Professional Services Marketing is especially important for nonfiction authors who want to leverage their book into profits beyond those originating as a publisher’s advance or royalties from book sales. In most cases, the majority of the author’s income comes from coach, consulting, and speaking activities-all of which require the author to be able to market and sell their professional services.

Professional Services Marketing is a 23-chapter book written by two professionals whose company has been researching what works, and what doesn’t work, in service marketing for decades. It addresses every aspect of selling professional services, including:

* Client expectations

* Target marketing

* Pricing

* Offer development

* Message development

* Lead generation

* Branding

* Pricing

* Client development

* Client retention

What I like most is that it doesn’t promise miracles–a failing of many business books. As this excerpt from the Introduction shows, “The first rule of services marketing-a key to revenue and profitability grown-is getting your service right.”

Mike Schultz and John Doerr emphasize the pragmatic aspects of marketing and selling, i.e., profit generation-dollars & cents results. Branding without sales is wasted.

Another favorite quote that expresses the authors’ approach and style, “If you’re doing only 70 percent of what you need to do, you don’t get 70 percent results; you get much less. Like patching a lead in the bottom of a bucket, if you don’t patch it 100 percent, it still leaks.” I like the directness and pragmatism of the quote, as well as the fact I haven’t encountered it elsewhere.

Four Outcomes Possible

The authors have synthesized effective marketing for professional services firms in terms of four measurable outcomes; the first three form the backbone of Professional Services Marketing:

1. Conversations with potential buyers

2. Better odds of winning client engagement

3. Higher revenue per engagement and client, and higher fees for services

4. Increased affinity with the actual and potential workforce

It is the emphasis upon “measurable” that sets Professional Services Marketing apart from similar books. Mike Schultz and John E. Doerr are co-founders of the Wellesley Hills Group, a leading business development firm for consultants, attorneys, authors, technology professionals, engineers, and other professional services providers.

Judging Professional Services Marketing’s true value

Professional Services Marketing synthesizes data from the above, and other, research reports that total well over a thousand dollars, and combines them with detailed suggestions and tips for creating effective marketing in the Web 2.0 age.

Professional Services Marketing is well written enough to read on a plane or train, yet detailed enough for authors to use it as a daily guide and checklist as they leverage their books to profits from services marketing. It offers both absolute and relative value; absolute in the value of its organization, concise style, and detailed information, and relative value in terms of its cost compared to the $200 to $400 price range of many of the research reports upon which its conclusions are based.
Rating: 5 / 5

-Mike Cooch, CEO, Everon Technology Services, LLC
Rating: 5 / 5

Without access to the studies and reports, a reader has no way of verifying the veracity of the claims the authors make.

Rating: 1 / 5