Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

I suspect the position for which you are applying is to market them, not work on projects for their clients. Questions to expect in this regard would concern your expertise/experience related to setting strategy, accomplishments related to growing a company's revenues, familiarity with their marketplace (construction & property, leisure and entertainment, IT and pension markets), your ability and success with developing and implementing marketing plans, your experience and abilities in researching markets, how independently and without daily direction you work, how much time you have spent outside the office with prospect customers.

The questions might not be too different if they were looking at you for project work related to their customers - for billing. Just the slant would be in evaluating customers' markets and defining their strategies and plans.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

Hmmmm. Professional services marketing is a weird business. Although it helps to know all the things Wayde has listed - or at least ask about them - the single key factor in your success will be in how you work with the partners of the firm.

Most will NOT think that marketing is necessary and you'll want to ask alot of questions about their commitment to the process and time it takes to really market effectively. Check and see if what they really want is sales support (preparing proposals) or if they truly need image and awareness building. Have they allocated enough money to get it done? Which partners are involved in reviewing the marketing strategy?

There are no 4P's to professional services marketing - you focus entirely on promotion. I used to tell the partners that it was my job to make the phone ring, and that if I'd done it right it would be the right type of client asking for a service we performed profitably. Now there are lots of levers to use to make the phone ring, but you will never find yourself in client meetings or leading the team - that's the partner's job, and what they get paid to deliver.

You'll need to be able to talk about getting things done alone - sometimes in spite of the partners - that the "work on your own initiative" part. Very few will be actively engaged in what they want you to do. They are paid to sell and deliver work. Partnerships like accountancies are funny - there's a formal hierarchy that means very little. Each partner is a partner (some have more equity than others), and as long as they meet their sales goals, whether on strategy or not, no one has any leverage over them - or at least none they are willing to use. So most professional services firms have a business strategy that a good proportion of their partners ignore, because it's outside their comfort zone. Developing a marketing strategy to help them be successful requires a great deal of persuasion without authority.

If none of this comes up in your interview - run the other way.

Hope I'm not too much of a downer, but professional services firms ARE different.

Natalie

Riten,

Natalie's points are good, but are not related to professional service firms. 99.99% of all small businesses don't understand marketing. To most, marketing is "sales" and you will be expected to "hit the streets." They don't have a strategy or a plan nor can they stick to one.

Accounting firms have rules in the US related to what they are allowed to do in promotions. So they tend to be very conservative in their marketing efforts. Besides that, most business in accounting firms and other professional service firms is acquired through referrals. Rarely will anyone wake up one day, see an ad in a newspaper and say, "Hey, I need that!" Relationships are strong between professional service providers and the client. Even when the professional services provider is incompetent, the client is reluctant to switch. So, their source of new customers are business start-ups companies who have outgrown their old accounting services and need more.

This company does more than accounting, from the sounds of it. They sound like more of a consulting firm. Much of the above still applies. Many of the prospects live in "Egypt" - the land of denial. Almost any firm could benefit from hiring this firm because they have problems that could be solved and if solved, would save the client lots of money (or time) or make the client lots of money - much more than the fee. Remembering what I said about small businesses above, aside from not knowing what marketing is, they also think they can handle everything themselves - the pride factor of feeling weak if they ask for help. Again, traditional promotions doesn't work well here. The business is acquired through referral. The aim of your marketing efforts is to get a consultant in front of an owner or MD so he can find the issues/opportunities and go for the sale. A very short phone script - no more than 100 to 150 words - about one to two minutes - asking for an appointment and simply saying that your company is local and has helped many businesses - could you set up a free, no-obligation, confidential appointment? Additionally, networking is a ripe area for gaining referrals. Any organizations for business people - BNI, chambers of commerce, Rotary, trade organizations - membership in these will help fill that pipeline. This isn't instantaneous, however. It usually takes eight to 10 months to get it started. The firm should have a website with white papers. General tips from which many businesses can benefit. You'd think that this would be "giving away" ideas free, but most businesses don't have the capability to analyze and implement the tips and will need your firm to do so. This is an effort to establish your firm's expertise and credibility. Call it a "branding" step. Seminars are a good way to establish business. Pick a topic of interest, always charge a nominal fee - like $10 (sorry, I don't know where you are located so I've put it in US currency). The outcome of the seminar is usually appointments to talk with owners/MDs.

All of these activities should be set up in a calendar - so many cold calls a day, so many networking events per month, so many seminars per year, so many white papers per year, etc. The metric/outcome is an "appointment" and you have goals each month for so many appointments and also a closure rate on appointments converted to customers. You have an average revenue per client - and viola - you have a revenue growth plan. And they should be targeted toward market segments identified in the strategy. The key is that this is an integrated marketing strategy - the aim of which is to get a consultant/partner in front of a prospect. For the partners - they will think in "spreadsheets." You describe this as a strata chart that builds revenue growth from the various sources over time based on a spreadsheet model for a three year period.

Good luck with the interview! Make us proud and land the job!

Wayde

This is probably obvious, but part of a successful interview, IMHO, is asking smart questions in addition to providing smart answers. I would ask some pretty broad questions in addition to finding out what the specific responsibilities of this position are. You want to make sure you're on the same page as them if you get the job. Some example questions -- What is "success" for this position? How does this position support the company's goal/mission? What does a typical day look like? What are the company's biggest challenges in the near future, and how does this position address them? Also, I'm guessing that they will ask you why you are interested in the job. I would be honest and say you need to know more specifics about the job, but that you're interested in the company because of ___, and you're looking for a position where you can ___(something you think the position requires, which hopefully you'll find out in the interview).

The other messages above maybe right, I also suspect that you will really do marketing services to their clients. As what you stated above, it is clear that the duties are more on the job of the accounting major. I think you should prepare answering questions like: how would you market our services to this particular client or that? how can you contribute to the company's mission? and so on, Hope this will helps.