John: 0:00

As a consultant who serves professional services firms, I hear it all the time. Our business is different. Our buyers are different, our market is different. Well, when everyone's different, is everyone really the same? I think that there's a lot of interesting takeaways that we can learn from looking across industries and across different verticals in professional services. Let's talk about it on the podcast. Alright. Welcome business developers, marketers, owners, doers, sellers, and all business development professionals to the Breaking Biz Dev podcast. I'm John. He's Mark, and today we're going to bring you a cross pollination of ideas. Different strengths across different professional services industries. So I'm excited for this conversation today. Mark, how you feeling?

Mark: 1:07

I am. I am. Great. How are you today, John?

John: 1:10

I am doing well and I am, uh, I'm excited at this, about this one because we brought in some different research. Uh, we both have perspective as consultants who serve professional services firms, uh, we see across industries. So I think that, this episode will help. Maybe folks that are stuck in their own echo chamber. Break out a little bit and branch out a little bit.

Mark: 1:36

I totally agree. I I'm gonna credit you on this one. I'm pretty sure you came up with this idea. I think it's fantastic. We have this Venn diagram overlap here at the podcast and the fact that we talk about professional services. You and I came from different. Different directions And I have been fortunate, to have worked with just enough professional services firms in different industries to see a, the screaming need, or the opportunity rather for this. So yeah, this is great.

John: 2:06

Yeah. so the way that this episode is structured is we are going to kind of break down what that core problem is, and then we've done some independent research and organization around like what different industry verticals do Well, And I think it's, it's, worth kind of going over and giving some industries, some, some props for things that they do well. So we'll talk about architecture engineers and construction firms, what accounting firms do better., What agencies are good at and what wealth management firms are good at, and where we'll talk about service offerings and pricing and different models for, revenue. so these are all different areas that are applicable you know, across all these different industries. so Mark, let's break down this core problem here. You know, why, do firms get stuck in that echo chamber?

Mark: 2:58

Well, it's, easy to see that, you know, as, experts within a particular industry kind of growth throughout their career, they kind of understand what they do and, they're insulated from other, other industries

John: 3:14

yeah,

Mark: 3:14

All these different professionals will work together at some point. But they don't perceive what they do and the, the work they deliver to their clients and how they charge them and, you know, the results and all that stuff as similar. Even in the same kinda universe. So the walls go down and, as time goes on, we're less and less aware of what's happening around us and more focused insularly, on ourselves rather than what else is out there.

John: 3:44

Focused on ourselves. And then if we do decide to branch out, focused on what others in the industry. Are doing, but not necessarily what others in other industries are doing. And so I think it's like those degrees of separation and that's why, you know, we are in a unique position to be able to help firm owners and, you know, marketers and sales professionals out there. so let's start with the architects, the engineers, and the construction firms out there. So that a EC, kind of segment of the professional services mark, um, marketplace.

Mark: 4:15

Yeah.

John: 4:15

in my own experience and then in kind of like looking at some of the research out there, a EC firms really have an advantage when it comes to using that doer seller model. And so where someone who is responsible for delivering on work also is responsible for winning new work.

Mark: 4:35

I've worked with architects and engineers for decades at this point, John aging myself, so this is a good one to start with. Because, a EC industry would look and say, well, yeah, it's a really popular model inside of this, world. I'm surprised that it's not elsewhere and it's not right. There's a lot of professional services firms who have, these responsibilities divided, amongst other people. And then there's engineers out there that I work with that are like, oh wait, I want that. I don't wanna have to do the work and sell the work. I, I, I, I just wanna do the work and I want someone else completely focused on that. So, but as we've talked about in the past, doer seller model is a fantastic model. It puts the practitioner in direct communication and contact with the clients and the prospective clients, and that's an ideal situation for the clients. Right? So this is a good place to start.

