Marketing continues to be a thorn in the side of many professional services firms. They’re baffled by their continuing inability to get it right – just as if they’d invested in a new high-tech accounts package and found it didn’t work.
What they’re looking for are answers to the following sorts of questions:
If they come to us, the answer we give them is usually unexpected : “Forget marketing for now, that’s not where your problems lie at all.” We believe that the success of any firm is based on three conjoined factors:
1. How the firm is managed
2. The willingness (motivation) of its staff.
3. Its approach to marketing
In effect, marketing, management and motivation are like the three prongs of an electrical plug - unless they're all correctly wired up and perfectly aligned, the whole thing won't work even though it appears to be fine.
The mystique of Marketing
The reason why marketing problems are so often approached in isolation is that most professional firms still don’t really understand what marketing is. They regard it as a separate bolt-on activity, a mere set of marketing communications activities, rather than a complete approach to doing business. As a result they find it difficult to see why management and motivation have such a crucial role to play. Yet because of its very nature, every marketing activity or decision necessarily carries management and motivational implications, as is demonstrated by this marketing planning example:
MARKETING MANAGEMENT MOTIVATION
Marketing activity |
Management implication |
Motivational implication |
Devise team marketing plan |
Does the team involved have sufficient power, authority, support and time to be able to implement the plan? |
Are the systems in place to ensure that every member of the team understands what they need to do, has access to adequate training and coaching and receives recognition for carrying out his or her part of the plan? |
What exactly is management? There are myriad definitions but for now, Henri Fayol’s is appropriately succinct: “To manage is to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, to coordinate and to control.”
Management therefore is particularly important in the achievement of effective marketing which, as a process, involves analysis, market knowledge, plans, objectives, strategies, implementation, review and monitoring. All of this needs managing. Indeed the Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as: " the management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers needs profitably". Note the words – management process - which means by definition, that marketing is inextricably bound to management and must be subject to all it entails.
In staff surveys we’ve conducted within professional services firms, poor management – both of strategic issues and people, emerges as one of the biggest causes of complaint. Part of the problem is that many partners don’t regard “managing” as a skill requiring training and aptitude; and/or they simply don’t feel that most issues within the firm need managing. Whilst it’s true that if things are left to their own devices, something eventually happens, the invariable result is disaffected and demotivated staff.
There are three misconceptions about management which contribute to poor management continuing:
Any firm which is brave enough to tackle these issues and take the risks needed to turn them on their head will, we believe, overcome one of the most fundamental obstacles to its future success.
Often poor marketing performance is due to misunderstanding the difference between management and administration. For example, recognizing a need for improved marketing performance, a firm appoints a Marketing Assistant or Manager to “manage” marketing. However, the person appointed has neither the strategic skills nor professional experience to do so. Neither are they given the status or influence they would need in order to effectively manage in the professional environment. What they are being asked to do, and all they can do, is administer the tactical marketing programme – a vastly different exercise from strategic marketing management.
Realistically, there is little or no motivation in most firms for partners and fee-earners to devote time and effort to marketing. With few exceptions, all that is seriously measured, valued, or rewarded is the amount of fees earned as in this simple equation:
work on desk = amount billed = degree of success and recognition
Factors such as what the work is, where it came from, how it was obtained, whether it will lead to more work are usually not measured and cannot therefore be rewarded. This being the case, all efforts are ultimately focused on the bottom line – fee generation at any cost - certainly at the cost of devoting serious effort to business development. Where’s the motivation for marketing to come from when the disincentives are so high?
A straightforward solution would seem to be to reward individuals for their marketing achievements, but until certain management and motivational processes are put in place, this would be both unfair and unworkable, leading to even greater disaffection with marketing and individual de-motivation. Instead, what needs to take place is that marketing becomes subject to the motivational loop:
Effective motivation for marketing stems from having a sound and detailed marketing plan and translating the objectives set down in it into personal objectives for each individual which make it clear exactly what that individual is expected to do. (Commonly, personal objectives deal with responsibility rather than action so the individual remains unclear about what is expected of them - and is often too embarrassed to ask.)
Timescales for performance and performance measures should be made clear at the outset and the consequences of non-performance spelled out. In practice, this rarely happens leaving managers disappointed to the point of being personally wounded when the individual fails to deliver when they felt they’d never been seriously charged with doing so.
Regardless of any rewards and penalties that may be put in place, performance measures are straightforward – acceptable performance is to carry out the behaviours outlined by the objective; unacceptable performance is not to carry them out. This is the baseline for motivation.
Individual performance can be improved either through training and/or coaching:
Training within professional services firms is often woefully inadequate in respect of soft skills such as marketing and personal development. Such training as there is often involves telling people how things should be done without giving them the opportunity - preferably immediately - to practise doing it. (There’s a big difference between reading about flying an aeroplane and actually doing it…)
Similarly, a lot of training doesn’t actually involve any learning – people attend, listen (at least some of the time), but don’t modify their behaviour. So mechanisms need to be in place for testing that there has been a behavioural change i.e. that learning has actually taken place.
Coaching is the process of bringing about improved work performance through individual instruction, interaction and motivation. Although it takes time and resource it’s often the only way to generate real change in an individual’s behaviour and improved results for the organization as a whole.
Many “motivational” problems are actually caused by lack of feedback. Quite simply, if people believe they are already doing what they’re supposed to, it’s unlikely they’ll ever do anything different. Regular, formal marketing progress reviews are therefore essential. Regardless of the individual’s performance, the results will have positive motivational effects: if they’ve not been performing well, it will be a chance to find out why and give them guidance and encouragement as to how to get back on course. If their performance has been good, it’s an opportunity for praise and positive reinforcement which will motivate them to continue and even exceed their previous efforts.
© Dianne Bown-Wilson, the M3 Consultancy