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Check out Suzanne Lowe's most recent post entitled "Hiring fee-earners who WANT to Market and Sell." She posts the findings from the first of four mini-surveys dedicated to her upcoming book, The Integration Imperative. Those findings are available in pdf format here. Check out the post and give her your feedback.
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Take Action. Don't be Afraid.
When faced with the uncertain, most people become afraid. That fear causes them to be hesitant or even paralyzed. This is the first step towards failure.
Marketing directors - don't allow yourself or your firm's leadership team to be paralyzed with fear. Take action and take it NOW.
The first action I would suggest is to gather the firm's leaders together to brainstorm a plan of action. Hopefully your CEO or managing partner has already done this, but if not, you do it. I believe the primary role of every marketing director is to make sure the phone is ringing, so if a fee-earner thinks you're overstepping your bounds, remind them of what your purpose is.
Focus the group on identifying 3 to 5 things that are vital to do in the short-term and 3 things that are vital in the long-term.
Don't be afraid and don't let your firm be afraid. Action alleviates fear. Action creates momentum. Momentum creates opportunity. Opportunity offers the chance for success.
Don't wait. If you haven't already, now is the time to take action.
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According to the February 4th issue of Advertising Age, consumer product giants P&G, Colgate-Palmolive, Kraft Foods, and Kellogg are all boosting (or have at least maintained) their marketing budgets. This even as they are cutting costs elsewhere due to the slowing economy.
So what can a small CPA firm or regional law firm or even a national business valuation firm learn from the likes of P&G? One thing:
In a slowing economy, it's time to increase your marketing budget ...
IF (and this is from "the book of Barbara") ...
You are focused like a laser on those activities that make the phone ring.
Now is NOT the time to pull back in your marketing expenditures and activities. Now is the time to get what I term "thoughtfully agressive" which is defined as taking time to identify those 3 - 5 marketing efforts that are most important to making the phone ring with the type of business you want and then being fearless in approaching the market to get that business.
What some see as a threat, others see as an opportunity. I believe the impending (or current?) recession is an opportunity. Do you?
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