John: 5:25

Yeah. So I think first I'd actually, I wanna start with, recently, hinge Marketing does this ongoing study, this annual study called their High Growth Study. And one of the things they do is they look at. The fastest growing firms across industries and what do they do differently than slower growing firms. And, I work with the team and I was able to take a look at some of the recent results. And one thing that really stood out to me was that high growth firms across, different size brackets, employ twice as many doer sellers than low growth firms. So doer sellers made up about a third of small high growth firms compared to 16% of low growth firms, 14% of mid-size compared to 5.2% of no growth firms in that same category, 17% of large firms versus 6.6% of low growth firms in that same category, so like across different sizes, you'd think that as firms get bigger, maybe that percentage would go down relatively. But when it comes to looking at the organizations that are growing faster than the others, they employ more doer sellers. So there's a clear connection to fast growth when it comes to the number of doer sellers you have within your organization,

Mark: 6:46

I love it. And, and that, completely intuitive to me, and I may not be to others just because whenever you have the doer, seller model and you have more and more people in your firm to whatever degree finding and winning new work that lets you scale your business development capability rather than just continuing to load more and more on the shoulders of fewer and fewer. So I'm, I'm all. I'm all bought in on, on that one. Makes

John: 7:15

So you're listeners are probably, okay, well wait a second. You just said that that study looks across different verticals. Like we, I thought we were talking about a EC. Well, when we take a look at another piece of research out there in the marketplace, again, we're, we're connecting dots here. So Standby Nest did a 2024 a EC business development report. And so it's relatively recent. They looked at 300 a EC firms in the study. And between 80 and 95% of a EC firms in the study use that doer seller model. So it's highly, um, used method within a EC firms, and that's why I wanted to kind of lead with that hinge finding, but then show that a EC firms have a lot more seller doers,

Mark: 8:02

doer, seller model is, different from the rainmaker model, the founder led model, dedicated sales team model, all that, all that sort of stuff, right? So that's kind of what we're talking about here. So clearly a e, C. Uses and leverages the doer seller model really well, not the case in other industries. Is that, is that right John?

John: 8:23

Yeah. I think that's the big takeaway here is that other industries can really kind of look at what architects, engineering firms and construction companies are doing and emulate that model. being known as like a recognized authority within your space. You gotta lean on your experience doing the work and being able to sell it. So I've seen this be effective in accounting firms. I've seen this be effective within marketing agencies. But you're right though that I don't think that those industries in of themselves and in, employ this methodology as frequently as a EC firms.

Mark: 9:02

Yeah. Yeah. All right, great. So a EC Rocking with the, doer seller model. Others, surprisingly less so. So good. Alright, next we talk about accounting firms.

John: 9:15

Yeah, so accounting firms have an advantage too. And so I think as a whole, from my experience and from what I found out there, in my research is that accounting firms. tend to be more digitally mature. Then some other industries like a EC, in looking at this and like, I think we, we had some like specific industry segments, marketing agencies being one of them, right? I think marketing agencies need to be digitally mature in order to survive.

Mark: 9:44

Sure. Sure.

John: 9:45

So there's like a, a necessity there. but. I think accounting firms kind of took this, and I think that they kind of lead the way. the Association for Accounting Marketing does a budget benchmark study, And, their most recent one found that 91% of the fastest growing accounting firms have a line item for SEO in their marketing budgets.

Mark: 10:10

And some marketing team at an architecture and engineering firm says, we just have a line item for our website.

John: 10:16

for our website, Right? And any additional investment. You got a claw for budget to be able to take out of that for SEO. But search is constantly evolving and it is a proven method to generate leads. In professional services and nine outta 10 high growth accounting firms have SEO as a dedicated line item.

Mark: 10:40

yeah. this hearkens me back. I know we did an episode on, on lead generation, and how there's certain industries out there, not the least of which are aforementioned architects, engineers, those folks believe that marketing. Doesn't do lead generation and that, it's all backs, slaps and handshakes. So,

John: 10:58

Yep. That study also found that those high growth, accounting firms were more likely to invest in like marketing technology, social media management, CRMs, email marketing automation. So there's a clear correlation in the accounting industry with faster growth and more adoption of digital marketing initiatives.

