Berbay's Blog: Marketing for law firms, engineers, CPAs, architects and other professional services

I attended a networking event this morning and heard Jonathan Fitzgarrald, Chief Marketing Officer with Greenburg Glusker, give a presentation on personal branding. Mr. Fitzgarrald opened the presentation by showing us photos of people almost anyone would recognize: Oprah, Lindsay Lohan, “The Situation” from Jersey Shore, etc. He asked everyone, first, to blurt out the initial thought they had when they saw these pictures and, second, if that impression had changed over time. The group was unanimous in the words it used to describe these people: The celebrities clearly had personal brands. This exercise was designed to show that personal branding exists, and that the impressions we make on our clients, friends, co-workers, etc., create a reputation and make a difference.

One key part of Mr. Fitzgarrald’s presentation concerned likeability. Being likable, Mr. Fitzgerrald said, is one of the top factors that create your reputation and personal brand. I thought this was very interesting. We’re always trying to differentiate ourselves from the competition. Many of us focus on providing high-quality service, a personal touch, even alternative fee arrangements; being likable is not among the first five items on the list. Likeability comes down to being genuinely interested in what people are saying—listening more than you talk and really adding something to the conversation.I attended a networking event this morning and heard Jonathan Fitzgarrald, Chief Marketing Officer with Greenburg Glusker, give a presentation on personal branding. Mr. Fitzgarrald opened the presentation by showing us photos of people almost anyone would recognize: Oprah, Lindsay Lohan, “The Situation” from Jersey Shore, etc. He asked everyone, first, to blurt out the initial thought they had when they saw these pictures and, second, if that impression had changed over time. The group was unanimous in the words it used to describe these people: The celebrities clearly had personal brands. This exercise was designed to show that personal branding exists, and that the impressions we make on our clients, friends, co-workers, etc., create a reputation and make a difference.

Mr. Fitzgarrald closed with a personal story about how, when he and his five siblings would get too noisy while out to dinner with his parents, his dad would lean over and say, “People are watching.” The moral was that we should always bear in mind that “people are watching,” treating everybody (regardless of their professional stature) as if we were being judged on it. We should also behave consistently, Mr. Fitzgarrald said—dressing decently even to go grocery shopping, for example. What if you ran into a prospective client in your pajamas? Our behavior, even at the supermarket, plays into our personal brand.

What do you think of your personal brand?

It’s clear that technology is changing the business landscape, and will continue to revolutionize the way we do business.  This change has been significant for some companies such as Amazon and Groupon, and severely detrimental for others such as brick-and-mortar stores. For Berbay, it’s exciting to learn about new technologies that can help us market our clients’ businesses, from QR Codes (read our recent QR Codes blog) to capturing leads on the Internet.

Our latest “refreshing” experience with new technology came when we received a phone call from a prospective client who found us through the Internet. I answered the call, and initially it went as expected for a typical prospect conversation: The person asked me about who we are, what services we offer, what types of clients we work with, and so on. Five minutes into the call, the prospective client asked if I would be willing to Skype with him.

At first, I was a little taken aback by this request, because I had never been asked to Skype with anyone except my out-of-state cousin and brother. On the other hand, I was impressed by the prospective client’s  knowledge of this kind of technology, as we frequently have to educate our clients on these types of programs. Although Skype has been around for years and is widely used, I had never used it professionally.

The prospective client and I had a one hour Skype conversation, discussing his firm’s needs and our services. I realized that on a Skype call, you have to pay attention to your posture, eye contact, etc.—all the things you would consider in an in-person meeting, but not on a conference call.

In the end, it was a very successful call.  I was able to get to know the prospective client on a more personal level than I would have on a usual conference call. For Berbay, the experience opened a whole new door to face time: Now getting face time with a client doesn’t have to mean sitting across from one another—it can be as simple as a free Skype account.

What do you think about the effectiveness of Skype calls with prospective clients?

Who is the last naked lady? Well, first, she’s not always a who; sometimes, she’s a what. Second, she takes many forms (sometimes even professional services marketing-related, I swear; bear with me). Most of all, the last naked lady is difficult to relinquish, though her relinquishment brings greater rewards than her possession.

OK, OK—enough riddles. The last naked lady is an idea. It came to me after a male friend of mine told me why, even after having dated his then-girlfriend, now-wife, for about five years, he feared the commitment of marriage: “I was afraid to commit to the fact that she could be the last naked lady.”

