My husband’s Nan lives in Lowestoft, which is just a bit too far for us to make it there and back in one day. Which means we tend to head over there a couple of times in the year, and stay over in a B&B.

Now, the proprietor of this B&B did something, which means, we will always reward them with our custom, every time we make the trip. In fact, this one thing, showed that they really got customer service in a way that a £400 a night five star hotel just didn’t.

Now, those of you who know me, or follow me on social media, will know that I am a coeliac. Hell, at times, it’s crap – but has set me a lifetime enjoyable challenge of making my own gluten and dairy free cakes and biscuits.

Whenever I stay in a hotel or B&B, I always give them advance notice of my dietary requirements. So, you could say, that each establishment starts with a level playing field. Now, this B&B owner, had exercised what I consider great customer care by checking what I liked for breakfast, and also making sure she could provide me with an evening meal I would enjoy. Whilst, this gave me great confidence in the B&B, I find that in small, well-run B&Bs I do get this high level of personal service. You could say, I have been educated to expect this level of service from a well-run B&B. The day I get this sort of service from a hotel, I’ll be incredibly surprised…

However, this wasn’t the reason we will give this B&B my lifetime loyalty. It was a plain and simple biscuit. Not just any biscuit, but one that I could eat and enjoy. Have you ever thought about the biscuits which appear on the tea tray in your bedroom? If you are lucky you may find that you get a custard cream or a bourbon, rather than the boring digestive. In fact, the £400 a night hotel I alluded too, supplied on the tea tray, 3 small custard tarts. (A delicacy of the region) However, as a coeliac, I can’t enjoy or even try the biscuits on a tea tray. Now, I’ve got used to this. After all, I can’t expect a hotelier to provide me with a biscuit I can eat with my breakfast cup of tea…

Or can I?

Actually, that’s what the B&B had done. No catering 3 pack of biscuits for me. But, a whole pack of tesco free from (gluten & dairy free) jammy dodgers. Yummy!

For under £2 this B&B has probably secured our lifetime custom and recommendation. So, how did they do this? They really put themselves in their customer’s shoes and thought of the little things, which really matter.

Are you doing this for your clients? Are you truly tailoring your service to their requirements?

Do this, and they will reward you with not just their lifetime loyalty, but a steady stream of referrals.

As I wait to catch my train into London, 3 posters caught my eye. They were all encouraging me to bake cakes to raise money for charity. Now those that know me will know that I am very partial to a bit of cake and biscuit baking. However, I am losing track of the amount of charities who are copying Macmillan ‘s very successful coffee morning campaign. When you are at a station and see three charities urging you (via a poster campaign) to do pretty much the same thing to raise funds for them, it begins to look a bit like ‘me too’ marketing.

However, let’s not be too hard on charities. After all, haven’t most professional service firms being indulging in ‘me too’ marketing for years? If you looked at the website for any top 100 law firm or top 100 accountancy firm, could you tell them apart if you stripped away the colour and logo? Isn’t this a classic example of ‘me too’ marketing?

The danger of following the herd and indulging in ‘me too’ marketing is very simple. The only thing you can compete on is price. Is there any wonder that so many firms are facing a big squeeze on their profit margins?

The current, and perhaps the biggest, challenge facing today’s professional service firms is how to become famous for something. In a marketplace which has traditionally generated most of it’s work via referrals and existing clients, this is tough. Old fashioned marketing rules state that consistency = gold standard for marketing. Consequently, fee earner’s personalities have been stifled so that anything they write or say in public needs to be sanitised by the comms department. After all, as the war advert goes, careless talk costs lives.   (Or referrals on this case)

But does careless talk really cost lives in professional marketing? Of course, I’m not talking about the gross misconduct types of careless talking. I’m talking about:

• giving your fee earners the freedom to go out and create their own personal brand to attract in work to the firm.
• injecting a little bit of entrepreneurial spirit and create service lines and client propositions which are just a little bit different to all the other firms
• educating your fee earners on how to communicate appropriately online, and encouraging them to actively blog, tweet, link and converse with their network

How is your firm doing something different? Or is it being a ‘me too’?

