The professional services market is unique because not only do professional provide services (instead of products), their services often require a complex sale. That is, it's often not immediately clear where and how the professional service applies best to the client. For this reason, selling professional services can be particularly challenging. And when selling is complex, so is marketing. Professional services are specialized services, to be distinguished from products and commodity services. As such, they are delivered by skilled individuals, through the use of their expertise, as applied to their client's goals and challenges. Examples of professional services include doctors, lawyers, engineers, designers, architects, developers, IT services, and consultants. In a business context, a professional service is delivered as support function to the main function of the end-client's business. In this way, the professional service is typically not directly related to the revenue-generating part of the client's business. This "support" function of professional services often means that such services are discretionary to the end-client. In addition, almost all professional services can be replaced by less-expensive or free versions. To be sure, this lowers the quality. But, this is often seen as an acceptable sacrifice to cost-conscious comanies. For this reason, it's easy to avoid spending money on professional services. As a result, the professional serivces firm often finds it hard to sell its services. At Synaxis, our goal is to improve the marketing and selling of professional services companies. To that end, we have outlined some simple ideas and tasks. Step 1 - Simplify communication. Professional services companies seem to be inwardly-focused. Perhaps the highly-skilled nature of the practicioners lends itself to being proud of these accomplishments. Perhaps professionals are usually just reluctant to promote themselves. Whatever the cause, the result is that professionals seldom communicate to their prospective clients in a way that makes sense to the client. If professionals are to sell more, then they need to present themselves in a way that is oriented to the client. At a minimum, this means demystifying their complex services. One of the best ways to do this is to simplify the message. The skilled nature of the work tends to result in the overuse of jargon and technical language. Best to reduce or eliminate this in marketing. Talk to the client in a way that makes sense to them. Step 2 - Don't forget the brand. The largest services firms know, and enjoy, the power of branding. All too often, smaller firms disdain branding (and marketing) as being irrelevant at best and deceptive at worst. Professional services firms need to get over this irrational fear. Marketing and branding are nothing more than positioning the firm correctly in the marketplace and presenting it in its best light. When this is performed carefully, brand awareness can be achieved quickly and cost-effectively. The result will be a shortened sales cycle. Step 3 - Get closer to the money in the client's business. Determine the value. Beyond simplifying the message, professional services forms need to help the client connect the service to the client's business. The closer a service is to the money in an end-client, the easier it is to sell. This is because the service can have a direct impact on increasing revenue, increasing efficiency, or decreasing costs. These areas are the most important to any client. Only when the professional service is seen in this light can it cross from "optional service" to "required service". The services provided are often complex and subtle. As such, the client isn't usually certain how best to deploy these services. So, while some professional services can directly affect these areas, it's not obvious how. It's up to the professional services firm to understand the client's business and apply their services in such a way that the business improves. Even "support" services can almost always be useful in controlling costs. Step 4 - Broaden communications Selling services is almost always complex. As such, professional services firms need to adopt the same kind of and multimodal lead nurturing used at the largest consulting firms. This needn't be expensive, but it must be deliberate. It's no longer sufficient to rely on referrals and word-of-mouth. Effective marketing of professional services must be carefully crafted and well-executed. This includes online activities like e-newsletters, pay-per-click advertising, search engine marketing, podcasts, and Web sites. It also includes print newsletters, personal mail, white papers, case studies, and other printed media. Only a comprehensive plan well-executed will work. If professional services firms adopt these simple steps, then they will enjoy much better marketing. And good marketing leads to easier selling and more sales. And that's good business.