CREATING THE B2B CUSTOMER

Alan/Anthony, Inc. -  September2004

Subtle, Tactful and Persistent:
Marketing Professional Services

If you were looking for a law firm to represent you, would your first choice be an ambulance chaser? Probably not.  You expect professional service companies to answer to a higher standard than most B2B service providers.  There is a greater level of trust required between the buyer and seller of a legal, medical, engineering or consultative service.  Lives may be on the line, or at least quality of life or business or financial success.    

But professional service firms need to create customers like any other business.  The difference is that the usual rules of customer creation cannot be applied in cookie-cutter fashion to meet their needs.  The professionals we know struggle to find ways to sell without selling and to get their name out there in a way that does not offend the sensibilities of their prospective clients.    

It Pays Not to Advertise

In our book B2B Without the BS (available from Amazon.com), we argue that traditional advertising is both expensive and indirect as a means to reach potential clients, and that this makes it a poor fit for most B2B markets.  This can be particularly true of professional service firms, where there is the added danger of offending the people you are trying to persuade.  For this reason, we typically advise against advertising and recommend instead the use of marketing tactics that have three things in common.  They are subtle, tactful and persistent.

Subtle

We live in shrill times.  But have you ever noticed that companies with a real ability to deliver are frequently understated in presenting themselves?  An understated approach feels comfortable to many professional service firms - but all too often, they have been led to believe that subtlety is the enemy of success in sales and marketing.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The quiet competence that we associate with the best in professional services is precisely the image that should drive their approach to customer creation.  A good example is found in Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, a New York City law firm, where partners write articles that appear in the trade press of the industries they serve.  Well-written, clear and insightful, the articles create a positive public identity for the partners, and the partners are able to capitalize on this when they meet prospective clients at industry events or in committee meetings of industry associations.   

Tactful

The traditional approach to marketing and sales assumes that the market is massive and anonymous.  But for most professional service firms, whether they sell to businesses or consumers, the market is actually fairly small and intimate, consisting of a few thousand buyers at most.  Those buyers frequently know each other.  Word-of-mouth is powerful.  In this environment, tact is absolutely required.  Since we will not be advertising to this market , our marketing will focus on leveraging existing contacts and making word-of-mouth work for us.  A heavy-handed approach is the shortest route to failure.  For example, in a recent campaign conducted for Progressive Medical Associates, a nuclear cardiology group, we targeted referring physicians.  This is a strictly limited audience of professional colleagues.  It would have been unthinkable to hit them hard with a marketing campaign.  Instead, we adopted a collegial tone, presented information and invited their interest, and chose forms of communication that conveyed respect for the intelligence of the readers and the time pressure under which they work.    

Persistent

Some rules in B2B marketing never change.  One is the absolute demand for persistent effort.   Since we cannot be loud or pushy, we must deliver our message many times to be noticed.  A consistent effort also makes a good impression, because consistency is a prerequisite for the creation of trust.  Take EuroConsult, a European consulting company serving the satellite industry, which offers an excellent example.  Each year, EuroConsult produces a conference that brings together the major financial professionals in the industry.  The company keeps its conference content and "production values" at a senior level and never appears overtly commercial.  By combining persistent effort with subtlety and tact, it creates an experience that brings attendees back again and again - and generates consulting contracts and research sales for the company in the process.   

Tools

We know many strategies, tactics, styles, programs and techniques for subtle, tactful and persistent marketing of professional services. They evolve based on the personality of the company and the characteristics of the target audiences. Some frequently-used tools include:

NEWS BRIEFS

April	Alan/Anthony senior partner Louis Zacharilla gave the Keynote address at the annual Smart City Summit in Ottawa, Canadaon April 27, 2004.
May	Senior partner Lou Zacharilla appeared on Business Technology Insider radio, Spokane, Washington, May 21, 2004.
June	An article by senior partner Robert Bell, A Business of Niches, appeared in the June 21st issue of Satellite News.
	Alan/Anthony produced the annual Intelligent Communities Conference and Awards Ceremony in New York, hosted by the NYC Economic Development Corporation in association with the Intelligent Community Forum. The oversubscribed event, held on June 10-11 at the NY Marriott Financial Center in Lower Manhattan, brought together over 200 public and private-sector leaders from around the world to discuss the role of broadband communications on economic growth. Among the featured speakers were - James Balsilie, Chairman, Research in Motion (creator of the BlackBerry) Gino Menchini, New York City's Commissioner of Information Technology & Telecommunications Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project Sara McCue, Senior Partner, ICT Partnerships, World Bank Anthony DiMaso, Vice President, Strategy & Development, Verizon John Neeley, CEO, iDirect Robert Mavretich, CEO and Co-Founder, OpenAccess
July	On behalf of the Immersion Lab, senior partner Louis Zacharilla advised a delegation of senior executives from Standard Bank of South Africa, known for leadership and innovation in marketing in that nation, on aspects of customer creation and sales development that focused on developing primary relationships with customers and customer prospects.

B2B Without the BS by Alan/Anthony's senior partners Robert Bell and Louis Zacharilla is a frank, fast-reading guide to marketing strategy, marketing tactics and sales management in the unique B2B space. It starts with the idea that most of the marketing and sales rules we learn in classes or from colleagues are based on selling to consumers. The B2B world turns this on its head - which means that too many B2B products and services go to market the wrong way, waste money and fail to achieve their true potential. B2B Without the BS is available through the Alan/Anthony Web site or directly from Amazon.com.

B 2 B C U S T O M E R C R E A T I O N

For more information on effective B2B sales and marketing, contact Alan/Anthony at lzacharilla@alananthony.com or call 212-825-1582 ext 12. Complete information on Alan/Anthony's services is available at www.alananthony.co

You are receiving a free subscription to Creating the B2B Customer from Alan/Anthony, Inc. To unsubscribe, click here to open a pre-addressed email message to us.