Last week (before the coronavirus had spread even further!) I attended a lovely event organised by the PSMG and expertly hosted by Concep & Allsop.  

The event was a round-table affair, with law firms and consultancies taking part in an open and honest session aimed at gauging where the attendees believed their firms currently sat within 6 categories on a marketing matrix and of course where they would like to be!  What became very apparent, was that most of the firms present seemingly scored themselves quite poorly from a marketing maturity perspective.  The priorities did differ from firm to firm but across the seven categories stack & integrations,  lead profiling and client nurture, list and consent management, automation, events management, and insights & analytics similar pain points existed whether it be tracking the customer journey, getting the different technologies talking to one another, tracking ROI from events or simply driving behavioural change that sticks.

A very interesting point towards the end of the session really got me thinking.  It was that more and more often, it is the clients that dictate (depending on the size or how many) how professional service companies are set up, how they report, how they communicate, and the business models that they choose.  The following article really helps to pinpoint three of the most recent models.  The models are summarised below and can certainly be linked to marketing maturity:

Collaborative Consulting: Regular collaboration on different projects can help all companies involved and often shapes new propositions at pace.  Two sub-models have emerged whereby there is a closed network of firms involved VS an open network of firms that can chop and change at any point.

Continuous Consulting: This centres around data, analytics and subscriptions.  New tools and processes are depended upon to accelerate project delivery and deliver recurring revenue for the consultancy firm.  This encourages closer and more regular client and consultant touchpoints with the reduction of one-off projects.

Instant Consulting: This business model facilitates the ability to show value to the client from the earliest opportunity.  Agility is key and as a result, clients often benefit over a very short period of time.  Gamification is often employed with short running games designed to teach client employees the basics of a concept very quickly.

At Passle we actually use gamification on a regular basis with our professional service clients and to this point, it really helps drive behavioural change in a short space of time by tapping into the competitive nature of fee earners.