the tone of your marketing must follow.
by bruce marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
editor’s note: 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 was privileged to have a long relationship with bruce w. marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. today we begin publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.
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the late lawyer and novelist louis auchincloss wrote so meticulously and vibrantly about life in the legal and social world in the early and mid-20th century. the legal profession was rigid and class-defined, with a caste system governed by strict ethical rules, a hierarchical structure with great distance between the levels of a firm from managing partner to the lowest clerks (whom we now call associates), and by both money and status in society. to preserve the integrity and probity of the profession, there was an aloofness – an elitism – that set lawyers apart from the rest of the working world.
in 1951, when i joined the then-big eight accounting firm peat, marwick, mitchell as its librarian, accounting firms were virtually identical to law firms in their elitism and attitude. in the offices of both professions, there were no first names in the ranks above and below one’s own status, women were never called by their first names, and jackets and ties for the men and dresses and stockings for the women (most of whom were secretaries or clerks) were obligatory. client development was done primarily by networking in social venues, such as country clubs, golf courses, and politics and by client referrals. the commercial aspect of professional services was rarely discussed in public.
i had been a journalist and had done some public relations in the air force during world war ii. when i suggested that there might be ways to develop the practice within the bounds of the aicpa’s code of professional conduct other than the traditional social contact methods then used, many of the partners were horrified (but they did it anyway). if the word competition was heard in the corridors of those firms, it usually referred to squash or tennis – certainly not to the accounting or legal professions.
no brochures, press releases, client retention plans, direct mail, or any form of advertising (except new partner announcements), knowledge management, marketers, active concern about value, horrible jargon like rainmakers or branding or niche marketing.
in both professions, such concepts as cross-selling rarely existed, because each partner felt that his clients were his first, and then the firm’s. we often heard such expressions as “i love you, charlie – you’re my partner and my friend – but stay away from my clients.”
clients were much less sophisticated than they are today and often unquestioning about advice. very little attempt was made in either profession to educate them beyond the matters at hand. this aloofness, i think, was designed to maintain the aura of superiority of the all-knowing professional. the firm, not the client, was at the core of the practice. the firm, as much or more than the client, defined the problem or matter and cast the solution. and all this was true for both professions.
notes david urbanik, long an outstanding law firm manager, “thirty years ago, the primary decision factor in retaining a lawyer was the perceived specific skills of the lawyer. today, a greater and greater percentage of legal work once thought of as complex is considered to be commodity work for which the supply of lawyers judged to be competent to do the work is large. much of it is outsourced, both domestically and abroad. at the same time, clients are putting much greater value on how the service is delivered.”
pamela woldow, an attorney with the prestigious international consulting firm edge international, says, “most commentators agree that the economically driven sea of change in the legal profession has changed the way legal services are procured and has shifted the balance of negotiating and pricing power from law firms to their clients. corporate counsel now have mandates from the c-suite to do more with less, contain costs, think outside the box and be smarter in how they use and manage outside counsel.”
moreover, says woldow, “the language of many current rfps now includes very specific questions, not just about a firm’s legal expertise, but about how legal services will be delivered, budgeted, monitored and managed. in-house counsel are making clear what they want to pay and how they want services delivered. increasingly, they also have begun to insist that their outside law firms provide additional no-cost perks.”
to which michelle golden, one of the most experienced of the accounting firm consultants, adds, “today, more than at any time in the past three decades, practice specialization holds the key to decommoditizing professional firm knowledge offerings. and focusing on the fact that the true value in what firms deliver comes from ‘knowledge’ versus ‘service’ is at the core of effective positioning and much needed price improvement. we’re moving toward the need for business model changes that move firms 100% toward client-centricity in all functional areas.”
how did we get from the neo-dickensian practices of those early days to today’s modern firm? how did we evolve into the focus on competition and business development, on management science, on value billing and two-tier structures, on the serious practice of managing a firm’s knowledge in many areas, on forming virtual partnerships with clients, or client service teams, and even on office informality?
the need to understand this process is more than an intellectual exercise. it’s a guide to understanding where we really are and how to function better in this new environment. it’s a blueprint for functioning better within the context of today’s economic, social and technological environment. understanding the process of evolution – yes, evolution – that produces meaningful change better informs us on how to compete more effectively and anticipate and prepare for the future progress of this evolution. it enhances the validity and simplifies the process of long-range planning.
the contemporary firm
today’s modern firm – and there are more of them than we think, and fewer of them than we’d like to think – is still evolving. change is the result of an evolutionary process – and evolution in a dynamic world is imperative and ongoing.