Mark: 11:19

The brain races for all the reasons why, other professional services firms wouldn't do this, And I'm sure somebody who's listening to this podcast at some point in the future is like, oh wow, now it's 2028 and we're doing 10 times that, you know, but to believe that, there is, a need to invest. or become more digitally mature, as you put it across all professional services, is super naive.

John: 11:46

Work. It's, it's also increasingly more challenging too because the, the nature of, the, the rapid advancement of technology means that digital marketing is becoming increasingly more complex. How firms are responding is less of hiring people in-house with those skills and more working with specialists outside the organization. And in my experience working with mid-size professional services firms like that key point of contact is usually a marketing director within those firms, like a marketing manager might not be experienced enough to be able to coordinate with like a many different external resources. And this is a very, very common position in the accounting industry, but what found was really, really interesting is we mentioned that stand bond nest report earlier. within that report, it shows that less than half of those firms had that marketing director position internally. So knowing the importance of that position and knowing that less than half of a EC firms have that position in-house, tells me that they're lagging a little bit more behind in terms of digital maturity.

Mark: 13:00

Yeah. And if you want to look at your organization and say, we are digitally mature, you have to be doing something now, and learning and progressing and growing and changing and paying attention to the changes in the industry and, the changes across the digital landscape and all the technologies and everything else.

John: 13:18

Yeah, find one channel and expand. yeah. totally.

Mark: 13:21

Good, good, good. All right, next one here. agencies, and we're talking about marketing agencies, creative agencies,

John: 13:32

Yeah,

Mark: 13:32

you know, that kind of stuff. They are really good at account management. This makes me chuckle, John, because I was an account manager at a marketing agency for a brief period of time. I recall being not fantastic at it. but I had that role for sure. So, yeah, so this is our third point here. Agencies like that, marketing agencies, digital agencies, creative agencies are really good at account management.

John: 13:57

I've been in. agencies, my whole life. Right now I'm running a growing agency. So I understand the importance of account management, the importance of, what is known as upsell, cross sell. I've heard that, account expansion is, it's also called, it's like, expanding into existing accounts is much easier and requires less resources than winning new logos. Agencies do this. very, very well. A lot of times they'll bring in sales consultants to help with the team. There's some that are organized with doer seller models for existing account expansion, but then dedicated new di new business development professionals for new logo acquisition. one thing that I've noticed in agencies that I, I wanna bring up and I think other professional services industries can learn from this, is the concept of pods. Have you heard of this?

Mark: 14:46

Um, I mean, I can picture it,

John: 14:48

Yeah. So a pod is, is essentially like, imagine like we've talked about being in orbit around your client

Mark: 14:54

Right,

John: 14:55

right. So within an agency, think of like, okay, we have this one client account and we're gonna organize our team around this client account. So we're gonna take, we're gonna bring in one dedicated, using the agency example, we're gonna take a PPC person, we're gonna take an SEO person, we're gonna take a design person. We're gonna take a video person, and this is gonna be the core team around this client and other clients like that. And so this pod team becomes like the core team instead of, a lot of times agencies organize around departments like we have an SEO team and we have a paid media team, and we have a design team. So this is a little bit of a reframe on your internal organization of specialists and people who deliver on the work.

Mark: 15:44

Yeah.

John: 15:44

but Yeah. so agencies do that really well, and I think other industries could benefit from it.

Mark: 15:48

Smaller, professional services firms are not going to be able to just add this new layer of staff that are all sort of account managers. What I would say mostly we're talking about here is account management sort of process or an account management sort of mindset. You know where we are. Centering ourselves, around our clients and with that type of approach rather than, staying, internally siloed, so it's as much of an approach and a mindset as it is having people in your organization who are account managers and some firms may call these people, client managers or client success. Sure. And we start to wander into the software as a service sort of industry when we start using some of those terms. But marketing agencies excel at this. And a ton of professional services firms out there do not recognize the need or the opportunity for this. For sure.

Mark Wainwright: 16:52

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 16:54

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright: 17:08

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman: 17:18

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright: 17:24

and now back to the show.

