KIA Corner: Marketing Myths... and How to Make Sure They Don't Put Your Firm at Risk

"Right. Business development is not about advertising; it's not about marketing; it's all about personal selling at the end of the day. Anybody who's been in our business for any time at all knows that."

As a fellow road warrior who is also a marketer, I found this exchange to be revealing and somewhat disturbing. Yes, Accenture's problem had to be dealt with quickly as the firm did—although the realities of outdoor advertising have kept the Tiger ads up for a while longer than his terminated contract. And, certainly, however effective that firm is in delivering on its claim of "high performance," there are limits to how far even it can stretch its service offering!

I puzzled over how two seemingly sophisticated consulting professionals could hold such a cottage industry view when it comes to what the role of real marketing—including advertising—should be in a professional service business. It's not a question of either/or—Sales or Marketing—but both/and.

I decided to see if I could gather the perspective of other consultants and uncovered more of what I call "frozen perceptions" from the "marketing naysayers." I found these other distressing myths from my "unscientific" sample:

• "For us, marketing communications is what the Marketing Group is supposed to be doing."
• "I'd rather have one good rainmaker than the best marketer you can get me."
• "We don't have to do the kind of market research on our own consulting services, the way clients who sell products do. That's because our partners act as the best kind of market radar and we can quickly course-correct."
• "When it comes to new business, my experience is that the insight of a smart partner beats the best market researcher hands down."
• "Why suggest that Marketing should take the lead in the development of new service offerings? We bring Marketing in only after our partners have figured out the new consulting services to develop and sell."
• "We don't have to spend a lot of time investigating market segmentation because our partners already know what the key segments are."
• "Of course, we do performance measurement on our work during each engagement. But we don't see any need to bring in an independent group for that because our people know best what's going on."
• "We don't use research to analyze the value of every attribute or benefit of our service offerings, trying to quantify what is different from our competitors. We pick up cues from the client — on the fly — in terms of their interest and we flex our pitch accordingly."
• "Because of the power of personal selling, we could go without any marketing group—it's not really a necessity."
• "Market Research can prove anything—we get better, more actionable intelligence on clients and market conditions from partners who are close to the action."
• "Relationship Marketing?" That's a buzzword—we do it the old-fashioned way: one client—one partner at a time"
• "Marketing and advertising are fine for impulse purchases — but selling of consulting engagements is a much more complex, long cycle process. And, often includes multiple decision makers and always legal contracts"
• "Brand reputation is important to us, but its earned by what we do, not by what we might say in advertising. Advertising to reinforce the Brand is really something of luxury—for the biggest consultancies. We build our Brand every day face to face."
• "There may be more sophisticated means of getting and managing leads, but we're pretty good at it. Besides the best new business comes from partners engaging with clients for more work and referrals"
• "When the marketing people talk about integrating Sales and Marketing, I feel it's a power grab"
• "Orchestrating multi-channel presence for the firm—that's just 'marketingese' for give us more budget to spend"
• "We are well known for our thought leadership and that comes from our people speaking at industry conferences and our White Papers. Marketing basically helps the firm with getting market presence and distribution for these—that's about it."
• "We have a Marketing Dept. and she does very well in getting the firm publicity"
• "Professional selling is strategic. Marketing is tactical."

These myths function as "frozen perceptions" which block real change, holding back the industry, one could argue, from the kind of reassessment of Marketing that would be required to change the game.

Without diminishing the role of the partner in selling and in the creation of new services, just imagine this scenario for a moment: If the kind of disciplined marketing skills of a Procter & Gamble could by applied—appropriately—by a player in consulting, what kind of industry disruption would we see? What if the world class targeting and relationship marketing of an American Express were executed—appropriately—in the marketing of professional consulting services?

One thing is sure in this imagined world of professional services marketing: the percentage spent on marketing would not be what occurs today—at about 2.5 percent to 2.9 percent of revenue—3x to 5x smaller vs. what major marketers budget.

How sub-optimal is the current spending level? Can any consulting firm demonstrate that what they spend on marketing of their own firm and services is optimal? Yes, there's an argument that this is partly a definitional issue and that other budget lines could be included under the Marketing rubric and the