Feature

| Getting Marketing and Business Development on the Same Page

Leaders of professional services firms can begin to increase the returns on their marketing and sales investments by asking one simple question: Are marketing and business development playing the same game, on the same team, and using the same game plan and scorecard?

For the majority of professional firms, our research and experience tells us the answer to this question is "no." Despite the fact that marketing and business development people are both charged with expanding their firm’s client base, at any given time they may be promoting different services to the same companies or speaking about the same services in quite different ways—thus confusing their clients.

The Bloom Group conducted a survey of 224 marketers and business developers at professional services organizations in Europe and North America in late 2007; survey analysis suggests that when marketing and business development are on the same page, a professional firm has a significant competitive advantage. By working in concert, successful firms’ marketing and sales activities create many more viable leads. A much higher percentage of those leads turn into work, and much faster: they accelerate the sales process. And, our experience tells us, these firms sell bigger and more profitable projects.

Read our analysis of the study and the implications for professional services firms that want to significantly increase the effectiveness of their marketing and business development teams. Click here to read the full article.

Industry Insight

| Growth Strategies for Professional Services Firms: An Interview with Michael Treacy

How can professional services firms grow more strongly? Dr. Michael Treacy has some thoughts. For nearly 20 years, Treacy has been one of consulting industry’s leading lights on growth strategies. He has authored two best-selling books, The Discipline of Market Leaders and Double–Digit Growth, and has counseled hundreds of CEOs and other senior executives on corporate strategy, product innovation and process excellence. He is president of Treacy & Company, a boutique consulting firm that also conceives, funds, and launches one new venture each year. Treacy is working on his third book, which will focus on the anatomy of sustained high performance, a topic he refers to as "performance discipline." Bob Buday, a founding partner of The Bloom Group, recently met with Treacy to discuss how his ideas on growth strategies apply to professional services firms—a topic that’s especially relevant given the current struggles of the U.S. economy.

Click here to read the interview.

Case Study

| Helping Transform a Consulting Website from an Ocean Away

The Bloom Group has helped a number of professional services firms revamp their websites over the past three years. Most of them came to us after reading our study on how to organize the content of professional services websites. (See the article here.) We had publicized the study through our website and an article for Consulting magazine ("Out of Site," which you can find here.)

Since publishing the study in 2005, we have received dozens of inquiries from U.S. and Canadian professional firms on how we could improve their websites. But we didn’t expect to be asked to help redo the website of a consulting firm an ocean away, Catenion Strategies, based in Berlin, Germany. "Together we built a fantastic website," says Dr. Matthias Krings, a partner at the firm who spearheaded the development of the new site (see www.catenion.com).

Click here to read the full case study.

Bloom Group News

EXHIBITOR Magazine and The Bloom Group Team Up to Explore Green Exhibiting

Everybody, it seems, is "going green" these days—looking for ways to lessen their impact on the environment and infuse a greater degree of ecological responsibility into their operations. But what about the trade show and exhibit industry? Are companies in that sector following suit? That was the principal question that EXHIBITOR magazine wanted to answer in an industry survey for which the publication enlisted The Bloom Group’s help in conducting. Working closely with the magazine’s leadership, The Bloom Group helped create a set of hypotheses that would guide the research and subsequently developed two survey questionnaires—one for suppliers of exhibit goods and services and the other for corporate exhibitors themselves—that would explore the issue in depth.

<a name="top" id="top"></a>After the survey was completed and responses received, The Bloom Group and the EXHIBITOR team analyzed the results and produced a comprehensive 44–page report, "An Inconvenient Booth: The Economic Impact of the Green Movement on the Trade Show Industry," which explores the findings of the survey. According to EXHIBITOR, this is the first in–depth research study done on the topic and has helped cement the magazine’s reputation as a thought leader and the voice of authority in the industry. We will have more on this project in a future edition of Thoughts on Thought Leadership, but in the meantime, you can download and read the full research report here.

Bloom Group goes "ON AIR": Inaugural BlogTalk Radio Show scheduled for May

Get ready to mark your calendars for the day The Bloom Group goes "ON AIR." In May 2008 we will host our inaugural Thoughts on Thought Leadership Internet radio show on BlogTalkRadio. The 60–minute show works like any traditional radio talk show, except it’s on the Web. It is accessed at BlogTalkRadio.com, and listeners can phone in using a landline, mobile phone or VoIP to be part of the conversation. In the first show, we will focus on the topic of this newsletter’s feature article—integrating sales and marketing in professional services. We will discuss the results of our recent survey and why it’s so critical for sales and marketing to act in concert as they work to increase demand for their organizations’ services. We’ll also learn about the experiences other professional services marketers and business developers have had getting marketing and sales "on the same page." More details on the show, including our special guest, will be posted at bloomgroup.com and emailed to Thoughts on Thought Leadership subscribers in the coming weeks.

Bloom Group Team

The Bloom Group is Growing…Some Would Say "Blooming"

The Bloom Group announces three new hires and one promotion in a strong start to 2008:

Susan Buddenbaum has been promoted to partner in our Cleveland office. Susan is a highly experienced professional services marketing executive who joined The Bloom Group as a principal in 2004. During her tenure with the firm, she has been instrumental in the firm’s growth—having led numerous large, high–profile projects for several international clients, and contributed to the development of new consulting services and intellectual capital. In addition to continuing to sell and lead consulting projects and contributing to the overall marketing of the firm, Buddenbaum also now will serve as the firm’s partner in charge of human resources to help attract and manage the talent the firm needs to sustain its robust growth.

Tim Parker has joined us as principal in the Boston office, leading The Bloom Group’s business development activities and managing client research initiatives that develop "thought leadership" and enable them to achieve prominence in their markets. For more than 20 years, Tim has been a management consultant, a consulting practice leader and head of business development at consulting and IT services firms, and an entrepreneur.

David Rosenbaum has been hired as our editor–in–chief, working out of our Boston office. David comes to us from award–winning CIO Magazine, where he spent the past nine years, first as a senior editor, then as managing editor, and finally as editor from 2005 through the end of 2007. Rosenbaum is the recipient of the 2006 American Society of Business Publication Editors National Gold Medal for his "Letter from the Editor" column in CIO. Before CIO, Rosenbaum was with Boston Magazine and Boston Herald; he is also the author of two novels.

Angela Hummel has been serving as our marketing & operations manager since November, based in our Cleveland office. Angela is responsible for overseeing the firm’s marketing activities as well as managing a wide range of client projects—particularly those in which professional services firms have outsourced their marketing activities to The Bloom Group.

To see their full bios, click here.

Spread the Word

The Bloom Group, based in Cleveland and Boston, specializes in the marketing of professional services firms by helping to determine clients' best growth opportunities, creating integrated sales and marketing plans, developing robust intellectual capital, and executing critical marketing programs that build awareness and client relations. The Bloom Group’s services include market positioning, marketing strategy, thought leadership research and development, and marketing communications. For more information, send an e-mail with your inquiry to info@bloomgroup.com or visit us on the Web at www.bloomgroup.com.

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Copyright 2008 by The Bloom Group LLC. All rights reserved.