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The Golden Triangle. How to achieve marketing competency (and growth) in your firm.
Effective marketing skills and selling skills are keys to business growth. There is no disputing this.Yet, our industry surveys have found that two-thirds to three quarters of the Australian accounting industry is uneducated in the latest marketing and selling skills and technologies.
For example, 41% of our survey respondents have never been trained in marketing and 14% haven't received training in marketing for over 5 years. That's 55% of respondents who have either never been trained or are way out of date.
The statistics are slightly worse for selling skills. 48% of survey respondents have never been trained in selling skills and 16% have not receiving training in over 5 years. So that's a total of 64%, almost two-thirds, of the accounting profession, as surveyed, pays little credence to marketing and selling as skills.
No wonder most firms cite growth as the number one challenge facing them at the moment.
Achieving competence in anything doesn't happen by accident. For a business, there needs to be a clear and focused commitment to acquire a competency across the organisation.
When it comes to marketing, competency can only be achieved by ensuring comprehensive training across three areas. We call this The Golden Triangle:
This applies to any business, not just accounting firms. To develop marketing as a core competence in your business, you need to ensure that three levels of people are trained in the mindset, skills and systems for effective modern marketing:
Number 1 - Leadership. Marketing is strategic. The leader of the firm must understand marketing in order to drive the firm's overall business strategy. Renowned and pioneering business management author Peter F. Drucker asserted, "Because the purpose of a business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has only two functions: marketing and innovation. These produce results. Everything else is a cost."
Number 2 - The Client Manager level. Anyone who meets face-to-face with clients needs to be trained in marketing and professional selling skills. They must understand the psychology of influence. If not, your firm is missing opportunities virtually every day.
Number 3 - The Marketing Coordinator level. This is someone in your administration or support team who is actively involved in the marketing of your firm at the 'keyboard level'. This is about logistical support in making marketing campaigns and events happen.
Unless you have team members trained in each of these three different areas, you will not achieve effective marketing for your accounting business.
So think about this ...
When was the last time you had marketing training for your directors and partners? What about for your accountants and advisors who meet with clients? And have you had one or two team members trained up specifically in how to be an effective Marketing Coordinator?
If you're serious about your marketing, you need to spend at least 5% of revenues on internal marketing resources, that is, in salaries of people in marketing and business development roles; and you should also allocate an additional 3% of revenue for external marketing resources such as training, education, technology and services.
If your firm intends to grow in 2011, ensure your business plan includes a budget and a plan for developing marketing and selling competencies across these three levels of your organisation.
Otherwise growth will continue to be an elusive goal and marketing will remain a mystery to you and your team.
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