I recently had the delightful experience of listening to some live jazz. Now, I love live music and if it is easy listening jazz, I’m halfway to heaven.

The jazz trio actually turned out to be a jazz duo plus recorded backing music. Well, when I say jazz duo, that’s probably incorrect. The female and male singer shared the stage and backing music, but rarely worked together on a piece together. In fact the male singer, whose voice was smooth and silky, did 80% of the singing. When the two of them did sing together, it was beautiful, and the harmonies they created, enriched the experience for the audience member. However, those moments were far and few between.

This lead me to think about what often happens in a professional practice. The firm’s literature talks about one firm, just this jazz trio advertising itself as a group. (I still don’t know where the 3rd member was – perhaps he was the backing sound track?) but, does the client truly get the joined up experience from the firm? Or do they occasionally get moments of great client service when the firm’s partners remember to work together?

Look at what happens in your firm. Are the partners incentivised to work together? Or are drawings based on solely individual’s billing? Being controversial, if Partner’s drawings are almost solely determined by the size of their client portfolio, then the kind of collaborative culture, which sees Partner’s routinely referring clients across the firm, is going to struggle.

The firms which have remuneration for partners based on team, sector or service line performance, rather than an office P&L, all seem to be taking, in my opinion, great steps forward in delivering a great client service via a ‘one firm’ approach.

What are your ideas for encouraging true collaborative working across your firm?

I was talking with a partner in a mid-tier accountancy firm, and he complained to me that “if only we were better at converting the opportunities that came our way”

I think I can relate to that one. Actually, I think that pretty much every professional advisor, accountant, lawyer, coach and trainer can relate to that one.

Our conversation had been about marketing, but then, the partner said, “but isn’t getting better at converting opportunities a sales skill?”

On the surface of it, converting opportunities is a sales skill. After all, these two factors help you convert more sales:

• pre-qualifying or screening out the time-wasters and unsuitable clients before they suck up valuable time
• listening to clients and understanding their requirements so you can help them solve these with your services

However, if you get your marketing right, then it becomes so much easier to convert your clients. Because:

• only the right type of prospects approach you
• your potential clients arrive as hot prospects
• the sales process is much shorter as they are motivated to meet and buy from you

However, how much time do you as a firm invest in helping your fee earners do the following:

• help them understand the right type of client for them
• what emotional and rational problems do they solve for their clients
• educate their introducers to what is the right type of referral for them
• raise their visibility and profile in their target markets

Next time you think, we need help with our sales skills, how much time have you spent making sure you get the right opportunities through to convert?

In last week’s blog by Jon Baker he mentioned that if you stripped away the branding from most mid-tier accountancy practices websites, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them.

A bold statement, but one I agree with. After all, how many mid-tier professional practices use the corporate bingo words of:

• proactive
• partner-led
• innovative
• relationships matter

It never ceases to amaze me how many random acts of marketing will take place in a firm – but how much red tape and scrutiny happens to the firm’s training budget. If you were to think about your firm, how much marketing spend is being wasted, due to random acts of marketing? For example:

• paying for corporate entertainment, but not having a clear strategy for who needs to be invited to make the investment worthwhile?
• lavishing time and money on clients who will never be anything more than ‘small fry’?
• placing an advert in the newspaper, because it’s always worth a punt?
• not measuring any marketing campaign’s effectiveness, because (particularly with social media and networking) it’s too hard to  accurately measure?
• allowing partners and other senior fee earners to pursue pet projects, which are not core to the firm’s agreed upon strategy for growth?
• paying an external social media manager to churn out press releases and retweet news items?
• sponsoring a local sports team, because it will be good local profile for the firm?
• encouraging fee earners to go out networking to get their name out there?

