Subscribe Did a colleague forward this newsletter? Sign up to receive your own copy. News Upcoming Speeches: The evolving role of the CMO, SMPS Southern Region Conference, San Antonio, Jan 25-26, 2007 Convert Your Marketing Role into a Strategic Firm Leadership Position, SMPS-PSMA Build Business 2007 National Conference, Washington DC, August 27, 2007 Articles: Practice Management: Re-evaluate how you evaluate your marketer (PDF), by Suzanne Lowe and Sally Glick for Accounting Today, September 2006 (also published with permission on The Marcus Letter) Why You May Not be Truly Differentiated, Consulting News, September 2006 (available to CN subscribers only) Hallmarks of an Effective CMO (PDF), The Marketer, August 2006 Turning a Marketing Eye Toward ROI (PDF), by Suzanne Lowe and Larry Bodine for New Jersey Lawyer, August 2006 New from the Expertise Marketplace Blog What should be expected of "marketing experts?" Part II What should be expected from a "marketing expert?" Part I Lessons I learned in 2006 See all the posts at the Expertise Marketplace blog Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed for regular updates. (Need RSS help?) Recent Issues   2006 Thank-You Issue, December 2006   The Problem of Defining Professional Services Marketing Expertise, November 2006   Leadership Legacies in Professional Services: Distinguishing Your Goals from the Expectations of Others, October 2006 You can order Marketplace Masters from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, your favorite online bookseller, or CEO-READ.

The Marketplace Master^TM is a monthly email publication on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing, LLC.

Doing Things Differently – A New Year, A New Direction

I founded my firm Expertise Marketing 11 years ago. Since then my consulting, research, writing and speaking has been focused on illuminating ways that professional service firms can make competitive gains. My intent has been to learn about and to discuss approaches that organizations could take to move ahead in the marketplace.

As I’ve presented topics in these monthly Marketplace Master™ newsletters, I have left it to my individual clients or readers to apply the strategies and tactics that I discussed.

For 2007, I'd like to take a different approach. I will dedicate the entire year of monthly newsletters to one theme: individuals taking steps to do things differently. Not just thinking they’d like to do things differently or wishing for it. Actually trying it.

My idea is not a new one, but it's one that I feel has special timeliness. More and more, I'm struck by reports that new approaches to marketing strategy or business development are known, but are not being embraced by professional services enterprises. Is marketplace myopia a real phenomenon, or am I just hearing from especially frustrated marketing leaders? Are professional service firms – public and private – seriously entrenched in their ways? Is the old way of doing something that much more attractive than making improvements? Is the risk of doing something differently so much more daunting that stasis is preferable?

The idea behind my commitment to this theme is simple: individuals are the catalysts to help their organizations grow in competitive effectiveness and marketplace leadership. Individuals can resolve to do things differently regarding marketing and business development. Individuals take the steps, one by one by one.

I’m no change management expert. But I’d like to explore, with you, just what it would take for individual marketing and BD leaders to go against the grain of their firm’s adherence to “this is the way we’ve always done it.” I’d like to ask how these leaders (whether on the staff-side or as revenue-generating practitioners of their firm’s services) are bucking the trend, moving the barge, making waves, changing stripes, or whatever metaphor works for you.

For each issue, I’ll explore a main topic, and I’ll ask how one person (or a small group) can get a firm to change its approach. If I can’t find examples of how the initiative has been done differently yet, I’ll ask you to think out loud about how you might make some changes. I’ll ask you to tell me how you’ve actually helped your firm try something new. What worked? What didn’t? What will you do differently next time? If I have to quote you anonymously, I’ll do it. (Let me know if you would like to be interviewed for future issues.)

Let me assure you that, in telling the stories of specific people, I am not trying to glorify any one individual to the detriment of others. I’m aware that people do not work in a vacuum and that things begin to change as soon as peers and colleagues make efforts together. My goal instead, is to get at the heart of professional bravery, to shed light on the courage to pursue competitive success, regardless of the certainty of the outcome.

Suzanne Lowe
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win
President, Expertise Marketing, LLC

Risky Business? Or Savvy Innovation?

Frank Kittredge

To kick off my series of articles on doing things differently, I interviewed Frank Kittredge, an Austin, Texas based Senior Principal of Mitretek Healthcare. Mitretek Healthcare is a consulting firm that offers integrated expertise to enhance the delivery of health care to private and public sector health care organizations. The firm offers a suite of services including Strategic Planning, Facility Planning, Healthcare Information Management & Systems, Process Innovation and more.

In late 2005, after the retirement of his nationally respected colleague Peter Rettig, Kittredge took over the leadership of Mitretek Healthcare’s national facility planning practice. Soon thereafter, he began to see synergies between facility planning (traditionally, a service offered in architectural circles) and other services the firm offered.

Myra Mengwasser

"Just over a year ago, we decided to pitch new business to a medical center in the North Central US. We knew who our competition was. We knew the medical center expected a facility planning proposal. The head of our process innovation practice, Myra Mengwasser, and I collaborated to infuse new process improvement and information management services into our proposed facility planning engagement. We did not win the job, but the medical center really liked our efforts to enhance their facility related operational plans.

"Out of that I developed a new approach for hospitals and medical centers that I call ‘concept of operations planning.’ It fits in well when organizations are doing facility projects and they need to be more customer focused. Architects design the space but it’s better if you figure out how to operate efficiently and effectively within the designated space. Space planning alone is a commodity – but a focus on operational efficiency is NOT a commodity. I had to work closely with Myra Mengwasser as the leader of our process innovation practice in order to develop an integrated service offering.

"I aggressively pursued this idea because it’s a higher value component for space planning. I viewed this as a way to kick out of the box my entrenched competitors who do more traditional space planning. We have now gotten two large commissions and are about to get a third. In addition, we are seeing increased opportunities for collaboration with architectural firms who recognize the synergy and value we bring with our operations expertise.

"Our next step is to figure out how to take solely facility projects and broaden them. Now we have to think about facility planning at the 20,000-foot level while also incorporating Myra’s performance innovation work which is more typically focused at the 1,000-foot level for true process redesign.

"It has been more about my understanding Myra’s expertise than her understanding mine. I had to try to figure out how to extend my practice to benefit her and as well our whole firm. We had to negotiate. I’d say, ‘Here’s my idea,’ and she would critique and expand on it. I had to understand her background and expertise more. Her experience is more focused on detailed process reengineering; I had to figure out how we’d apply this to our facility planning projects. I had to pick her brain in order to benefit both of us and our whole firm.

It took lots of time, and this time investment continues to this day. It’s an individual initiative that required her feedback and negotiation. We had to discuss what’s mine and what’s hers. We had to discuss the way we’d work. The first time we sold one of these new assignments, it was to a client entirely new to the firm. The second time we sold this, it was to HER client. As we proceed today, these efforts have really strengthened my relationship with Myra, while also benefiting our firm and our clients."

Perfection is not Required

Kittredge voiced the conclusion I had planned to write, and which powerfully fits with this year’s theme: doing things differently doesn’t mean things will never be changed again (or go back to the ways things had been before). Doing things differently acknowledges that the marketplace is fluid, and that our firms and our professionals must be fluid too.

"The stakes are high; these are six-figure jobs for our firm. I had to make the case that it was worth the risk to try to learn more, knowing that it’s not perfect. I know that we have to continue to develop. It is a risk, but I am comfortable with this risk. I don't need to know where it’s going to end up, but I am learning and getting smarter each step of the way. The biggest risk was doing something different, but I was – and am – willing to learn."

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