Jeff,

PS surveys and benchmarks report wide variations in the marketing spend on PS.  I have not found a strong correlation overall between marketing spend and PS sales results.  Below I have listed the three best practices for improving PS sales effectiveness.  The best practices are based upon benchmarking and actual programs that have improved PS sales performance as measured with increased win-rates, reduced sales-cycles, increased revenues, increase average deal size, etc.

1. Implement a sales methodology covering the sales process, skills, and tools

A.) Process defining phases and tasks for conducting discovery, qualification, planning, execution, and measurement
B.) Skills such as negotiations, objection handling, solution presentation, etc.
C.) Tools such as call plans, account plans, forecasts, etc.

2. Link business value to your professional services’ solution - make sure that everyone can tell the story

A.) Create a value story for each target audience (CIO, VP Finance, etc.)
B.) Develop offerings that meet your customers’ requirements vs. your service capabilities
C.) Develop sales aids (FAQs & Common Objections, Key Features, Differentiators, etc.)

3. Sell without sales people leverage the relationship and sheer number of consultants in the field (typical PS organizations have a 10X to 20X ratio of consultants to sales)

A.) Train and enable consultants to recognize and activate opportunities that can be passed on to sales
B.) Leverage the trusted advisor relationship
My bias for the above three tactical best practices is based upon experiencing PS organizations with limited marketing outperforming organizations with better marketing.  Every PS organization that has implemented the three best practices in selling professional services has improved their sales performance.

If you are interested more details, I can forward a PowerPoint on PS Sales Best Practices.  The presentation is from an OpenAir / InfoMentis webinar that was delivered in the fall of 2007.

I can attest to the effectiveness of Scott’s approach, since my company has extensively used Infomentis for sales and professional services training.

Train all your sales people with representation from the a number of the most “client centric” professional services (ps)people in the sales class and vice versa on the ps training.  It gives continuity to the process as it turns into a single process rather than “siloed” methodologies. It helps tremendously in the sales to services hand-off.

If the people in ps understand the business drivers for the work and the influencers in the client organization, then the account will very likely yield a lot more than the original sale because you are truly fixing the client’s pain points and you have ps people that can recognize an opportunity.
Mike H.

Jeff,

It’s important to first determine your marketing objectives. Is your goal to create Brand/Identity awareness or Lead generation or both. If this
is your first attempt at formal marketing then creating awareness through cost effective channels such as - industry special interest
groups / online advertisment on relevant sites and conducting a breakfast seminar (as apposed to webinar) with key clients from your
industry would get you a lot of mileage. The budgets for such activities are fairly nominal. In my experience if you allocate even 1% of total
revenues - its will be a very good start and more than sufficient.

Finally attending industry and other conferences maybe helpful but in my experience spendign $10-20K on setting up a booth and flashing you logo
does not get much mileage - the only way that it woudl work is that conference you have a couple of key presentations slots.

Hope this helps.

Rajiv C.