Professional services firms, some more than others, have made substantial progress in adapting a content marketing strategy. On a regular basis, they’re posting short blogs and articles on relevant developments in law, accounting rules or other areas that might interest their clients. Forced by restrictions for travel and meeting face-to-fac, most also are active in organizing webinars to communicate their expertise and client cases. So far, so good.
But the goal of a content marketing strategy is to attract potential clients to your business and ultimately convert them into actual, paying clients. So how do you do that, converting interested prospects into clients? Especially now, when everything is taking place online and the opportunities to follow up on a lead in a more personal way seems very limited. This is where many professional services firms struggle.
So, how do you that?
One of the reasons law firms and accountants find it difficult to find new ways to convert prospects into clients (or even converting leads into prospects) is the limited knowledge of online tools for collaboration and communication. The use of whiteboards and interactive tools still for instance, is undiscovered territory for most. Due to lockdowns and the shift to online work, most are familiar with video conferencing and hosting webinars to broadcast expert opinions and case studies. But they recognize the lack of interaction that is imbedded in this unidirectional way of communicating. As one business developer said to me “we had a very successful webinar, in terms of the number of participants. In terms of follow-up and conversion, it was disastrous. Almost nothing.”
A quick round of interviews with CFO’s, Legal Counsel and similar key stakeholders revealed that (1) the interest for webinars is very limited and (2) active participation quickly disappears when emails need to be checked or other issues are screaming for attention.
Using tools like Mural or Miro can help change the way you communicate online into a more interactive and enjoyable manner. By inviting the ‘lead’ or ‘prospect’ to actively participate in ideation or analysis of its key business issues (remember your ‘consultative selling training’ you did long time ago?) completely changes how your (new) contact perceives the way you, as a professional service provider, interact with her or him.
Simply learning how to work with an online whiteboard or voting app like Mentimeter or Kahoot won’t do the trick though. Its not just about placing sticky notes on a shared virtual frame. You will need to redesign your process. Just like a face-to-face sales conversation with a new prospect can be very different than a business meeting with a long time client, so are the various meeting moments online. So, first you’ll have to start thinking about your sales process. Starting from your content marketing strategy attracting new leads and then define the steps in which you start to build trust and credibility and gradually move into a sales conversation. All online!
Want to learn more? In an interactive setting, I can easily show you how to make your online sales and prospecting process more interactive. From more advanced roundtables to tailored sales processes. It’s a lot easier than you’d expect. Get in touch: florent@florentmeier.com or +316 2191 4811 .
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