The New Client Imperative

Driving up in a down economy

by Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group

Driving Up in a Down Economy

“It’s just information overload,” she said, looking rather bleary-eyed. “I’ve read dozens of articles, downloaded several white papers, listened to Webinars and even attended conferences. All I want to do is execute a simple and effective business development plan that puts real deals in the sales funnel.”

As VP Business Development, she was uncertain about the strategies and tactics that were effective before the recession. Were they still the best choice? What would work in a tough economy, she wondered?

“I see you’ve made a list,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “These are the 20 best ideas I’ve found. But we don’t have the budget or resources for all of them. I have a charter to grow revenues by 50 percent in 12 to 18 months. To do this, I have to pick the right strategies. But frankly, it’s a tough call.”

What really works?

It seems I have a similar conversation almost weekly now with professional services (PS) leaders. I noted in a recent webinar that we’ve never seen this much hunger for new client acquisition among PS leaders. Unfortunately, this means more and more firms are willing to go far afield of tried and true strategies that simply work.

In my previous article, I stated that the quickest and surest path to new revenue is offering a new service to existing clients. Please carefully consider which you need more — new clients or new revenue. If new client acquisition is your goal, there are a few questions to ask yourself.

• What really works for new client acquisition?
• What will fill the sales funnel?
• What will bring you real prospects ready to engage in serious dialogue instead of just time-wasting tire-kickers?

In this article, I’ll deliver insights into the top tactics that hundreds of PS firms are using right now to grow their revenue.

The top five tactics

To understand what’s working for client acquisition, my firm has conducted several surveys over the past few months, all of them after the onset of the recession. We polled more than 350 PS leaders at companies with a few to a few hundred staff, with top-line revenue from one million to over 100 million. We included PS firms in IT consulting, software as a service, business consulting, financial services, real estate, law, engineering and a few others.

Across these surveys, a handful of tactics emerge as the preferred means for filling the sales funnel — no matter the company size or industry vertical:

1. Email marketing: 77.9 percent
2. Thought leadership: 72.1 percent
3. Public speaking: 66.2 percent
4. Search-engine marketing: 65.6 percent
5. Webinars: 58 percent

What does this tell us? These tactics work. These are the tried and true tactics that PS leaders prefer — to help them grow their businesses — even through the recession. In fact, nearly 50 percent of the firms we polled told us that their top line revenue actually grew in 2009.

Is your firm already using these tactics? Are you using them well? Have you mastered them? If not, then I believe you should focus here first.

There are other tactics, whether traditional or new, that are fancier, riskier and more management intensive. These showed up in our surveys, too, but with lower levels of preference:

• Social media networks: 42.1 percent
• Online video/podcasts: 41.9 percent
• Telemarketing: 33.8 percent
• Blogging: 31.7 percent
• Direct mail: 30.8 percent
• Trade ads: 26.7 percent
• Print newsletters: 13.5 percent

To help you realize the full potential of the top five tactics, let’s review why they are effective.

Pull versus push

The place to start is not with the tactics. The tactics themselves are meaningless, unless part of a larger strategy to pull ideal clients into buying cycles. I say “pull” because it works so much better than “push.” Pull is about enticing ideal clients to look at your brand and services by offering them something of value that they deeply care about. More often than not, that “something” is an idea or set of ideas to help them solve a challenge or realize an opportunity that matters greatly to them. Push is about telling the market who you are and what you do.

Note that the top five tactics are predicated on pull, not push. If you are emailing white paper offers, speaking to audiences at live events or Webinars about topics that matter to them, and utilizing search key-words that resonate with ideal clients, you are likely to get a lot of attention. But if you’re just advertising your brand name, the market may ignore you.

The term “ideal client” is a crucial one. An ideal client is an organization that your firm is ideally suited to serve, where you make a healthy profit from the relationship. Ideal clients truly need and want your services and pull you through the buying cycle, instead of you pushing them. To learn more about ideal clients and pull marketing, download the white paper called Five Strategies To Acquire New Ideal Clients In A Tough Economy.

Pulling ideal clients into the B2B buying cycle

The aim of the top five tactics is to give ideal prospects a compelling reason to enter the business-to-business (B2B) buying cycle with your firm. Remember that most organizations already have a budget and want to spend it. They want to enter the cycle and realize results. To get them to open their wallet, you have to speak to the outcomes that matter to them. Unless you deeply understand your ideal clients and their desired results, doing this will be very difficult.

Almost no organization will sign an agreement without passing through some or all of the six stages of the B2B buying cycle. When I write and speak about the B2B buying cycle, some PS executives assume this means the prospective client is in control of the process, much like a request for quote (RFQ). This is not what I mean. If you leverage the top five tactics effectively, you will control the cycle. You will define success criteria and the right outcomes. You will beat competitors, charge the highest fees possible and increase profit per deal.

Not certain? A couple of years ago, we entered a buying cycle with a firm “pulled” to us through one of our thought leadership articles. I maneuvered the buying cycle, reached agreement and met their leadership team in Las Vegas for a kick-off. Their VP business development stood up and told how they searched for the right marketing partner, they found us, they compared us to two other firms, and they negotiated the best possible deal.

In secret, he told me a somewhat different story. After a couple of bad experiences, they had given up on looking for a marketing partner. When they came across my article, it spoke so clearly to their experiences and goals that it actually sparked a new buying cycle and caused them to re-allocate budget. While my firm was up against two “competitors,” they did not shape success criteria and did not win — even though we were nearly twice as expensive as them.

I hear stories like this all the time from firms that use the top five tactics effectively.

Stay tuned

Instead of spreading your efforts across numerous business development tactics that may or may not work, focus on the tried-and-true tactics. In the next issue, I’ll outline some key best practices your firm can leverage to make them really sing.

Randy Shattuck is a senior marketing executive and founder of The Shattuck Group, a full-service marketing firm that specializes in growing professional services organizations. You can reach him at randy@theshattuckgroup.com.