The missed growth opportunity for Professional Service’s Firms

Sales targets – The uncharted territory for professional service specialists

Professional service specialists dedicate the majority of their careers to curating and mastering a certain set of tailored skills in order to become ‘specialists’. 

In a path where exercising duty of care is requisite, the demonstration and application of expertise is the pillar to a successful service. In parallel, these specialists also build a positive reputation for themselves, alongside an impressive industry network. 

This trust, credibility and competence constructed through years of practice enables higher volume of client referrals, recommendations from channel partners and general world of mouth. All low cost high success client generating avenues, tapping into these networks and established reputation is an appealing and opportunistic asset for Professional Service Firms. 

However, there lies a problem in this approach.

These specialists have not spent years training to shift gears from client-facing responsibilities to generating revenue and expanding the firm’s clientele.

Now presented with a sales target for the first time, the question immediately becomes, how do I effectively and efficiently leverage my network and relationships to build firm-level growth and revenue? Faced with the hardship of now being a specialist in the wrong field, without a detailed growth and market engagement plan in place, this question is impossible to answer. 

Market engagement plans – How to grow in uncharted territory 

The process of turning professional service partners (previously specialists) into sales and marketing people is a challenging task, especially in an already saturated market. 

To aid in this process and ensure their established networks and relationships are correctly utilised and capitalised on, both the firm and partner need to collaborate to build a personalised go-to-market plan. 

Tailored specifically to the partner, the process provides a highly structured tactical plan that is market-ready. This consists of multiple door-opening pitches, competitor analysis, segmentation, targeting by role, and a library of sales tools including email and LinkedIn templates, highly targeted campaigns, and a nurturing plan.

Built through collaboration and ready to be delivered by the individual, the documented plan not only instills confidence that the sales target and growth objectives can be met but also provides an opportunity for all parties to build and approve the go-to-market plan.

In a market where the company and brand messaging relayed to the market is commonly inconsistent, this process presents an unmarked opportunity to have strong market awareness. 

How does GrowSure help Professional services company to grow?

GrowSure is a highly detailed go to market process and software assisted by Advisors that captures knowledge and build actions enabling effective contact and ongoing relationship building with buyers.

We help companies identify who their buyers are and how to engage with them.

You cannot underestimate the importance of messaging to market and one of the biggest mistakes we see is messaging only targeting prospects ready to buy today which excludes prospects not yet at that stage. We build messaging to engage, to inform and then to nurture so companies are speaking to the market prior to an event such as a tender renewal, a legal incident or a legislative change in accounting.

So maybe growth is not about an increase in spend it may be about getting more from your existing spend.