What's Next?

Perhaps one of the most telling characteristics of a successful business owner is the “what’s next” attitude.   The understanding that you can’t just sit back and enjoy the spurt of growth you happen to be experiencing right now; the knowledge that unless you’re always moving forward, you’ll soon be moving backward. 

So how to move forward?  Well certainly one important step is understanding how your clients’ needs are changing and figuring out what you can do to help them.  Developing the right services and knowing how to take them to the market is a challenge many firms struggle with; consider the following concrete action steps to make this challenge a little less daunting.

First step forward – needs

You have a great source of information to help you figure out what the market needs:  your clients.  And it costs nothing.  Get together with a few of your clients and ask them some questions about what challenges they’re facing, how their business is being affected, what obstacles they’re running into in dealing with the challenges, what kind of help they need, what they’re willing to invest in help, etc. 

Add to the information you get from your clients by doing secondary research:  use web sites, industry publications and conferences, social media and even your competitors to figure out what people are talking about and struggling with.

Next steps – evaluate, prioritize, focus

If more than one new service idea bubbles up from your research, you need a systematic process to narrow the list and decide which to pursue.  Factors like the level of demand within your current clients, your ability to hire the expertise you need vs. having to acquire it through a merger or strategic partnership, how easy or difficult it will be to differentiate your offering from competitors, and the long-term revenue potential all should be considered.

You’re almost there – define the service

Before you’re ready to launch a new service, help ensure your success by defining the scope of the service very specifically:

·         the process you’ll use to deliver it

·         the timing for the client, the frequency of delivery

·         the “package” you’re delivering, including the name of the service

·         key deliverables and benefits to the client,

·         pricing.

Train your staff on these elements so all know how to talk about the service in a consistent manner and those delivering the service will do so with consistent quality.

Your launch to the future – taking the service to market

Consider beta testing the service with one or two good clients to refine your scope and develop marketing messages.  When you’re ready to go to market, define the target market, develop the key messages – benefits, differentiation – create materials you need, including a testimonial from your beta test, and then get your messages to the target market.  Conversations with clients, direct marketing campaigns, seminars, webinars – there are a variety of ways to do this.  Finally, measure your results to make sure you’re reaching your sales goals and getting a positive return on your investment.

If you’d like more detail on any of these ideas, take a look at our article on this topic:  Your Future Firm Starts Now:  Success Strategies for Launching New Services.  And, if you’re interested, call us at 319-447-6400 or email info@thewhetstonegroup.com to ask for our free New Service Evaluation Checklist.

We hope it will help you answer the question “What’s Next?” and keep your firm moving forward.

Setting Realistic, Achievable Growth Goals

With summer here, many firms are planning retreats and beginning to set growth goals for next year. It's the perfect time re-think your goal-setting process. Don’t just think in terms of acquiring new clients when setting target numbers; it’s important to evaluate all factors that will contribute to your final growth goal.   

1. Average Useful Life of Clients:  From mergers and acquisitions to changes in management – there are a number of factors that will lead to lost clients.  Every client has an average useful life cycle.  If your firm’s average is ten years, that means on average your firm will lose 10% of your clients every year.  If your firm’s average useful life is 15 years, you can expect to lose 6.7% of your clients per year.
2. One-Time Projects:  You should also consider the amount of one-time project work your firm does in one year.  Typically this averages 10-20% of a firm’s total volume.
3. Net Growth:  The net growth you want to achieve this year.

After evaluating these three factors, you can determine your growth goal.   For example, if you have an average client life of 10 years, 10% of your revenue is one-time projects, and you want to grow by 10% next year, you really need to generate 30% of gross new business to achieve your 10% new growth goal.

As you can imagine, it takes a lot more activity to generate 30% gross new business than it does 10%.  So it might be helpful to break down your goal and determine exactly what you’ll need to do to realize it. 

·         How many new clients will your firm need to secure?

·         How much additional work to current clients will you need to sell?

·         How much of a price increase will you need to consider?

When you actively define you growth goals with these three components in mind you can easily assess how realistic or aggressive your goal is.  Tracking each of these on a quarterly basis will give you the ability to measure how you are doing against your overall goal.  If one of them is lagging, you can increase activity within that component or adjust to make up the difference another way.

Be realistic when setting goals.  Make sure your firm can generate enough activity -- and that you have enough money budgeted in your growth plan -- to achieve your goal.

