John Miller’s Post

One of our values at Scribewise is "clientcentricity"—we want to go above and beyond *always.* It's incredibly gratifying when clients notice our team's commitment to their success. Thank you Marcia Zaruba O'Connor for the very kind words!

Don't do what everyone else is doing. It's the surest way to blend in, which might've been a good goal in middle school but not in business. Everyone is obsessed with following "best practices," but they are typically a path that leads directly to the middle of the pack. You're saying "let's do what every other firm has done." If you use someone else's mold to create your thing, your thing is going to look a lot like their thing. The obsession with following best practices is a shortcut that often inhibits our creativity and consequently stunts our growth. When we take the shortcut, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to dive deeper and learn.

It's hard for a true salesperson to sell professional services. So how do we solve that? People who hire professional services firms tend to hire the actual professional who will be involved in the work. There's a comfort level there—they know the material. They can talk the talk. They've done the work before. They have the deeper understanding that the buyer is looking for. But, if you're running marketing for professional services, how do you position your "doers" to be "sellers?" The easy answer is to position individual SMEs as thought leaders. But they don't have the time, and likely don't have the writing/marketing know-how to deliver leading thoughts to the marketplace. They need marketing's help to turn their smart thinking into bold ideas.

Do you want the pain of moving forward or the pain of standing still? Of course, making hard decisions and pushing your company forward is not easy. You have to leave comfort behind. It won't always go perfectly. It demands more time, more brainpower, more will. But standing still brings it's own pain. A slow, dull ache. Over time, it becomes harder and harder to make changes. The lethargy sets in, and then you're stuck. And you have to deal with the pain of not having fulfilled your company's potential. This is why I wrote "Playing It Safe Sucks: A Manifesto for Courageous Marketing."

When a company decides it's time to bring in a professional services firm, the person making the buying decision is usually 👉 skeptical - they've been burned before 👉 exposed - they have to reveal information about their company, which means there is risk for them 👉 threatened - generally, they need to hire outside help is an admission that they don't have everything they need or can't solve the problem Hiring your firm means they are taking a leap of faith. They are putting their company and their career in your hands. How will you earn their trust?

When I talk to company owners and leaders, it usually isn’t long before they say some version of “our people are our greatest strength.” I bet you feel the same about your team. For any successful firm, people are what make it go. Unfortunately, while that is very possibly your greatest strength as a business, it is not why clients hire your firm. Not at the beginning, not when they’re first shopping for assistance, not when they’re comparing you to your competition. Because people outside the proverbial walls of your business cannot tell if your people really are great. Worse—all of your competitors are saying the exact same thing (even though sometimes it isn’t true), and since your prospects can’t figure out the difference, it’s a meaningless talking point. However! I guarantee you that there is something provable that makes your firm great. This is your neon fingerprint, and it should be the central point of all of your marketing. It could be the niche you serve. It could be a proprietary technology or process. It could be the knowledge you’ve accumulated through the years that can fuel your thought leadership and outward communications. There’s something there. You just have to find it.

Yes, you have to pay attention to SEO hygiene, but No, it should not be a big focus or use up a chunk of your budget if you're running marketing for a professional services firm. Fun conversation with Casey Cheshire 🎤 on The Hard Corps Marketing Show!

Beige. Most professional services firms are operating in a sea of beige. Their public-facing identity is blah. Indistinguishable. Mediocre. BORING. Let’s stop talking about how good we are (no one believes it, and they can’t measure it if they aren’t already working with us) and start talking about how different we are. Different is better than good. Different gets you the work, and *then* you can demonstrate how good your firm is.

“Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.” Legendary investor Charlie Munger said that, and it is obviously true. And yet, most professional services firms act like carbon copies of their competition. They have the same messaging. They market in the same channels. They offer the same services to anybody who walks in the door. They might do this out of fear or lack of imagination, but the biggest reason services firms all sound the same is because they incorrectly value the things that only they can see—what goes on inside their walls. We need to fix this. We need to understand what our customers see and care about. Your company needs to find its “neon fingerprint”—the unignorable identifier that lets the world know that you are on the scene. 

One of my favorite questions to ask prospects or new clients is, "how many clients do you have?" It's a simple question. But it immediately helps me to understand the context of their business. It gives me insight into their business model. It tells me what their business goals likely are—if you have 25 clients (a good number for many professional services firms), you don't need the next 100; you need the next five. But those next five clients will likely be making a major commitment—a six- or seven-figure engagement—and we need to develop a marketing program that builds a deep level of trust. The sales cycle is longer. The target is more cautious. Knowing this greatly influences the marketing approach we recommend for them. Yes, it's a very simple question ... that yields lots of insight.