The Integration Imperative:
 Erasing Marketing and Business Development Silos – Once and for All – in Professional Service Firms
By Suzanne C. Lowe
Professional Services Books, 2009
How can Professional Service Firms (PSFs) and Business-to-Business Firms (B2Bs) overcome their marketing and business development silos? And how can they know that their strategy is assured success in the future? In her new book, The Integration Imperative: Erasing Marketing and Business Development Silos – Once and for All – in Professional Service Firms (Professional Services Books, 2009), Suzanne Lowe provides a nuanced analysis and solution for the disconnection between marketing and selling.
Following her successful Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win (Praeger, 2004), Suzanne explains that effectiveness, i.e. productivity, is the biggest concern for today’s PSF and B2B executive managers, marketers and business developers. Between competitive pressures, rapid technological changes, and savvy clients, professional firms must adapt their go-to-market practices to achieve more sophisticated strategic goals. The reactionary, rather passive marketing and business development approaches used by tradition-bound firms simply won’t work in today’s hyperactive business environment. And more importantly, individual marketing tools can be rendered ineffective if not worked on collectively.
Most executive managers and leaders do not sit idly, Suzanne acknowledges. They’re already welcoming the initiative and professional passion of their marketing and business development professionals. Most leaders are proactive, forward thinkers.
Many leaders, however, haven’t yet figured out how to integrate marketing and business development throughout their organizations. Nor have they successfully embedded marketing and business development into every person’s job. This leaves the PSF or B2B at a significant competitive risk and financial vulnerability. Suzanne reflects:
 I wrote this book because I believe marketing and business development functions are the most critical engines for the growth of a professional or business-to-business service firm. Period. Together, these functions propel a firm forward in every way – helping it adapt to the shifting needs of its clients and serving as the springboard for mutually beneficial relationships between experts and clients. Integrating each person’s involvement in marketing and business development, using the structural models and cultural approaches described in this book, gives an organization exponential advantages on many fronts. It’s a competitive imperative.
Indeed, in order for PSFs and B2Bs to overcome their marketing and business development silos, Suzanne advocates integrating marketing and business development into every function, by reconfiguring the firm’s structural frameworks and initiating new cultural paradigms.
The book features cutting-edge research findings, outlines a set of emerging best practices, and offers a series of templates that can be adapted by professional firm managers. The Integration Imperative is a must-read for all decision-makers in PSF or B2B firms.
Founder of Expertise Marketing LLC, Suzanne is a highly regarded consultant, author, and speaker on professional service marketing and management strategy. In addition to The Integration Imperative, she is the author of Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win (Praeger, 2004) and numerous published articles. She also publishes her monthly newsletter, The Marketplace Master™, and a blog, The Expertise Marketplace™.
To learn more about The Integration Imperative, click here and then click on the book's cover. You'll also learn about other books authored by our emersongroup client thoughtleaders. Just scroll down the page to view our many thoughtleaders' books!
OUR CONFIDENTIALITY
POLICY: Your email address stays with us. We do not sell or transfer
ANY subscriber contact info.
TO
UNSUBSCRIBE: This mailing has been sent as a courtesy to help make
your job of finding speakers easier! If you would like to be removed
from this list, click on the "Safe Unsubscribe" link below.
about emerson consulting group
emerson consulting group transforms consultants, attorneys, finance experts, executives and companies into successful "thoughtleaders" via publishing, speaking engagements, research projects, the Internet and other thoughtleading channels. Learn more by visiting our website or by calling 978-371-0442. Sign up for our free monthly "thoughtnotes" by filling in the subscriber box in the left-hand margin on our website.
CHECK IT OUT! Our Chief Imaginative Officer (CIO) Ken Lizotte's book The Expert's Edge: Become The Go-To Authority People Turn To Every Time (McGraw Hill) outlines in detail how to transform you and your firm into the gurus and leaders of your field. Available at Amazon and in bookstores everywhere. Click here to learn more.
Thoughtleading Website
Ken Lizotte, Chief Imaginative Officer (CIO), 978-371-0442
Email Us
voice: 978-371-0442 |