Maybe I am being slightly too harsh here, but there is a huge amount of time and money being wasted in marketing budgets. Here are four remedies to stop these random acts of marketing in your firm:

1. Make each partner accountable to their marketing budget spend

It’s all too easy to spend on marketing. After all, you’ve got to invest to accumulate. That’s not the way forward. Actually, each partner needs to have a business development plan for their part of the practice, which details:

A few weeks ago Jon Baker wrote a blog about what’s hot in marketing for small accountancy practices. Jon leads our small professional practices team here at Excedia. Having read his blog post, I would argue that everything that Jon wrote in this article is just as valid for mid-tier firms. After all, it’s not only the small firms who are finding it tough to keep their best clients and attract in new, profitable clients. Here are Jon’s thoughts on what’s hot in marketing for accountancy practices:

Marketing in accountancy firms is ever more important in the wake of changes to the economy, the marketing landscape and your growth ambitions. Click here to download our free 7 new realities of marketing paper. (email required)

Which of those changes affect you the most? Maybe, if you’re lucky, it’s the ever growing number of self employed / small companies around on the landscape. If you’re an accounting practice that doesn’t benefit from that, there’s something odd!

But then, who else is hunting for these companies? In our experience, every single sole practitioner, independent firm and mid-tier firm. Pretty much everyone outside of the big 6 is chasing these businesses, plus the £1-20 million pound businesses.

This article has three clear actions for you to take, to ensure your marketing is hot enough to fuel your growth.

Clients are becoming fussier, there are new easy ways of getting our accounts done and we hear more and more from your competition. In our 7 new realities of marketing paper, you will hear how clients are being targeted by your competition, and what clients want from their professional advisor has changed. (email required)

Marketing small (and mid-tier) accountancy firms is getting harder. After all, you don’t have the luxury of clients buying you, because the FD never got told off for buying the accountancy equivalent of IBM. So, what should you concentrate on?

Excellent client service is NOT enough.

Many professionals I talk to consider excellent client service to be the best marketing weapon in their arsenal. Traditionally they’ve thought good service is all they need when marketing the small accountancy firm. It is not enough.

It is an absolute prerequisite, but it isn’t enough to get you the continuous growth you seek.

An incredibly happy client is great news, well done. But they are not an asset to your marketing plan………unless you use them in it as a matter of course.

Give excellent client service and show it off by using well placed testimonials – have you tried YouTube yet? Do you have recommendations written by your clients on LinkedIn?

Your (YO)USP

OK, so maybe you’ve read about the importance of a USP? Every time I talk to professionals in small firms they say things like

When pushed they say things like “the only real difference is us”. That is the point – the (YO)USP means you need to get that difference across to all your prospects. If you have a look at the websites of most mid-tier firms, and strip away the branding, you probably couldn’t tell one firm from another. That’s how much personality most accountancy practice websites have. So start by understanding what your personality is, then consider how to get it out there.

Content Marketing is great for your (YO)USP

Content marketing (that’s mainly blogs and especially YouTube videos) gives you a great way to provide something interesting to your prospects that also shows your personality, how you think rather than focussing on what you offer.

The more you show your prospects valuable content the more you can engage those that are most likely to do business with you. Yes, more personality (within reason) is a good thing. It’s like the debate about having a niche, far better to be brilliantly known for something than an also run in the mass market.

Remember the purpose of the video is to get your prospects or clients to get to know you. It’s no good having an actor do the video for you, you need to be in it

Social Networking

Everybody seems to be talking about Social Media, but thinking of it as social networking may help you focus on the important thing. It’s about engaging people, not thrusting adverts, or even useful content down their throats all the time.

So, is it time to think about how you can get the other partners and fee earners on board with Social Networking – one poorly fed Twitter account won’t do it.

Marketing small and mid-tier accountancy firms – 3 actions for you.

Consider carefully how you’re different to your competition and who you really want to do business with. Create your “personality” rules and clarify your niche. Your marketing team could help with this and should certainly understand the outcome.

