Professional Service Firms and Social Networking: Part 3 of 6

Here's Part Three of my six-part conversation about professional services firms and social networking, with Microengagement's Tim Gilchrist and Steve Fisher.

Lowe: When do you think the business world is going to "get it" about social networking, and what will it take? Do you know of any good examples of social networking from the professions?
Fisher: Whenever you have a profession that depends on that certificate on the wall that says, "I have the degree," you tend to think you know more than the customer does, and in many cases, you do. But I think you become less sensitive at looking at customer needs.
Gilchrist: You can see the flip side of that in consulting as well, through the Ernst & Young product called Ernie, where they are trying to get more contact with the customer and have sacrificed a great degree of control to extend the customer relationship. Then there are all the new companies (like ourselves) where you cannibalize traditional value chains, leaving only the customer interface. This is a very close parallel to what happened in software 15 years ago, where the value chain moves up to the customer, and everything else becomes vended out.
Next time: Will professional service firms' clients want to be socially networked?
Read Part One.
Read Part Two.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Suzanne Lowe is founder of Expertise Marketing, LLC and author of The Integration Imperative: Erasing Marketing and Business Development Silos – Once and For All – in Professional Service Firms and Marketplace Masters: How Professional Services Firms Compete to Win. She blogs at the MarketingProfs Daily Fix and her own blog, the Expertise Marketplace.

Before founding Expertise Marketing in 1996, Ms. Lowe spent more than a decade leading the marketing programs for top-tier management consulting and business-to-business organizations. Before that, she spent more than a decade managing and implementing strategies for political candidates and organizations.

She spearheads the only widely disseminated research initiative on strategic marketing perceptions, practices and performance of professional service firms around the globe.

In addition, Suzanne Lowe has written or been quoted in nearly 100 articles on the topic of professional services marketing strategy. Her work has appeared in the a rel="nofollow" href="https://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/hbr/hbr_home.jhtml">Harvard
Business Review, BusinessWeek.com, CMO Magazine, Harvard
Management Update, and scores of profession-specific magazines and journals, including MarketTrends, Marketer, Marketing the Law Firm, Accounting Today, Engineering, Consultants News, Structure, Journal of Law Office Economics and Management, The Practicing CPA, Environmental Design and Construction, Massachusetts High Tech, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, and the Legal Marketing Association’s Strategy. She is a contributor to the second edition of the book Marketing
Professional Services, by Kotler, Hayes and Bloom. She has also been instrumental in the development, writing and publication of five books and nearly 50 articles and book chapters for her consulting clients.

Suzanne speaks regularly around the world to leading trade associations, industry groups and in-house firm audiences. Her work has also been presented internationally, most recently at the American Marketing Association's annual Frontiers in Services conference. She facilitates a Roundtable of Chief Marketing Officers from some of the world's largest and most prestigious professional service firms. She has guest-lectured at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and designs and delivers customized executive education programs in marketing for professional service executives.

She advises the leaders of professional service firms, from small start-up practices to large global organizations.

Ms. Lowe received a B.A. from Duke University.

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