John: 17:28

Alright, so we've got, um, our next one here is from the wealth management space. And Mark, this is one that you have some experience with, wealth management firms, leverage centers of influence. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Mark: 17:43

Yeah. So to define centers of influence, internally referenced as the acronym COIs in firms like this, and the whole concept of centers of influence, would be, you know, a, wealth manager who, surrounds themself with complimentary professional service consultants that can serve the same, population or, client base. Right? So you can picture this, a wealth manager would want to surround themselves with. Legal, with accounting, with, real estate, and there are more actually. I work with an environmental consulting firm who connects themselves very closely with. Legal and with, real estate, brokers who are buying and selling properties and things like that, and properties need to be assessed for their environmental concerns, all that sort of stuff. So, but wealth management this is like oxygen to them. It's like this is their foundational methodology for finding and winning new clients is creating these strong networks and they refer to these individuals in the networks as centers of influence where they either surround around themselves or they put themselves in orbit around these or partner with these other, consultants who offer complimentary services around particular clients. It is a built-in system for, referrals, It is a built-in system for account and client management because inevitably when you have a handful of experts, consultants that are working with the same client, significant changes in the client's life can impact everyone. So

John: 19:35

that's a good point.

Mark: 19:37

in the wealth management, example, whether they're dealing with, an individual, you know. Clients or they're managing the funds of a foundation or something like that, right? Significant changes within the individual, the organization's lives, sense of ripple across all of these folks. So, the more in tune and collaborative and connected they are, the better off the better off they are. So,

John: 19:59

That's, that's really interesting because, you know, I imagine, you know, obviously relationships is important across industries too. that's kind of a layup in a given, but I think here it really like, it seems like this wealth managers specifically overinvest in those relationships, right? That's like the core part of their strategy.

Mark: 20:17

Yeah. One of the terms I use often is co-opetition in that, your typical engineering firm has to collaborate with other consulting firms in order to get Something done. Because all these disciplines are very specific. So there's a lot of collaboration and cooperation that has to happen, but that varies, project to project client to client, job. Job, right? So, having a a really good network around us would be really, really helpful. We could serve our clients really, really well. But, very few of the firms that I know ever get into that tight relationship with others, because of this, because they could find themselves competing the next week. And it, it happens all the time. And it's just, it's just really, odd. You can understand how it happens,

John: 21:06

yeah,

Mark: 21:06

but it's just kind of, it's just kind of odd so a frenetic thing and, the outcome of all of it starts to erode that trust that's needed to build these really strong, centers of influence

John: 21:19

Is that insulated though by it being accepted as an, as an industry norm, right? Is it just like, Yeah. that's just, you know, what it, what it is in the a EC world,

Mark: 21:30

Yeah, But the downside of it is, that one of the fantastic products of these centers of influence relationships where we're networked really tightly together referrals. Right. It's, the a EC industry has this, awkward. Relationship with referrals. And most think that referrals are, the only thing they're gonna be is sort of this serendipitous little, emails that end up in their inbox. As I've talked about, referrals can and should be an important part of people's new business strategy. Not the whole thing, but it needs to be an important part of it. And these proactive referrals are really important. So, it really handcuffs the whole idea of referrals because people are less and less willing to share clients in the same way that wealth managers and accountants and legal, do it very, comfortably and they kind of have to. Right? Because the downside is all the things we've mentioned.

John: 22:22

if We were to take that centers of influence concept and apply that to some other industries, like if we were to think about it from like the marketing agency world. I could see how like other niche agencies, like a web design agency or like a social media marketing agency, if you are like a boutique agency, like I could see how those could be like centers of influence, like teaming partners. I could also see how it, it plays out like the a EC industry where it's like, oh, well, you know, hey, who, who's gonna be the prime? Who's gonna own the relationship with the client and bring the other one in? In the agency world though, I think what might be a little bit different though is employees that come through, because oftentimes agencies are, like a starter track For marketing professionals to work through and then become like a marketing director on the brand side, right? And then they then become a prospective buyer of the agency services. So there's like a center of influence with employees long term that I think some agencies do really, really well in terms of nurturing that and maintaining those relationships post that employee leaving the company. So we've got one last little like piece that we want to take a look at It's how different types of professional services firms price their services.

