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Marketing Professional Services
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Marketing Professional Services

Forward-Thinking Strategies for Boosting Your Business, Your Image and Your Profits

Philip Kotler, Ph.D., Thomas Hayes, Ph.D. and Paul N. Bloom, Ph.D.
FT Prentice Hall, 2002
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Recommendation

As any self-employed lawyer, consultant or accountant knows, selling services can be much tougher than selling widgets. The major professional service firms employ huge marketing staffs whose job is to convince potential clients that they need the company’s expertise, and to differentiate that expertise from all other competitors. Three marketing professors - Philip Kotler, Thomas Hayes and Paul N. Bloom - have distilled the strategies and techniques designed to accomplish this daunting task into this comprehensive text, which getAbstract recommends to anyone running their own services firm and to all those charged with marketing the majors.

Summary

Marketing in a Crowded Field

At one time professionals were restricted in how they could advertise and promote their services. But in the last two decades, the barriers have come down and professionals can generally promote their services in whatever manner they wish, providing that they do not make deceptive or misleading claims.

But let’s face it - there is a huge oversupply of professionals today, especially in certain specialty areas like law. Adding to this glut has been the rise of paraprofessionals like paralegals, who are taking over many everyday services.

As things become more competitive, individual firms are branching out, with accounting firms moving into management consulting and causing major headaches for the consultants who once had this business to themselves. Amidst all of these changes, customers have gotten more demanding and are now much more likely to question the judgment of professionals or make complaints against them. These complaints can be quickly disseminated through the Internet and the media, ruining business.

To overcome these challenges and survive in today’s cutthroat markets, you must become a master of marketing. Your...

About the Authors

Philip Kotler is a professor of international marketing at Northwestern University. He has published over 20 books, including Marketing Management, now in its 10th edition, and more than 100 articles in leading journals He has been a consultant to IBM, Merck, General Electric, Honeywell and many other companies. Thomas Hayes is a professor of marketing at Xavier University and has been chair of the department for 13 years. He is president of VisionQuest Marketing Strategy, a nationally recognized expert in services marketing. Paul N. Bloom, is a professor of marketing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author of Knowledge Development in Marketing.

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