1. Think about the biggest questions you get asked by clients. How can you answer them in short (500 ish) words? Now you have the material for your first 10 blogs! Click if you’ve ever thought “what should I write in my blog and how do I get the ideas
2. Talk about each of those questions for about 1-2 minutes, whilst recording yourself (the camera on your iphone is good enough). Now you have something you can use on YouTube. Click for tips on using YouTube for marketing your practice.
3. Review how you use of Twitter and LinkedIn. Approach them as networking sites are target specific people, engage in discussion and offer great content that may help them. Click here for more ideas about Social networking strategy.

Times are changing, are you?

Marketing accountancy firms is changing rapidly. How are you adapting your marketing? 

Written by Jon Baker The 5-50 Coach. I head up the small professional practices team at Excedia and help professionals grow their firms from 5 to 50 employees, sustainably, profitably and while they still have fun. Have you got your "next step kitbag yet"? It's stuffed with guides, reports & templates helping you grow from 5 to 50 employees. Click here for your copy.

Jon Baker, who heads up the small professional practices team for Excedia,  asks whether all professionals, such as lawyers and accountants, are coachable. 

Over to you Jon:

Can coaching solve all performance problems?

Coaching can improve performance at a personal level. It can also improve performance of a firm. There are many firms who use it extensively for just that reason. I was recently asked whether I thought that coaching could solve all performance problems and a little more specifically “are all lawyers and accountants coachable”.

They were two great questions; my answer shocked the senior partner I was talking to. I said “No”. (Jon is pretty good at being honest and occasionally shocking people!)

We carried on talking about his “are all lawyers and accountants coachable” question. The main points from the discussion were:

Are all lawyers and accountants coachable?

Some lawyers and accountants cannot be successfully coached. These tend to be those that  believe that they have no performance issues.

If they accepted that there was a performance problem, they see it as caused by everyone else. The problem is, forcing them to have coaching will not help (in fact forcing anybody to have coaching doesn’t help). If this is the case, the person concerned needs to have  a mindset shift before coaching will be of much use.

Coaching helps people to reflect on their own behaviour, to learn and grow from it. So before starting they need a desire to change their behaviour, they need to be willing to take some personal responsibility. Forcing somebody into coaching won’t help.

5 questions to tell if they’re coachable

If you are considering getting coaching for somebody then think about the following tests. I often use these five questions indicate to me if somebody is going to successfully “own” their part of the coaching process.

1. Commitment to change: The person coached will need to step outside of their comfort zone and take responsibility for their interactions with others. Individuals who don’t think they’re perfect and want to improve tend to get much better results from coaching.
2. Self awareness: Good coaching candidates tend to already have some self awareness. Developing the ability to reflect on behaviour and how it affects others (clients, team or prospects), and then acting on it, improves performance.
3. Open about themselves:  Coaching can require people to engage in topics that may be uncomfortable. These issues may be obstructing their professional development, or the growth of their firm. Successful coaching needs open, honest discussion about “what’s really going on“.
4. Open to feedback: Being willing (and able) to listen to constructive feedback without being defensive is important. Performance improves by blending feedback with personal reflections, and then acting on it. Understanding different perspectives and accepting them improves performance.
   
5. Passion to grow: I coach professionals, typically lawyers, accountants, consultants, who are looking to grow their firm/ portfolio. If they’re not looking to grow and improve performance, coaching isn’t the relevant intervention. Coaching takes highly motivated, self aware individuals to new heights. The awareness and motivation are key, not their current performance. That’s how it can totally change the fortunes of a firm, where the owner is willing.

What should you do if they’re not “coachable”?

That depends on the issues, but a range of interventions could include training on specific tasks, task management, giving specific assignments and closer management.

Maybe you need to look at specific elements of their behaviour, or give them some good feedback (here’s 7 tips to give better staff feedback). If you’d like more ideas on how to manage your team, click here for a range of free downloadable guides (email address required) .

Written by Jon Baker The 5-50 Coach. I head up the small professional practices team at Excedia and help professionals grow their firms from 5 to 50 employees, sustainably, profitably and while they still have fun. Have you got your "next step kitbag yet"? It's stuffed with guides, reports & templates helping you grow from 5 to 50 employees. Click here for your copy.

