Services Marketing: How to Avoid the Revenue Rollercoaster Trap
Many consulting, professional, and technology service businesses find themselves trapped in the following vicious, no-growth cycle. The firm is either:
- Heavily marketing because they don't have enough leads and new business or
- Heavily billing and delivering—and thus have no time for marketing.
We call this the service revenue rollercoaster. It's a common trap for many professional service companies because when they get busy they can't sustain their marketing momentum...they're too busy with client work. Then, when the client work slows down, they must start marketing from square-one all over again, as all momentum from previous marketing efforts has stalled.
How to Avoid the Trap—Create a Revenue Engine
The ideal role of the marketing function for consulting and professional service companies is to generate a sustainable flow of leads and revenue—helping the company to avoid using only billable resources to intermittently generate leads for their practices when business is slow.
Consider the following six guidelines to help your firm establish and benefit from a sustainable lead and revenue generation engine:
- Choose to Avoid the Services Revenue Rollercoaster: The first step in avoiding the services revenue rollercoaster is to realize it exists, and to overtly declare, “We are going to maintain marketing energy by creating a lead and revenue generation engine—and avoid the pitfalls of the revenue rollercoaster.”
- Balance Billable and Non-Billable Resources: When creating a revenue engine, assign a non-billable resource as the senior marketing leader. This person, whether full or part-time, should be able to set strategy for and lead the revenue engine, not merely implement tactics.
Senior billable resources may flow in and out of the marketing team as the busy-ness of their practices dictate, but it is imperative that the revenue engine continues to function and improve under the seamless leadership of a competent senior person.
- Understand Services Marketing: The person who heads your firm's marketing efforts doesn't necessarily need to be an industry insider (i.e. you don't need a CPA to run your CPA firm's marketing efforts), but you do need someone who understands how profitable services clients are attracted and retained.
- Dedicate Management and Staff: It may be trite to say so, but without senior management support, your revenue engine aspirations will turn into a "marketing department" that buys a few ads, sends some mail, maintains a website, and puts together your glossy brochures.
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John Doerr is principal of the Wellesley Hills Group (www.whillsgroup.com), a consulting and marketing services firm that helps service companies to grow. John can be reached at jdoerr@whillsgroup.com.
