Cambridge Business Association
Marketing the Professional Services Firm
Book

Marketing the Professional Services Firm

Applying the Principles and the Science of Marketing to the Professions

Laurie Young
Wiley, 2005
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

As professional services firms become more prevalent, their industry is also becoming more competitive. Professional services firms must understand how to tell the marketplace about their special qualifications and accomplishments. Author Laurie Young’s textbook includes the information marketers need to do this, but because it is, in fact, a textbook, readers will have to sift through both theory and details to find practical suggestions. Young backs up his sound conceptual ideas with numerous case studies of major companies. getAbstract recommends this book to students and to practitioners looking for a comprehensive understanding of marketing practices in the evolving professional services industry.

Summary

Selling Professional Skills

Marketing is an art, a science and a management technique. The American Management Association says marketing is a process of planning and executing a mix of price, promotion, and distribution of goods and services. The academic definition of marketing says it is a social process based on the profitable interchange of products and values. In actual practice, smart marketing identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer requirements.

More and more, professional services firms need marketing expertise because of increased competition and globalization. It is a lucrative industry, worth around $700 billion worldwide. Compare this to the U.S. legal industry’s estimated value of $156 billion in 2005. Professional services include a vast range of subsectors encompassing education, training, executive search, financial services, retail sales and medicine, among many other areas.

In general, professional service providers offer skills that require special qualifications. For instance, you might have such special skills as accounting, public relations consulting or project management. The more specialized your skill, the more you can earn ...

About the Author

Laurie Young is a specialist in marketing services and in customer care. His career includes senior positions with PricewaterhouseCoopers, BT and Unisys. In the 1990s, he founded, built and sold his own professional service firm. He is the co-author of Competitive Customer Care and the author of Making Profits from New Service Development.

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