Partner Article

Why professional services consultants must develop new relationships online

Managing relationships is something that all of you do, it could be argued that in professional services consulting it is the majority of all you do. It’s how things get done, business is just people, doing business with people.

Of course, you need to have a background or a specialism such as tax, assurance or corporate finance but first and foremost, to survive as a consultant you need to be able to manage and develop a number of high level relationships.

But building relationships has and will become more difficult.

Here are some of the key things that I believe play a part in this;

• Because we have the tools and infrastructure to do so, we are expected to build more and better relationships i.e. CRM, marketing automation, analytics etc. These tools should make our lives easier but the reality is that professional service consultants are finding it difficult to embrace them. As a result, the rate of adoption is low and tried and tested methods are reverted to. This problem won’t go away, it’s one of those problems that gets worse, every day.
• The way people find and judge you is incredibly different now. We used to rely on personal references but all we need to do is type your name into Google. We’ll see how many people follow you on Twitter or how many connections you have on LinkedIn to judge how good you are. People often make their decision about you before you even know it. And if you’re not found or don’t live up to expectations, there is always somebody else who can advise on the next deal.
• People are building relationships with you whether you know it or not. When people are searching for you online (because they are), you need to make sure you are a) there, b) putting the right messages out.
• Perhaps more importantly is that your customers are now becoming more savvy about developing relationships than you are. If your clients are using new methods, techniques and tools to develop relationships with their audience and you are not, how long do you think it will take to become an agenda item at their next board meeting?
• Professional services consultants rely heavily on what their head office marketing departments are putting out. And why not, they put out a lot of good stuff. But that’s what it is, just good stuff. In the industry, we call this noise. In order to really develop relationships you need to build empathy and illustrate that you understand customer problems. This is achieved by putting out exceptional stuff.

There will be those sceptics that disagree and that the foundations of developing relationships hasn’t changed, to which I agree, and that a lot of tools and methodologies that exist today just get in the way, to which I disagree.

The point I am making is that people now, more than ever, have the ability to find, judge and act on whether they think you are a worthwhile consultant that can add value to their business or their next deal. And they are doing this and you have no idea when, how and why they are doing it.

You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.

Technology, or digital, now plays a huge role in developing new relationships. For those that are proactive and have accepted that buyers now have all the power, there is a world of opportunity within reach.

As I mentioned before, professional services organisations are good at putting out stuff that seeks to develop relationships by illustrating capability. But the unfortunate irony is that it’s often too generic and rarely empathises with real business problems. It’s difficult to develop relationships without being empathetic to people’s problems because they won’t find an area of affinity, or common ground.

One of our clients who is leveraging technology to develop relationships are using their blog as a powerful content marketing tool.

Content marketing is a technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience  with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

The reason this approach is working so well is that it helps them manage relationships en masse. It allows them develop a relationship with their audience that;

• advises without being transactional - giving advice, free of charge.
• demonstrates expertise and thought leadership in a very specific area - specific focus delivers improved engagement and better quality customers.
• builds trust and encourages social proof - allows potential customers to develop trust that only used to exist through human interaction.
• meets customers on a medium they are comfortable with - People are researching and making buying decisions online.

As a result this approach is delivering other benefits.

• The rate and type of content their audience consumes tells them exactly what to put out next.
• They are building their own captive audience, becoming the media.
• They are increasing market share by focusing on problems much earlier in the buyer journey.
• They are creating better informed customers who recognise value and spend more money.

The most surprising element is that this client is a high street retailer with brick and mortar stores. But by accepting that buyers are using the web to inform their buyer journey, they are able to meet the buyer on a medium of their choice and build their proposition in a methodical way.

By Q1 2015, we expect to install iBeacon devices in store to bridge the gap between online and offline and to understand the customer better and improve revenue.

Not only will technology give you a platform to become recognised as a professional services leader in your area of expertise, but it allows you to develop relationships en masse, which hasn’t previously possible, unless your Richard Branson or have a huge budget, like Richard Branson.

By advising your audience through social media, blogging platforms, trade press and publishing sites you can illustrate your problem solving abilities which allow your audience to trust you. There is a reason that Richard Branson has 5,653,066 followers on LinkedIn and it’s not because he’s a good networker.

If there are obvious peers in your network who are prolific online, if everywhere you look there are articles and thought pieces attributed to your peers and if your customers are sharing information that your competitor has created then now is the ideal time to act.

Key Takeaways;

• The way people buy services and build relationships has changed, you need to understand this process.
• Building relationships incorporates many channels and tactics, the methodology hasn’t changed, but the tools and messages are very different now.
• Developing relationships online still requires a strategy and a plan.
• Rest assured your clients are leveraging digital to develop relationships, as a trusted advisor, you should be too.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Duncan Dibble .