What happens in Vegas...

...should definitely NOT stay in Vegas.

At least, when in comes to AAM/AICPA's event next week. It's the inaugural pairing of the Association for Accounting Marketing's (AAM) Annual Summit and the AICPA's PCPS Tech Conference-- and it's going to be one of the most progressive programs to hit the accounting profession in years. Hundreds of professionals will descend upon the strip next week to discover leading edge practices to bring home and grow their firms.Will you be among them? We will.

Just how much knowledge can you fit into a suitcase anyway? We'll find out next week. Hope to see you there.

Busy Season Year Round

Sometimes it's difficult to look past our own busiest times of year and think about business development. For professionals who also sell it can be one of the biggest challenges to maintaining consistent growth. But, the most successful firms are those that take their own busy times out of the equation and adopt a more year-round approach to growth. (Which, incidentally, is also usually more market focused.)

There are four main methods for prospecting. Some you can work into your schedule even when you are busy serving clients. Some you should think about for once your busiest time is through. But a mix of all should be implemented consistently to help even out the peaks and valleys of your growth results. Planning ahead helps make sure you're getting the right mix and helps you be more effective at implementation.

1. Who’s Your Friend?   You’ve just finished. or are doing a lot of work for a lot of happy clients, right?  Now is good time to call and ask for referrals.  Thank them for any referrals you receive and touch base again to let them know the outcome.  Be sure to follow-up right away with the referred company. You can do this while you're meeting with and delivering value to your clients.

2. COI Development:  Develop relationships with centers of influence or evaluate current relationships you have with COIs and see if they are willing to provide any sales leads. Get back to this activity shortly after your busy time is over.

3. Get Involved!  If you’re not already, become active in local community or industry groups.   Membership in area associations is a great networking tool. This personal marketing effort should eventually transition to sales, don’t just wait for referrals.  After you’ve established relationships ask about your prospect’s business—and how you can help. Once you've checked in and picked up with your COI relationships look to broaden your efforts with this type of activity. Most community and industry groups publish an annual calendar of activities so you can look ahead and decide the activities that best fit into your schedule.

4. Dear Prospect:  Acquire a list of companies that meet your target criteria and send a direct mail piece.  Follow-up with a phone call and set appointments with interested prospects. As long as you are willing to do the follow-up and work the sales cycle, direct marketing can often be a fairly quick and effective method for generating leads.

Use this big-picture approach to planning your prospecting activities and spend less time thinking about what you should do to grow your practice, and more time growing it!

Middle of the Funnel Marketing

Check out this interesting article about how to more effectively move opportunites from the top of your sales funnel to the bottom by employing these nurturing techniques in the middle.

A Guest Post by Alan Vitberg, Owner, VitbergLLC

Combine Telemarketing with Marketing Automation for a Powerful 1-2 New Business Punch

We’re reading and hearing more about the leadership at professional services firms saying that top line growth is their key objective for 2012. So, they’re either asking partners to take more accountability for developing relationships and working their contacts for new business opportunities, or they’re turning to inbound marketing and outbound marketing techniques like telemarketing to fill the top of the sales funnel.

But the real test of new business development not only comes at the top of the funnel, but how effectively the firm nurtures leads in the middle of the sales funnel. According to a recent study by Marketing Sherpa, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Yet, other studies like the one done by DemandGen Report show nurtured leads produce on average a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

As much as managing and niche practice partners would like to think that prospects are pacing the floor awaiting their call, the fact is that most leads acquired with top of the funnel marketing activities just aren’t sales ready. In fact, about 8 out ten prospects just aren’t ready to sign a contract after one touch, regardless of the strength of your company or personal brand. But, according to Marketo, an average of 20% of leads that are nurtured will convert to sales-ready leads within 12 months.

That’s a powerful argument for professional services firms to consider a dedicated lead nurturing program, and one of the most powerful nurturing programs you can construct will come from combining telemarketing touches with touches delivered through marketing automation technology.

Marketing automation is executed using software that reduces repetitive tasks associated with marketing processes, including customer segmentation and campaign management. One of the key benefits of automation in lead generation is the ability to set up a campaign that automatically sends messages to prospects on a regularly scheduled basis. Another key benefit is the ability of the  automation software to track responses, both at the campaign level and at a level that identifies if the prospect has engaged with the campaign by opening or clicking though a message.