Mark: 23:47

Yeah. So in wealth management, it's, completely industry standard. There are some organizations in wealth management who are starting to price their services, differently. But this one, typically you will find that most wealth management firms, price, their services based on a percentage of a UM and a UM are assets under management. So if the wealth management firm is charging 1% off of, assets under management, then they have a client who has a million dollars under, under management. They, they charge them 10,000, you know, for their services. And the, the notion there is that as the client's assets grow, and hopefully the wealth management firm is a direct contributor to that, then the wealth management firm's, fees, their price will, will increase. And everybody nods and says that that's a completely wonderful thing, but there's a bunch of stuff that happens that's, that's kind of crazy on, on, on that end of things. It's, someone's assets can grow due to macro factors that the managers have almost nothing to do with yet they make more money on the flip side. Assets take a nose dive. They start making less money, but the demands and the needs of the clients like double, you know,

John: 25:05

Yeah. Oh, that's a good point.

Mark: 25:07

so that model, I'm not saying it's a fantastic model, I'm saying it's a different model. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So that's a, different, model. some folks in the a EC could equate that to we base our, fees or what we charge off of a percentage of construction. Design firms, architects, engineers who are, busy designing the building, will design something and an estimated sort of construction price, so they will base their fees on that. conceptually, there's this sort of, as this big number goes up, our number will go up as well as that big number goes down, our number will go down as well.

John: 25:46

I've seen that a similar thing play out in the agency world where they'll charge based on a percent of ad spend or they'll charge like a fixed fee, and then on top of that, it's a percent of return on ad spend as like a bonus for getting a positive ROI or roas, as they say in the agency world.

Mark: 26:06

Yeah, so a flat amount. this is common in some industries, even a to the point where, it's a productized offering and it's an off the shelf sort of thing and they can come in and they can do it and they charge$10,000 for it and they make a massive profit'cause they can do it super easily. And they've done this in the past. So that's moves more towards a productized service. It Breaks the model because a lot of times, whether it's a creative agency or whether it's an architecture firm, whatever else is that everyone looks at each, client, each problem they face as completely bespoke and it ends up being super expensive to work on, so looking at productized services is really important. in accounting and legal and other industries, everything's based on the hourly rate, you know? Right. It's, you know, your, your accountant is doing something, charge you for 15 minutes of this or that, or whatever else. You know, your lawyer charges you a ton of money. Per hour. even architects, engineers and others in that world there are still completely tied and focused on the billable hour. And we've, sliced and diced the whole sort of billable hour mindset, John, in the past. But that's a pricing model that exists out there as well.

John: 27:21

That's exactly right. Our, our goal with this is to plant seeds of new ideas that you can borrow from other industries, and I think the, the examples that we've laid out today are highly relevant across these professional services industries. But I don't think you need to stop there. Like, um, I've drawn inspiration from B2C companies, right? It's like, oh wow, that's a great, you know, marketing tactic, or that's a great way to position their, the message that they're trying to convey. So, Yeah. I think like the challenge here to our listeners is to open up your mind and think outside of your industry and take some of these ideas that aren't in your industry and think to yourself. How can I apply this to my own business? Does this make sense? What would that look like as just an exploratory exercise?

Mark: 28:13

Yeah. And I guarantee, that professionals in a specific industry that are listening to this are connected to either have friends either personally or professionally that are in these industries. So. Go talk to him. And you know, the cross pollination thing should be happening because hopefully we'll get the best of the best, you know, across all these professional services firms. And you know, you and I, John, have our biases on which. what people should be focused on and what types of pricing models they should be using, et cetera. But, you know, at a minimum, just starting to take the blinders off and look across these different industries, lets you know that, oh, there's actually different ways to run our business, to work with our clients, to price, to Bill, to manage their relationship, you know, to find and win work. So yeah, just go have some conversations?

John: 29:01

Well, mark, this has been another fantastic conversation. hopefully our listeners got some value out of this.

Mark: 29:09

Until next time, John.