Adapt and innovate to grow your business

I was intrigued to read about Kevin Roberts' speech at the recent IoD Annual Convention. As CEO of one of the worlds largest marketing groups, Saatchi & Saatchi, it was somewhat self-defeating to hear him declare that 'marketing is dead'. However, he had, at that stage already told the audience that "strategy is dead", "the big idea is dead" and "management is dead". Amusingly, as a CEO, he also went on to say "the further up in a company you go the stupider you become and the further away from new things". By this stage I was starting to wonder if he was looking in the mirror. So apart from successfully being controversial and grabbing a few headlines, is this type of thought leadership valuable?

Personally, I don't believe it is. Don't get me wrong, there was a serious message to this seemingly flippant tirade. But I suspect most Directors that left that event didn't buy into the idea that some of the key principles of business are confined to history. Something tells me that the universities won't be rewriting their MBA courses following that speech either. For me, this typified a Big Brand Agency demonstrating style over substance. Coming at a time when the economy was faltering and many businesses struggling, Saatchi & Saatchi's headline messages were out of touch with reality.

That is a shame because the serious message of the speech probably got lost amidst the noise of the headlines. The real message was the need for businesses to adapt and innovate in the current economic climate. Business opportunities exist in embracing change in a world where the pace of change is accelerating. That is a compelling message we regularly share with our clients when we say

"the only thing that is constant in business is change."

However where we would beg to differ with Saatchi & Saatchi is that strategy, far from being dead, is the vehicle for business to identify and monetise change. We advocate that strategy is not something you sit down once every year and dedicate senior management time to in a series of workshops and blue sky away-days. Instead strategy is an evolving process that is refined and adapted as new information informs strategic thinking. The imperative for business is to have the awareness and flexibility to adapt to changing business environments and markets. That strategic agility is the basis for the successful businesses of the future.

In parallel to this strategic agility in professional services, there is a need to deliver value today through existing business relationships. That value is provided for many firms through excellent service delivery and sharing of valuable thought leadership to help inform clients and prospective clients. Having hosted a series of Marketing Clinics for businesses recently it is very clear to me that the business Directors I met are focused on how marketing can help them engage more clients and develop more successful business relationships. So marketing is not dead, it is very much alive and can be a strategic and tactical driving force in business.

This reminds me of the Chinese Military General, Sun Tzu, quoted by my debating partner at a recent Chartered Institute of Marketing debate in Manchester -

"Strategy without tactics is the slow route to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

So strategy is not dead and marketing is not dead. For the record, Sun Tzu is dead, but his mantra lives on here.

Are your lead generation activities filling your sales pipeline?

There are typically two situations which we regularly see when we talk to professional services firms about lead generation. In the first scenario, it may be a firm that appears to be quite proactive in generating leads. They have a mix of regular marketing activities including email marketing, telemarketing etc that they implement, yet they are simply not generating the level of business leads they need. In the second scenario it may be a firm that has previously been quite successful and has now embarked on ad-hoc marketing activities to generate leads. But the overall feeling within the firm is that it's a case of 'spray and pray'.

In our experience, the firms that are highly targeted in Lead Generation and make it a habit, are the businesses that are currently experiencing the most success - domestically and internationally.

So here is our top five tips for those of you that would like to build some momentum into a more targeted lead generation programme to increase your success:

1. Quantify your need for leads: Map out your sales funnel on a blank sheet of paper. At the end of the funnel write the value of business you need to win to meet your business objectives. Now move up the funnel and considering your bid win rate write down the value of business you need to be bid for, to reach your target revenues. Consider your average contract value and identify how many bids you will need to deliver. Now think about your experience of meetings with prospects. How many prospect meetings tend to produce opportunities to bid - one in three, one in four - you decide what looks reasonable. Write this number down on your funnel. Now you have identified the number of good quality leads you need to generate.
2. Assess your current activity: What are you currently doing to generate the required volume of leads on a weekly/monthly basis? How many clients and prospects are you communicating with in any given week/month? What are the gaps in leads generated and activities undertaken?
3. Analyse your approach: This is where you need to be totally objective in your analysis. Put yourself in your clients' or prospect's shoes and consider who you are trying to engage, how you are trying to engage them and what you are engaging them with. At Shaping Business we have developed a model for this analysis. One of the greatest learnings from clients applying this model is that not everyone on their prospect list should be treated the same. The type of relationship you have with the prospect and their position in the buying cycle should determine how you approach these prospects and what you approach them with. Your aim from this exercise is to refine your prospect lists, your prioritised lead generation activities, your chosen channels to market and your key content enablers.
4. Build a 'SMART' Lead Generation Plan: Concentrate on pulling everything together into a three month timeline that will show how you can be delivering lead generation activities on a regular basis (weekly/monthly) to meet your lead generation targets. You must make sure this is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timed or it will not get implemented. If you identify constraints such as resourcing or budgets that will impact on your ability to deliver the plan, discuss them internally to make decisions. Combine different streams of activities looking at nurturing/developing relationships to pick up the lower hanging fruit and prospecting/building relationships to access wider market opportunities. They key aspect of your plan is that it should be built from your prospects perspective not from an activity, content or business perspective.
5. Commit to maintaining momentum in lead generation: Be determined in your implementation of the plan because your business needs a regular flow of good quality leads. It is all too easy for the day-to-day operational issues to get in the way of your lead generation activity. Don't defer lead generation, instead make sure it gets allocated the time it needs each week and look to shift other tasks which are lower priority. Regularly review your delivery of the plan to refine and improve your approach based on what is working better for your business.

In a services business one of the most precious commodities is resource. So if you are genuinely struggling to get some momentum into your lead generation activities then you should consider outsourcing some elements of your lead generation programme. Shaping Business can help you to build a healthy sales pipeline. You can hear directly from clients that we have helped to implement successful lead generation programmes in the video below.



If you would like to discuss your lead generation programme further, or would value some additional support to increase the success of your lead generation activities, then please contact us directly.

Four steps to driving your top line growth

Many professional services firms are spending 20% of turnover on marketing and business development when fee earners time is included. Yet most struggle to see the kind of top line impact that should be expected for such a sizeable investment. So why aren't these firms getting better results?

Our research suggests that the problem is less about the quantity of time and effort invested and more about the way it is deployed. Marketing and business development costs are often spread across multiple accounting pots with different owners. The outcome can be an unproductive jumble of activities with many not executed well.

Experience working with a wide variety of firms has led Shaping Business to conclude there are four steps that if implemented, have the power to radically improve the impact of marketing and business development on the top line.

1. Demystify marketing and business development for everyone in the firm
2. Create a business development culture
3. Invest in your people
4. Implement governance and accountability.

Read the full article by downloading our Four steps to driving your top line.