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Marketing Professional Services Is not an Oxymoron By Steve Ernst, CPA  At
one point in my career I was responsible for the small but growing
B2B area of a company. For the most part, the responsibilities were
more "business development" than traditional sales and
marketing. My CEO was very supportive, and he saw a potential growth
engine worth nurturing. On one occasion we were reviewing a presentation
we were about to make to a potential partner. Chuckling, he asked
me to not bring up the fact that I was a CPA because he didn't want
the group we were meeting with to think his sales and marketing guy
was a bean counter.
When I contended that being a CPA made me more of a sales and marketing professional than he might have thought, he asked me to explain. I said that for years, while I was a practicing CPA, I had been producing, packaging, marketing and selling myself, my ideas, my recommendations, my services and my firm. I explained I had been working in a very competitive environment – CPAs compete every day with each other inside the same firm, and you have to sell your "value proposition" to senior partners and department heads continually. Externally, CPAs compete with other firms to acquire new clients and retain current ones. I continued by pointing out that a lot of CPAs, although most of them are not aware of it, become very adept at positioning and marketing their professional services in an understated but direct fashion. In essence, I told the CEO, I have been a sales and marketing person from the first day of my business career. He let that sink in and, after a few moments said, "On second thought, tell them you're a CPA." Branding professional services Branding is a science unto itself. There have been lucrative consulting careers built, numerous books written, college and MBA courses taught, PhD theses written on the subject of branding. To me, branding encompasses a couple of key concepts: The Promise and The Difference – what someone can expect from you and why you're different from your competitors. Building a brand is time-consuming. It's not a "just add water" or overnight proposition and there are no foolproof one-size-fits-all templates to follow. But, as CPAs, we have an advantage; we have the ability to use the set of initials that still maintains its own, concretely solid promise. Attaining and maintaining the right to say you're a CPA is a never-ending task. There are certain thoughts and to-do's that are everyday things with CPAs. Just as there is an ongoing search for meaningful, professionally impactful yet cost efficient continuing professional education, there should be a regular search for professionally acceptable ways to convey the value proposition of your services as a CPA and a way to distinguish you and your services from those of other CPAs. As a group, CPAs have maintained their polling position as one of the most trusted professions. We remain the most trusted advisor to the business community. We can build on that. We can use that as the basis for our marketing in general terms. It's part of the branding effort and that's exactly how CPAs have to think – in terms of branding, in terms of The Promise. Differentiating If you think deciding on and solidifying the promise within a branding effort is difficult, wait until you try to make yours not only different from but preferable to someone else's. Right now you're saying "Steve, between my family, my church, my clients, my local volunteer efforts and the few hours of free time I have left each month, where am I going to find the time for this branding stuff, this promise and difference malarkey?" My answer, as noted above, is you're doing it every minute of the day and just not aware of it. If pressed, I would offer the following as the significant differentiating factors: inquisitive intelligence, education, independence, experience, the ability to apply and innovate, and reference-able success. Your response would be a sarcastic "and what CPAs would not describe themselves using those attributes?" Not many. Each of those differentiators is worth a column or two. Being truly independent and being able to think innovatively and being able to demonstrate how those two assets have contributed to client success will set you apart from your peers and help you complete the branding of not only a professional service but, more importantly, your personal, professional service as a CPA. |
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