To make a lead generation and nurturing campaign successful, personal need to be woven into the campaign schedule, and that’s where telemarketing can and should play an important role.  Start with a campaign plan that includes a two or more offers (i.e. whitepapers, seat at a webinar), landing pages on your web site supporting the offers, and the outbound and inbound marketing tactics you’ll use to deliver the offer. Telemarketing can play an important role in the outbound promotional components of the plan.

So here’s how a lead nurturing process can be executed by integrating automation with telemarketing:

1.       Touch 1: Prospect is driven to a landing page where they complete a form in order to get an offer (i.e. “free whitepaper”). Consider using telemarketing at this point to inform prospects of the offer and where and how they can redeem the offer.

2.       Touch 2: An automated thank you response is delivered to the prospects

3.       Touch 3: Use telemarketing to make an introductory phone call to the prospect, with the objective of exploring their issues

4.       Touch 4: 30 days later, send an automated e-mail with a case study

5.       Touch 5: 45 days later: send the prospect another offer (i.e., a webinar) that requires an action, like filling out a form again. This should be set up and automated at the beginning of the campaign and triggered by time after first contact

6.       Touch 6: Make a phone call to personally invite the prospect to redeem the offer

7.       Touch 7: 60 days later: send an automated invite to the prospect inviting them to subscribe to your blog

8.       Touch 8: 75 days later: call for an appointment

The combination of telemarketing with automated marketing touches can be a powerful combination for nurturing prospects though the sales funnel. These campaigns need to be designed and timed and fully complete even before the first outbound or inbound promotion is launched, and along the way, measuring conversion rates of leads to qualified leads to sales ready leads is a prudent step as it will provide insights as to effective techniques and approaches for future campaigns.

Alan Vitberg is owner of VitbergLLC, a marketing agency that works with professional services firms, specializing in inbound marketing, internet marketing and lead generation. He can be reached at avitberg@vitbergllc.com or at (585) 425-2552.

Celebrate!

It’s that time of year – holiday parties, events, open houses – likely you’re hosting at least one and attending a few.  And while we aren’t in favor of “commercializing” the holidays, it’s the plain truth that these events can be opportunities to interact with clients, prospects, referral sources and others who influence your success.  Here are some ideas to ensure your holiday celebrations lead to celebrations of your success in 2012:

·         Before your firm’s annual event, pull your people together and share the invitation/RSVP list.  Encourage your staff to identify who they want to make sure they speak with and to be proactive about seeking out those people at the event.

·         Remind your people not to cluster together in large groups at your event or any other.  It’s not very inviting and limits your ability to interact with others.

·         Review your firm’s 30-second speech or key branding talking points.  You and your staff will likely be meeting new people at holiday events; now is the time to build a consistent brand image for your firm so that future marketing efforts are successful. 

·         Share some ideas for how to follow up with contacts your people make during holiday events when the situation warrants follow-up.   Activities could include an invitation to an industry event, a personal note attached to an article or newsletter, a phone call to set up lunch, or simply a “nice to see you” email.

Simple Tools

Accountability.  The word alone can conjure negative feelings of “getting in trouble.”  Consequences.  Same thing.  But without accountability – and yes, maybe even consequences – business development activity in a professional services firm is sporadic and results are unpredictable.   So how can you start to integrate accountability into a culture that doesn’t historically embrace the concept?

It isn’t as hard as you might think.  Four simple tools – and how you apply them – can begin the process:

1.       Annually – set the right growth goal, determine what it will really take to reach the goal and whether that’s feasible, and determine where your growth will come from.

2.       Semi-annually – measure your billing results using the same parameters you did in setting your goal to determine if you need to step it up half way through the year and how to set your goal going forward at year-end.

3.       Quarterly – review the referrals given and received by your firm for each referral source to assess whether you’re networking with the right people and effectively implementing this valuable lead generation tactic.

4.       Monthly – analyze your sales pipeline to determine if you are generating enough leads and working opportunities to move them through the sales cycle.

Simple tools – but, like a whetstone, it’s all in how you use them that will determine your success.  Don’t just produce the reports; hold regular business development meetings with all who have responsibility for growth, ask them to report status of results and activity, and watch as eventually accountability starts to work its magic.  Activities are implemented when people said they would be, your people commit to building their skills so they can be more effective, and growth results will follow.

All from four simple tools.