High Growth Strategies for Your Professional Services Firm: 3

This issue is the final of a three-part series of articles on high growth professional services firms, based on findings in our research study The High Growth Professional Services Firm: How Some Firms Are Able to Grow in Any Market. In the first two articles we looked at characteristics and strategies of high growth firms. In this article, we'll leave you with some suggestions to put your firm on a high growth track.

 
If we had to choose a single trait that separates high growth professional services firms from their average growth peers, it would be their single-minded focus on their core clients. By client focus, however, we don't mean customer service. Great service, while important, is just one component of a comprehensive strategy to engage the client.

So what do we mean by customer focus? As we learned in our last article, high growth firms often invest heavily in client research. They use this information to inform a wide range of decisions they make about their firms — from what marketing tactics to deploy to the service mix they offer. We would argue that it is precisely this "insider" information that gives high growth firms their competitive edge.

Research is Your Foundation

If you want to emulate these high growth firms, where do you begin? We believe there is only one logical starting point. To truly understand your audience, you have to conduct regular, qualitative research on your customers. If you can, try to include some of those prospects who chose another firm over yours. They will provide invaluable insights that can help improve your business development process.

To get the most useful information on clients and prospects you should employ an neutral third party to conduct phone interviews. Clients will reveal things to a third party they would never say to your face. And often this is the sort of information that, if taken to heart, can dramatically improve your ability to serve your clients.

Once you have a solid set of research, put yoursef in the shoes of your clients and prospects. Try to figure out how you make your firm more relevant to them. Pay particular attention to any negative themes in the research — you'll want to be sure to address these issues. And always be on the lookout for hidden opportunities — characteristics that your clients love about your firm but which you never appreciated. These could become the foundation of your competitive advantage.

Define Your Strategy

High growth firms tend to have a clearly defined approach to their market. They know what they stand for (often expressed as a narrowly defined specialty) and they are very good at explaining their positioning to prospects. In addition, high growth firms can define their target audience with great precision. Average growth firms tend to be less specialized and often struggle to articulate how they are different.

It is important to gather your leadership team and define in very specific terms who you serve, what benefit you offer and how you are different from similar firms. A firm that can talk about itself with confidence has a powerful edge.

To help you define your strategy, draft a 4-6 sentence positioning statement. This is not a mission statement or vision statement. Instead, it is a concrete paragraph that explains who you serve, how you are different from similar firms and how you approach the marketplace. The process of articulating each point will force your leadership team to make fundamental — sometimes painful — decisions. At the end, however, you will have a clearer understanding of who you are. And that's a powerful thing.

Invest in the Right Marketing Tactics

How you spend your marketing dollars can have a significant impact on the fortunes of your firm. In our study we asked each firm where they invested their marketing budget. As you can see, high growth firms find marketing leverage in very different areas from their average growth peers:

Preferred Marketing Tools

 
How you make use of this information depends on what marketing tactics you use today. If you've given little thought to developing strategic partnerships, that might be a rewarding use of your energy. Or if you spend a lot on direct mail and advertising, consider redirecting some of those dollars to your website, sales training or outside consultants who have specialized expertise that you lack. Clearly, high growth firms get far more benefit from spending time with their clients than attending networking events or making cold calls.

If you had to choose just one place to invest marketing dollars, however, make it your website. No marketing tool in history has been able to do so much for a business. Depending on how you build it, your website can be a passive online brochure or an active source of leads. You can tweak your site to target local, regional or national prospects. It can house a library of your thought leadership. And your site can even be a platform to speak directly to your audience. Most professional services firms today have only begun to tap their website's potential. With some time and effort, you can turn your site into an inbound marketing engine that will bring highly qualified leads to you. We know, because we've done it oursleves!

Final Thoughts

Think of this series of articles as a mini-course on building a high growth, high value professional services firm. We hope we've given you some inspiring new ideas. As practicing service professionals you very limited time to devote to marketing, and you can't afford to make poor decisions. That's why we're doing ground-breaking research to help you make the best use of your marketing dollars and achieve new levels of growth and prosperity.

If you want to learn more about building a high growth professional services firm, be sure to check out the library section of our website. Or follow us on our blog, where we chronicle many of our latest findings and insights.

If you would like a more in-depth guide to the issues discussed in this series of articles, be sure to download and read our new book, Spiraling Up: How to Create a High Growth, High Value Professional Services Firm. It's free!