How many other professions do you know who actively encourage their practitioners to work long days? In fact, even tell their potential new recruits that the typical day of a lawyer is 16 hours in length? It seems ludicrous, but that’s just what one law firm has done. Their comms department decided to sign off a ‘day in the life’ piece on a junior partner whose day started at 08:00 and finished with a call at midnight.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not rushing up to find if this firm has vacancies. How many 30-40 something’s are motivated by the thought of a typical 16 hour work day? (Or 20 year olds, for that matter) I know I’m not. But then, you may (quite rightly) tell me, I’m not a qualified lawyer, and don’t aspire to be a partner in a law firm. That’s fine then.

Or is it?

Do you clients want great technicians or well-rounded advisors?

How rounded is an individual who spends 16 hours a day working? How much time does that leave for anything else, such as family, friends, hobbies, interests? Is this the sort of person your clients want advising them? Or do they want someone who has more to them than just a good technical grasp of the law?

Just in case you think I am exaggerating, Baker & Mackenzie requires it’s associates to bill 7.5 hrs of chargeable time a day. They are not the worst firm, or the only firm who ask it’s associates to bill more than 6 hrs of chargeable time a day. That chargeable time doesn’t include, CPD, Business Development, admin… Is it any wonder that many associates and senior associates decide to forgo any desire to get promoted to partner and just focus on doing their billable hours targets?

Let’s go back to the 30-40 something age. This is the point where, if you are partnership material, you will take the step up to partner. It’s also the point in many professional’s lives where they take on the responsibility of being a parent. Young children and 16 hour days in the office don’t tend to go together.

The “So What” to all of this, is how many firms are wringing their hands and bemoaning the fact that their senior associates don’t have the desire to take the step up to partnership. A prize which means 16 hour days in return for the possibility of taking the next step and becoming an equity partner. But that’s only if you are prepared to put your life on hold and dedicate every hour you are awake to work. I’m not selling this am I?

Are the partner’s drawings driving the shape of your firm’s business model (however outdated it may be)?

If your firm’s business model, or should I put this correctly, your equity Partner’s drawings requirements, mean your associates, senior associates and partners need to regularly work 12+ hour days, then is it any wonder that you are struggling to attract good talent at partner level. (Be that home grown or lateral hires?) If falling profit margins are meaning that your firm’s answer is to flog your assets harder, (such as Baker & Mackenzie did in Jan 2013 when they raised chargeable hours targets from 1600 hrs to 1700 hrs, with no increase in pay) shouldn’t you re-think?

Is it any wonder that I am having more conversations with law firms frustrated by their fee earners not driving their own career. How motivated would you be to drive your career to get the benefit of 16 hr days?

This is the second part of a blog post where I explore the 4 ways to help you fee earners drive their own career. In yesterday’s post we explored some of the organisational factors which stops a firm from building a culture where fee earners are expected to drive their own career. In today’s blog post we look at the remaining 3 ways to help get your fee earners to drive their own career – and not expect to be spoon fed to get to the next level of their career.

2. Provide tools to help fee earners drive their own career

It is all very well telling fee earners that they need to drive their own career, however you need to provide the tools to help them do that. Do you have:

• a competency framework for each grade in your firm, which details what skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviours you expect from people at a certain level?
• simple self-assessment tools, sign-posted to suggested development options (both informal and formal types of learning) to help your fee earners identify what they need to do to help them acquire the key skills needed for the next stage in their career.
• openly and commonly available case studies of employees who have taken different career paths through your firm to show your fee earners what is possible
• promotional pathways, which could be the same as your competency framework, to help your fee earners plot
• access to on-line, self-study and distance learning tools which fee earners can access at the point of need?
• easy access to tools to help increase their self-awareness, such as PROPHET, 360 degree feedback, performance reviews

3. Have the conversation

4. Train up partners to have meaningful career discussions