today’s modern firm is sufficiently different from the last century to be almost unrecognizable to the old-timers. it tends to be more client-oriented. it’s informal in internal and external relationships, and appropriately formal when the accounting or legal practices demand it. new concepts of governance are beginning to emerge – even to the point of considering the publicly held professional firm. both accounting and law firms increasingly speak of a concept called value – what is the value to the clients of the knowledge and skills we provide? – this puts greater pressure on client service’s traditional and somewhat archaic hourly valuation. in many firms, hourly pricing is being replaced with more substantive value pricing, based on the value of the matter to the client.
while accounting firms’ structure and business models differ in several significant and obvious ways from those of law firms, the contemporary environment for both professions have much in common. for example, both professions face a changing relationship with clients. for both, the era of the somewhat docile client is vanishing, thus affecting the ways in which each profession must function in the marketplace. at the same time, both professions are experiencing the commoditization of traditional accounting and legal practices, which, in today’s electronic environment, readily facilitates outsourcing to highly qualified accountants and lawyers in such countries as india, the philippines and even china.
to have dreamed of outsourcing accounting or legal processes to a foreign country would have been a source of great hilarity only a decade or so ago. such can be the quirks of evolution.
august aquila, a leading international consultant on accounting firm management (and my co-author of client at the core), says, ”the traditional black box model of the all-knowing professional is now an anachronism. where once clients didn’t have access to the accounting process, accountants now function in collaboration with their clients. this has fostered, in many client matters, increasingly changing the client-professional relationship to one of consulting. this relationship continues to emerge as more aspects of the accounting process are commoditized and outsourced. it’s here, too, that technology serves as an important factor in accounting practice, as such practices as tax returns and bookkeeping are regularly sent to call centers in other countries, where they’re processed by well-trained technicians.” this new kind of client is well known to the legal profession as well. says pamela waldow, “the language of many current rfps now includes very specific questions, not just about a firm’s legal expertise, but also about how legal services will be delivered, budgeted, monitored and managed. in-house counsel are making clear what they want to pay and how they want services delivered. increasingly, they also have begun to insist that their outside law firms provide additional no-cost perks.”
new processes, such as defining, analyzing and using data of all kinds – knowledge management – are becoming an integral part of law and accounting firm management, and are themselves evolving. understanding and using data and information – both internally for firm management and externally as an aid to the crucial science and art of defining a market and reaching it – is expanding. and now, we have dedicated knowledge management specialists, some of whom are accountants or lawyers, and some of whom are data specialists, and many of whom are both professionals and data specialists.
the new norm is the firm that moves into the digital age – that uses technology with increasing sophistication in all aspects of its business. increasingly, firm practices are shaped by technology. processes are automated, the mobile office is becoming commonplace, concepts of productivity are increasingly considered. flex time and the internet allow people to work at home, which helps keep talent and can improve productivity.
and marketing. and competition. practice development? no longer merely at the country club or golf course, but as a professional practice that’s integral to the professional firm’s practice.
bates v. state bar of arizona and professional services marketing 1.0
there seems to be a general impression that the changes in accounting and law practices that created the modern firm resulted from the blast of technology that began to enter the professions in the early 1980s. not so. the current cycle of evolution resulting in the thread of change we now see actually began in 1977, with the u.s. supreme court decision in bates v. state bar of arizona. the decision, which primarily addressed the subject of law firm advertising, effectively upended generations of prohibitions against all forms of promotion.
that landmark supreme court decision struck down the american bar association’s canons of ethics – and by extension, the code of professional conduct of the american institute of cpas – that for generations had inhibited frank marketing, or any form of commercialization, by professional firms. it profoundly altered the future of the accounting and legal professions and started the evolutionary course that has led to the modern firm.
the ethical rules of the professions were ostensibly designed to preserve both the real and perceived probity and integrity of the professions. they obviated, as well, any deviations from the traditions of the practices, most of which fostered a virtual class war – a barrier between the all-knowing professional and the client. and while bates specifically addressed lawyer advertising, ultimately the professionals realized that two things had happened – the decision applied to the accounting profession as well as to the legal profession, and the new concept of competition bred the first opportunities and efforts at marketing. competition continues to be the driving force of evolution that defines the modern accounting and law firm, as it does for commercial enterprises.
technology, of course, ultimately enhanced the evolutionary process, and continues to do so, but competition, not technology, drives the evolutionary process that portends continued change in the professions.
