Marketing for Accountants: 3 Strategies for Making It Happen ... Structured Learning! (Part 2 of Article)

Michael Carter - Thursday, August 11, 2011 - Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

In Part 1 of this article series I gave you some tips on the types of deadlines that help (and don't help) you get active with your firm's marketing. After all, marketing is so very easy to postpone.

This second tip is crucial. Whenever I think of it, I'm reminded of this ...

Years ago, up late one night channel surfing, I stumbled across a Michael Parkinson chat show interview with Woody Allen. Allen was, at one point, giving his views on the benefits of structured, formal learning, versus self-education where you pick and choose books to read. He said that structured learning, like degrees and diplomas, are good because they give you something clear to work towards so you are more likely to stick at it; and they also introduce you to subjects that you otherwise probably wouldn't have gravitated towards.

Allen recounted that at one stage in his life, he decided he wanted to expand his vocabulary and really improve his mastery of the English language. He figured that he didn't need to sign up to a formal course for this because he had all he needed ... the dictionary. He started at 'A' and set about going through until he came across a word he didn't know. He'd read the definition, think about it, learn it off by heart, work out how he could use it in a sentence, and then he spent the next day or so using that word whenever the opportunity arose. Once he felt he'd mastered the use of that word, he'd move onto the next word. Allen said he kept at this quite diligently until he got half-way through 'D'. Then he stopped doing it. He ran out of steam with it. Then he said something to Parkinson, in true Woody Allen style, along the lines of, "And you know what? To this day, I still have an amazing vocabulary across A, B and C and I'm pretty good with D words too. The rest of the alphabet, I'm pretty average. Never got there. Probably never will." He then reeled off a very funny and verbose sentence using very long and obscure words beginning with A, B and C. The guy cracks me up.

The point of the story?

The same applies 100% to learning how to market your accounting or advisory firm.

These days, the equivalent of Allen's dictionary is the internet. There is a plethora of information freely available on the web, and whilst most, like most content on the self-publishing world of the web is pretty ordinary, much of this information is terrific.

But ... it's fragmented.

You can pick up bits and pieces of information here and there, and (if you're in a minority) then apply the strategies, tips and techniques. However, without a structured program with a clear end point, you might—like Allen—lose steam 'halfway through D' and give up on it.

And because marketing is one of the highest ROI activities you can do in business, losing steam, not making progress, is costly. Massively costly in terms of the opportunity cost to your business.

Even in the days before the web, the fragmented nature of self-education applied.

Think about the business and self-development books you gravitate towards when you walk into a bookstore (or if you no longer walk into book stores (I know I don't anymore), think about the books you gravitate towards on Amazon.com or Audible.com). Typically, you will gravitate either towards authors you like, and/or subject matter that you enjoy and in which you already have a certain level of proficiency. Or ... you will choose subjects that you know will help you address a challenge you know you have in front of you.

But what about subject areas where you "don't even know what you don't know". These are the 'blind spots' in your knowledge that you are not even aware that you have.

Not yet.

In my own experience, I recall when I was doing my MBA in Entrepreneurship and New Venture Management (a.k.a. Start Ups) that there were subjects I was forced to do as core subjects and I was dreading them. I'd trudge along to these subjects and then, more often than not, find that I found them fascinating and really valuable in the workplace. In my case, these were finance subjects. I ended up enjoying them so much I did lots of them and ended up with one of my majors in Finance.

This never would have happened outside of a structured learning program. Never. There is no way I would have picked up the finance books in the bookstore. No way in the world.

I didn't know what I didn't know in this area.

And so it is with you and your team's education about marketing.

You may not know, what you don't yet know.

You might be self-educating on the topic, reading a book here and there, going to a conference presentation here and there. If so, your education about marketing is likely to be fragmented, incomplete, unstructured.

And structure really matters. So do clear end points and actions.

Knowing these principles, we've designed our marketing training and implementation support program, The Clientshare Academy, to have a very clear structure. It starts out with 10 modules: The first 5 modules are about marketing, the second 5 modules are about selling.

We define marketing as the one-to-many communication of value, and selling as the one-to-one communication of value. There's an art and a science to it (and these days, plenty of technology and tools too), and we specialise in teaching accounting and advisory firms all about marketing and selling.

Each module in the Academy program also has a clear structure. There's a Class video, a list of Next Actions (Tasks) to complete, 2 weeks later a Nuts & Bolts video, then a Test to complete, as well as reporting in on your completion of the Next Actions.

Education + Action = Results.

Education on its own is just a theoretical exercise, and makes very little difference in the world (including in your firm). Action (especially in the area of marketing) not based on a solid, structured education is likely to be ineffective and wasteful, both in terms of your time and money.

In Part 3 of this article we'll explore another strategy that supports you in achieving competency in marketing your accounting and advisory firm.