4 Pointers to organizing B2B marketing of solutions, projects and professional services

Point 1 : Who is responsible for marketing?

Marketing of professional services cannot be the responsibility of the marketing department (includes sales department too) alone. This article will give you an idea about how to organize your marketing function. Please note that in most cases the marketing department does NOT handle ALL marketing functions. All the marketing functions are shown below in the marketing process diagram.

While the responsibility for the marketing of "inspectable" and "boxed " products can be given to a marketing department; the same cannot be done in high contact professional services like firms selling

• consulting 
• advertising
• legal advice
• turnkey solutions of infrastructure, manufacturing, IT

Point 2 : Product vis-a-vis service marketing
The difference between Product marketing and the marketing of professional services and solutions is best understood by a concept called SNTBRE. It stands for

• Size and access to market
• Need
• Timeframe
• Budget
• Responsibility
• Experience.

Application of SNTBRE to the marketing of soap

• Size of the market :  almost everyone buys soap every month
• Almost everyone needs a soap
• Most buyers will buy a soap over the "next 1 month" time
• They will have kept a budget aside for buying a certain number of cakes 
• They would have allocated the responsibility for buying soap to the housewife
• They all have an experience of buying a soap - so they already know a lot about who sells it, what is on offer and what are the prevailing prices.

Diagonally opposite is the marketing of ERP on the SNTBRE concept.

• A handful / few  companies need ERP at any one point of time
• They themselves do not know that they need an ERP because
  they do not truly understand the costs attached to their current manual system
• They do not have (obviously) have a time frame in which to buy an ERP
• They do not (obviously) have a budget for an ERP
• Clearly there is no one assigned as responsible to look into the buying of ERP
• They have no experience and do not know  who sells, what is on offer, or prices.

It must be clear to you by now that ALL marketing practices are very different between these two markets

• Soap is used by everybody and hence you can use "mass advertising".
  Looking for firms needing ERP means searching for "a needle in a haystack"
• Since SNTBRE already exists, soap marketing involves explaining "superiority".
  For ERP you need to meet the top brass who can create "SNTBRE" first.
• In short, for soap, you do "Product Marketing"
  For an ERP you do "Concept Selling"

Point 3 : How to organize

Organizing for selling soap is almost entirely in the hands of the marketing and sales departments because both the input and output is visible to them and is largely within their sphere of influence. The results of the money and time spent in a marketing campaign / effort  a standard boxed product can be measured by the number of units sold or by the awareness created by an ad campaign over a relatively short period of time – like a given a quarter.

But marketing of professional services is very different.  Nothing happens over a short time because the “sales cycles” are pretty long. Second, the marketing and sales effort does not directly link to the sales numbers.  The role of marketing in professional services is to pre-sell, educate and create an  appetite for a solution to a problem that you’ve identified and which client can be made to understand. The output of a marketing program for professional services is generally when the customer rolls out a “red carpet” for the marketer to come for a meeting with the members of their top brass. This opportunity needs to be seized by the technical and commercial “top brass” of the marketing company to impress the “top brass” of the prospective client company. And, even if this meeting is successful, more meetings need to be conducted to study existing practices, discuss findings, weigh costs and benefits, negotiate.  In the marketing of prosessional services you need two hands to clap - the marketing hand and the rest of the organization.

Because the  marketing of professional services is an organization-wide and cross-functional effort; the CEO's active involvement is necessary for good marketing to happen. The CEO needs to resolve an interesting  dilemma because the senior people’s time is very costly and the  CEO needs to decide how much of their time should be devoted to 

• speculative and non-billable business development activity.
• business activities which are billable to a client.

Many of you are impressed by the website copy, brochures and other content written by professional service firms like McKinsey, Bain & Company, Harvard etc. Do you realize that it would not have come out so well if it was left to the marketing department or the ad agency? A good marketing campaign for high end professional services can only be written with inputs from the top professionals working for the company because they alone can put themselves into a specific customer’s shoe and write out the copy, proposal or answers to queries. The ad agency can do it only for a standard and simple product like a soap or a shoe.  

Point 4 : Defining Business Development Objectives

In view of all this it is absolutely necessary to define the BD objectives in a professional services firm so that it is clear who needs to do it.  The following is a possible list

1. The recognition and recall of your name
2. Knowledge of your firm's capabilities
3. Knowledge of what problems your firm helps to solve
4. Circumstances under which you may called to help
5. Belief that you can understand and solve the problem
6. Belief that you are responsive, concerned and trustworthy
7. Willingness to respond to take a call and give an appointment
8. That your firm is responsive, concerned, and trustworthy
9. That your client retention rates are high

In almost all cases, even where professional salespeople are involved, the sale must ultimately be made by the professional who will perform or supervise the service.