Philosophy
Raise Your Expectations
In 2011 Digett was coasting on a comfortable business model. We were adept at leveraging website content management systems to help our clients, well, manage their content. We'd seen that light early on and knew the traditional approach to building websites using static HTML files wasn’t sustainable.
In fact, we had become experts in the world of content management because we pushed ourselves in those early days to explore and experiment with a number of solutions. As a result, we were well positioned to create value for our clients. We understood the nature of organizational and technical issues related to content management.
Yet, eventually, we somehow ended up sitting still, unable to let go of comfortable habits amid change all around us. The growing popularity of WordPress and other content management systems attracted dozens of rival firms, all competing for the same business. We lost our differentiating attributes, we waited too long to adjust our course, and we paid a big price in the form of growth stagnation.
Thankfully, we had to learn that lesson only once, and we moved, gradually at first, into the realm of developing and executing marketing strategies for our customers. Since those earliest failures and successes, we've not stopped learning, and now recognize how such a dark experience allowed us to see, and enthusiastically embrace, the light of transformation.
"You've lost your muchness."
-The Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland
More than half of the professional services companies (PSCs) we speak with—companies that sell primarily their brainpower—say they either fail to set meaningful marketing goals for the business, or fall disappointingly short of the goals they actually set.
We believe this is a direct result of low expectations.
In the wake of pervasive digital disruption, PSCs still don't always see how technology can help solve their customers' problems more effectively. It's not hard to see, then, how they may overlook using digital marketing technologies and tactics to help differentiate their own offerings. Ironically, these are the firms whose very employees make up the segment of the population who most quickly adopt the latest consumer technology trends.
As a result of their beliefs, PSC leaders fail to set meaningful business goals and invest adequately in achieving these goals.
Let's face it. Leadership often doesn't expect great things to come from adopting and adapting digital technologies and practices, particularly as it pertains to marketing their services. Just as Alice was accused by the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, of losing her "muchness", we think the same could be said for companies that sell and deliver professional services.
Leadership often doesn't expect great things to come from adopting and adapting digital technologies and practices, particularly as it pertains to marketing their services.
The Case for Raising Expectations
We've seen all sorts of reasons for indecision or reluctance to challenge the status quo:
- We don't recognize the potential of adopting digital technologies to transform how we interact with our customers.
- We think transformation is too hard and too costly.
- We don't believe the return justifies the costs.
- We simply procrastinate out of fear of the unknown.
But by failing to at least examine with a critical eye how you provide and communicate value to your customers, the types of experiences your customers are subjected to, and their resulting outcomes—you’re actually inviting uncertainty and disruption from external forces. Someone's eventually going to come along and do a better job.
You also fail to position yourself as an innovator and true partner in your clients' pursuit of success. As a strategic partner, you become weak through your own laziness and intellectual atrophy and eventually find yourself less able to compete with those who seem to welcome change and opportunities afforded by digital developments in the marketplace.
I’m pretty certain something in the back of your mind is telling you it’s not only possible but necessary to do more to harness this change. But how?
Looking Ahead to a New Vision
Digital transformation is change affected by digital technology; change which occurs at a rapid pace disrupting established ways of creating value, interacting socially and demanding a new way of thinking.
At Digett, we believe the only proven way to participate in and benefit from this phenomenon of digital transformation is through a process we call Proactive Self-Disruption.
Our goal as leaders should be to not only embrace disruption, but to lead our firms toward and through its creation. At Digett, we learn something daily about how to achieve self-disruption proactively. And it is through the philosophical lens of self-disruption that we partner with our clients to help them do the same.
Like you, we at Digett are in the business of helping our clients solve problems and gain competitive advantage. We focus on strategy, technology and processes related to achieving revenue growth. We ask questions like:
- How do our clients find and identify their prospects today, and how might they do it better?
- How might our clients best position themselves and their services among a sea of competition?
- What specific technologies and tactics are useful in overcoming challenges of getting a buyer's attention in a digitized world? A world in which our client’s buyers are already inundated with distractions from every angle?