This friend now has been happily married for more than 20 years. In retrospect, he admits his fear was misguided. But, of course, he’s not alone in having felt that way. Man or woman, in our relationships and in our careers, we are often afraid to commit to being whom we want to be (or, sometimes, whom we already are) and bid adieu to the last naked lady—to our other options.

Among Berbay’s clients, this fear of commitment takes the form of professional services firms being scared to define what they do—to declare, “Our focus is representing entrepreneurs in the food industry,” instead of, “Our focus is representing entrepreneurs in general” (Ever tried to find those general entrepreneurs, much less, cost-effectively market to them?).

Why this fear? Why do our clients have such trepidation about targeting a defined market? It’s understandable, really. They’re concerned that if they promote themselves as focusing on one or two areas, prospective clients and referral sources won’t think of them for opportunities outside those fields. But, in reality, more often the opposite happens: A referral source thinks of a client because it has a specific, memorable focus. The referral source comes to the client and says, “I realize you specialize in food-industry entrepreneurs, but a widget entrepreneur I know has a need. Can you work with her?”

Of course you can. Let the last naked lady go, and you’ll find you never needed her after all.

I did something in a meeting yesterday that I had never done before.

I and a Berbay account manager met with a few members of a prospective client firm. At some point in our discussion, one of the prospects mentioned that he was a friend of one of our former clients (I’ll call her Jane Doe), and that he had seen her name on the list of representative clients on our website. He asked me what Jane Doe would say about Berbay if he asked her about us.

Here’s the thing: Our experience with Jane Doe didn’t work out that well. We have many satisfied clients, but naturally, we’ve had some clients for whom we weren’t a good fit (and vice versa). Jane Doe was one of them.

I didn’t get the chance to answer the prospect’s question right when he asked it, but at the end of the meeting, I said, “Listen: I’ve never done this before, but I’ll tell you that if you ask Jane Doe about us, you won’t hear great things. We’ve been around for a long time; we have a lot of happy clients, but not everyone works out. But I would recommend you talk to her and see what she says.”

Like I said, this was a first for me. I didn’t want to sit around after the conversation, worrying about whether the prospect would actually get in touch with Jane Doe, and what she’d say. I wanted (like any good PR pro, I suppose) to take the bull by the horns. Who knows what the prospect actually thought, but he did say he appreciated the honesty.

The entire episode leaves me with two questions:

1. The obvious one: Did I do the right thing to address our experience with Jane Doe head-on?
2. The prospect had seen his friend’s name listed among our representative clients on our website. Should clients that weren’t 100% satisfied with us be listed on our website? We include them because, whether or not our experience with those clients was positive, it was still an experience—we learned from it, and it helps us work better with other clients today.

Readers, what do you think?

In making the rounds of my Saturday errands this morning, I used the products and services of two different business people who understood the importance of the quality of their marketing materials.  We’re still human beings and even in this digital age, can’t get around the fact that touch and feel convey a lot about your business. Not just whether it’s a quality business but whether you believe that it’s a quality business, and whether you believe it’s worth investing in.  These providers conveyed their message not just through their corporate identity – the look and feel of their logo, but also through the firm, solid stock they used for their business cards.

Israel Garcia is a hair stylist and make-up artist at Gavert Atelier salon in Beverly Hills (310-858-7898). Awhile back he developed his own corporate identity and when I took another of his cards this morning, I remarked on the solid stock.  It’s clear he understood the importance of aligning his marketing materials with his positioning in the marketplace.  We extolled the weight and solidity of the paper stock, the fact that the black didn’t show fingerprints, and the spot varnish on his logo. I was impressed that he recognized these points, because most professionals don’t understand the difference factors like this can make.

Then, I happened on the Dana Davis pop-up store in Beverly Hills.  I wasn’t familiar with her line of shoes (www.danadavis.com), which I’ll be a fan of going forward, but again, we ended up talking about marketing material because I commented on the quality and solid stock of her business card.  I also liked her marketing brochure, which to me seemed an adequate weight, but she whipped out one from the previous batch, the way she’d really wanted them done, which was on a heavier stock and very nice.

What does this have to do with marketing your professional service?  How often do I stifle a cringe when a lawyer, wealth manager, or real estate developer—all of whom are targeting high end markets — hand me their business card on paper-thin stock.   Sometimes, they’ve made the investment in developing a firm identify – a key step in branding themselves, but they’ve put it on cheap stock, which belies their positioning.

The business people this morning understood the fact that all of your marketing pieces fit together to reinforce your message to the marketplace.