Have you ever thought about or noticed a competitor
utilizing "thoughtleading" as a business development
strategy? Positioning yourself and your firm as
leading-edge thinkers in your field involves publishing
articles and books, speaking regularly to professional
groups, getting yourself noticed by the media and surveying
your target market in order to produce research data that
only you possess.
If that sounds like fun, or simply a potentially
advantageous way to distinguish your firm's services, one
major hurdle to choosing to implement such a novel strategy
might be the question of ROI, specifically: : Does evidence
exist that a thoughtleading strategy really will generate
new business growth? Is there any way to accurately measure
this? Can a "thoughtleading Return-on-Investment (ROI)" be
quantified? More importantly, can it pay dividends for YOU?
Happily, the answer to all four questions is "yes."
Studies indicate that a quantifiable ROI can in fact be
discerned, and, just as happily, indications are that
results will be overwhelmingly affirmative. Getting to the
heart of the issue, however, first requires an
understanding that age-old ways of measuring ROI may not
always apply here. That's because a new equation in our
economy, one that's mistier than traditional bottom-line
measurements, demands alternative methods of measurement.
This new equation is the economic asset of "intellectual
capital" (or IC).
The concrete ROI metric standard until now has always been
based on "I-can-see-it-with-my-own-eyes." This still
applies to material goods of course but IC's decidedly
non-Industrial Age elements can be harder to fathom. Mary
Adams, Managing, Principal of Trek Consulting LLC
(http://www.trekconsulting.com/), specialists in the
developing study of IC as an asset that can be measured,
explains it this way: "Can you imagine a merchant without
an inventory report, having to sell product without knowing
the quantity or price of goods he owns? Yet this is the
position that most corporate leaders are in today. They
lack basic consolidated information about their most
important resources: Do we have the right people, network,
and knowledge to meet our goals? Are we positioned for
continued innovation? Where are we at risk?"
Such relatively "soft" questions leave the interpretation
of data and resulting ROI conclusions in the hands (and
minds) of analysts to a greater degree than has been true
of traditional ROI measurement with its clear numbers and
black-and-white company balance sheet. As one example,
Kennedy Information, the nation's premiere management
consulting think tank, which regularly conducts surveys of
management consulting compensation, has found that firms
and individual consultants at the topmost point of the
compensation chart are paid way, way better than the
remaining 99% below. When asked how the top 1% manage this,
the response is crisp and clear: "Oh, those highest
revenue-producers are the ones who regularly publish
articles and books, do speaking engagements, and connect
with the media," the Kennedy people explain. "They are the
thoughtleaders."
Another recent study has also correlated increased revenue
with publishing, speaking, media and other individual
thoughtleading actions, adding that thoughtleading's ROI
will be measurably high when thoughtleading actions are
integrated with a firm's more traditional marketing and
sales activities. Article-publishing ROI, for example,
incorporated in the marketing and selling pipeline, can
easily be measured by asking prospects if the firm's
published articles had played any part either in their
initial decision to approach the company or in their
ultimate decision to do business with the company. One
professional services firm can testify to this personally.
"We always email prospects a PDF or two of our published
articles early in the sales process," says the firm's
president. "We want our prospects to see a relevant
published article of ours so they will glance at it and be
impressed. 'Wow, this looks pretty cool' may be all they
say, then we move on. But that's sufficient to stamp my
firm as something more than some run-of-the-mill
consultancy, which is what they may be thinking."
Some studies have even produced clear and definitive
measurements sufficient to satisfy even the most old school
quantifiability standards. One survey of law firms by
Levick Strategic Communications and PR Newswire surveyed
200 firms that had gotten themselves mentioned consistently
in the legal media. Their survey found that the 25 firms on
its list with the highest revenues were also those with an
average increase of nearly 20% in overall media presence
over the previous two years. Firms ranked below these 25 in
terms of income, however, reported a mere 1% increase in
media presence.
Is there also anecdotal evidence that thoughtleading
produces a measurable ROI? You bet. Former top executive
recruiter Jim Masciarelli, now founder and CEO of
PowerSkills Solutions, a "relationship capital" consulting
firm, recalls one time when his book PowerSkills: Building
Top-Level Relationships for Bottom-Line Results clearly led
directly to a piece of business that he certainly would not
have landed on his own: "A partner of a top venture capital
firm who knew me from my past career as a retained
executive search consultant called me up after receiving an
announcement of my book PowerSkills, which details a system
I created for building profitable business relationships.
He said, 'I understand you're now doing advisory and
alignment work with CEOs and executive teams. We could
really use your help!'
"Their portfolio company had just acquired a major Internet
company in a 22- billion dollar stock deal," Jim recalls,
"but the CEO did not yet have a plan to integrate these
companies. The mere announcement of my book (and, with it,
my new practice) repositioned me as an expert in his mind
in this new line of work I was now pursing. As a result, I
got the introduction to the CEO and ultimately the
assignment as well."
Are you wondering if all this means that publishing an
article or a book, or engaging in other thoughtleading
actions such as public speaking, media and research, will
automatically yield you new business and/or drive your
incomes levels up above that of your competitors? Well,
there are no guarantees in life, so no one can say for
sure. But it is clear from all the data and anecdotal
evidence that the likelihood is there. Since most of your
competitors will ignore it, a thoughtleading business
development strategy could be the smartest decision a
professional services firm could make. There are just so
very many facts, figures, studies, stories and personal
experiences to back you up.
----------------------------------------------------
Ken Lizotte CMC is author of the new book The Expert's
Edge: Become the Go-To Authority that People Turn to Every
Time (McGraw Hill) which shows professional service
providers how to position themselves as thought leaders so
they can "separate themselves from the competitive pack."
Chief Imaginative Officer (CIO) of emerson consulting group
inc. (Concord MA), Ken speaks at conferences and other
business events on such topics as becoming a thoughtleader,
getting published, creative thinking and work/family
balance. Visit Ken's website at
http://www.thoughtleading.com
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