Our framework serves as a mirror that helps Digett stick to our own brand of relentless self-disruption, and it also serves to guide us in every marketing engagement for our clients.
- 01 Know Thyself
- 02 Know Thy Customer
- 03 Map the Customer Journey
- 04 Optimize the Touchpoints
01. Know Thyself
Successful professional services firms have defined and can articulate a well-differentiated value proposition. "Good people", or the all-too-common 4-step methodology on your website doesn’t cut it when it comes to differentiating your firm in a competitive environment. True differentiation is the road less traveled, but companies that are most successful are those who sacrifice and make the difficult decisions.
Differentiation permeates every aspect of an organization's operations. It speaks directly to the value you provide. Failure to articulate internally what makes your organization special limits the lengths to which employees can go to support such a vision. Failure to articulate such uniqueness externally is synonymous with poor positioning. You can’t simultaneously present yourself as similar to competitors and also expect to have a strong brand in the mind of your buyers.
02. Know Thy Customer
It’s of course important to be clear about who the audience is that you serve. Equally important is really knowing and understanding that audience. In other words, being able to identify a target prospect is just the tip of the iceberg. You should strive to understand the needs and objectives of those who buy your services.
Understanding buyers is a key goal, and advantage, of a solid differentiation strategy. By narrowing focus to a more specific audience and their needs, firms tend to achieve a level of depth of expertise that before would not have been possible. This expertise translates to a deeper understanding of problems and paradigms common within a given focus.
The result is bidirectionally advantageous. On the one hand, all other things being equal, firms with a greater depth of expertise deliver better solutions than their competitors. They deliver more value. This fact is not unrecognized by a firm's potential buyers, which speaks to the second advantage. Because common sense dictates that a more knowledgeable firm is in a better position to deliver value, buyers prefer specialists. This translates to a significant edge for firms with deep expertise when it comes to the sales process, from generating leads to closing a sale. Want more power in the sales process? One sure way is pursue a strategy of differentiation.
03. Map the Customer Journey
Assuming a company really knows its customer, the next step is understanding what a prospective customer will encounter on the road toward and beyond making a purchase. While it seems obvious that a company should know this, I can guarantee you that most professional services companies have not taken the time to put themselves in the shoes of their buyers. They haven't seen for themselves exactly what customers experience as they navigate the purchase process, much less the entire delivery cycle.
You should be asking:
- Where do customers experience friction?
- Where do they find value?
You can establish a basis for insights by tracing the steps of their customers' journey and identifying each touchpoint along their path. A journey map enables firms to begin asking the right questions in an organized fashion, and puts stakeholders on the same page, literally and figuratively.
04. Optimize the Touchpoints
With journey map in hand, successful PSCs will focus on optimizing touch points where opportunities exist to streamline or eliminate them, or to add more value to the touchpoint through the use of digital technology. This will test a team's creativity, persistence, and sanity.
As the customer experience is optimized, thoughtfully conceived KPIs—those relevant to business and customer goals—will provide the feedback necessary to validate direction or encourage course correction. Testing new ideas will uncover more ways to improve the customer experience. This is a marathon, not a sprint, which makes a commitment to get started all the more critical.
Raise Your Expectations
This is innovation at its best, and nobody ever said innovation is easy. Fortunately, firms can, and should, walk before they run, especially if they start now. Firms who procrastinate will face a crisis down the road that demands far more difficult change and more serious consequences, especially if the change demanded falls outside of the firm's existing capabilities.
Make no mistake, disruption is occurring at an unprecedented pace, and it will only gain velocity. Hiding from the change will save no one. If you're committed to staying in business, you will not have a choice about facing disruption. Your choice is whether you want to move toward it proactively—creating advantage—or sit still and become a victim of the tidal wave headed your way. Sounds cliché, but it's no time for business as usual.
Thanks to technology, never has there been a more exciting time to execute more effectively on your mission, to live your values and to contribute to the strengthening of our society. The speed of change may seem scary, but with it comes opportunity for those courageous enough to welcome and act on it.
Raise your expectations. Expect More. Let's connect if you'd like to talk further.