Some of the Most Common Client Acquisition Mistakes in Management Consulting Firms

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

1. Advertising is just a euphemism for flushing money down in the toilet. There is nothing wrong with advertising as a process. However, if you have no earthly idea of how to write advertising copy, how to negotiate deals for ads and how to position your ad in a publication, then it is really a waste of money and a grossly overlooked opportunity. Just because you cannot drive, you cannot say that having a car is a stupid idea.

2. Everybody knows us, so we can save our marketing budget. It is the same as saying that I have just shaved, so from now on I can save my money I spend on shaving tackle. Everybody knows Microsoft, KPMG, IBM, etc., but they still do marketing on an ongoing basis. How known is your firm in comparison to them?

3. Our content professionals do marketing as well. They can only go and sell solutions to prospective clients your practice development people have already identified. There is an incubation time between first contact and signed contract. During this incubation time marketing people must do the courting in various forms - newsletters, informative website, educational seminars - and your professionals only come into the equation after certain prospective clients indicated their interest and buying intention to your marketing people.

4. Direct mail is just junk mail. It depends on the sender. If you send - for you regard your offer as - junk, then it is junk mail. There is no doubt about it. If you send a unique value proposition, then it is not junk. Not everyone will respond to it, but it is not junk. It is up to you if you send trash or treasure. Again, just because you do not know how to conduct affective direct mail campaigns, and do not know how to write copy, the method itself is still valid. The fact is that good mail gets opened, read and responded to. Address one of your direct mail packages to yourself and see how you respond. You may be shocked.

5. Relying on word of mouth only. Imagine you want to date, but instead of going out and making connections yourself, you rely on your previous dates to introduce you to new dates. So a date from 15 years ago introduces you to a friend of hers, saying "You must meet this guy. He is the best-looking dude you’ll ever meet". But by now you have gained an extra 50 pounds, and your hair is thinning big time.

So, you meet and you become an instant turn-off. In business someone can say, "She is an amazing bookkeeper, and her rates are only $45 per hour." But by now - 15 years later - you are a chartered accountant, charging $220 per hour.

None of those word of mouth people will do business with you due to the shock your fees cause. Word of mouth is only one component of your marketing. Why are you making other people responsible for your business success? Why do you ever want to depend on other people’s opinions of you?

6. The media pays no attention to us. It depends on the topic. Just read the "news" section in most firms websites. What is that It is all self-aggrandisement. Would you want to read about other people’s drumming on their on chests shouting "We are the best, we are nicest?" Than what makes you think anyone wants to read your bragging about who you are and what you do? There are many things in any company that is relevant to its target market and could be published an newspapers. But looking at things from the same perspective always produces the same results.

7. We are just a small firm. Marketing is only for large companies. Once large companies started small and marketed well, so they could sell enough to become large companies. Marketing a business function, just like accounting and cleaning the toilets in the premises. These functions have nothing to do with the size of the company. They just must be done. If you are still not convinced, read this.

8. For our clients price is the most important issue. It is if this is what your marketing messages and your people communicate, then your market positions you accordingly. If you promote low price, you get judged on price and eventually may well die on price. If you promote value, then it is value that will position you in your industry. Studies indicate that about 6% of all lost sales are lost on price. And that is the company’s fault, not the buyer’s. It is the result of miseducating buyers. Smart buyers know they get what they pay for.

9. Our sales are growing. Why to waste money in marketing? Sales are for now. Marketing is basically investing in the future, making sure that sales keep growing. Marketing today will create the steady stream of prospective clients who will become paying clients tomorrow. In selling professional services, the buying cycle can be fairly long, so it is important to do marketing on an ongoing basis.

10. We know where our potential clients are. Marketing must be 100% certain about who exactly potential clients are. However, as the market changes, it is important to keep pace with that change, which only very few companies do.

Marketing Quotations

Peter Drucker (In his 1954 book The Practice of Management): "Marketing is the distinguishing unique function of the business. A business is set apart from all other human organisations by its marketing activities. Any organisation that fulfills its purpose through marketing is a business, and any organisation where marketing is absent or incidental is not a business, and shouldn't be run as such."

Peter Drucker: "Because its purpose is to create a client, the business has two - and only two - functions... Marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results, all the rest are costs..."

Jay Abraham: "Marketing is nothing more than educating your prospects and clients to understand, appreciate and desire the self-serving benefits, advantages and results of your services to them, and wanting to have those results for themselves, because they trust you as a purveyor of it."

United Kingdom Chartered Institute of Marketing: "Marketing is the management process which identifies, anticipates and supplies customer requirements efficiently and profitably."

World Marketing Association: "Marketing is the core business philosophy which directs the processes of identifying and fulfilling the needs of individuals and organizations through exchanges which create superior value for all parties."

Peter Drucker: "Foreign managers take marketing seriously. In most American companies marketing still means no more than systematic selling. Foreigners today have absorbed more fully the true meaning of marketing: Showing what is value of the customer."

American Marketing Association: "Marketing is a process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives."

Tom St. Louis: "Marketing is communicating value."

Robert G. Allen: "Marketing is about setting up automatic, repeatable systems, that create the environment where people want to buy from you, instead of you having to sell.""

Jonar Nader: "Marketing is engineering the future."

Tom Peters: "Without marketing you are nothing."

Copyright Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan. All rights reserved. You are free to use this article in whole or in part. One favour though: Can I ask you to you include complete attribution, including a live website link. Also, can you please let me know where you plan to publish the article.

The attribution: This article was written by Organisational Provocateur, Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan of Dynamic Innovations Squad, a firm specialising in helping consulting firms to sell their expertise at the highest margins. Get Tom's free Practice Management Black Paper when you sign up for his monthly newsletter, Commando Consulting: Lessons And Practices From The Ultimate Professional Service Firm, The Military. Visit Tom's website at http://www.di-squad.com.

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