Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win

By Suzanne C. Lowe

In today's knowledge-based economy, service professionals, such as consultants, lawyers, accountants, architects, advertising agencies, IT specialists, and financial advisors, face a dazzling array of opportunities and challenges. In order to compete effectively, they need a disciplined approach for detecting market shifts, harnessing their competitive advantages, and developing service offerings that will attract the most profitable clients. Drawing from a five-year study covering thousands of firms, Suzanne Lowe presents the three building blocks of a market-driven infrastructure--looking out, digging deeper, and embedding innovation--and identifies eleven core skills that any service firm can apply to master the marketplace and achieve lasting competitive success.

Integrating insights from the fields of marketing, service management, planning, and entrepreneurship, and showcasing the successful strategies of such firms as Towers Perrin, DDB Worldwide, and Egon Zehnder International, Lowe shows service professionals how to gather intelligence about their clients, competitors, and marketplace; promote a market-driven culture throughout the organization; and engage in continuous research and development to introduce new services. Mastering these skills will enable readers to be better prepared to face changes in the market, and make decisive, informed decisions about opportunities that will prove right in the long term.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275981193
• ISBN13: 9780275981198
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Addresses the Achilles Heel of professional service firms

This thorough and well-researched book addresses the Achilles Heel of most professional service firms: how to successfully market themselves. It dispels the myth that rigorous, systematic marketing disciplines cannot be appropriately and effectively applied to professional service firms. The eleven competencies are well-detailed, researched, and supported with credible data. The case studies should provide almost any PSF with a peer company to whom they can relate. This book will help you focus on real solutions to the unique challenges of marketing professional service firms.

A MUST READ for ALL professional service firm managers

Finally, a marketing book written about a subject (competition) that has been brushed aside by professional service firms for way too long. Lowe's call for firms to adopt a market-driven infrastructure is right on. "Infrastructure" is a mouthful, but this concept is exactly what our company needs. Lowe's book is refreshingly different in its specificity (tells us exactly how we can compete more effectively) and its practicality.

Leapfrog Ahead of Competitors

"Hard hitting and compelling reading, it offers a brutally accurate assessment of the Professional Services Industry, as well as a cure."Tom Markert , Global Chief Marketing Officer , ACNielsen"Any professional services firm that makes the corporate commitment to embrace the practical concepts detailed in this book will leapfrog ahead of its competition by better understanding its markets and clients. The factual research and case studies eliminate the excuses for avoiding that commitment."George Friedel, Senior Vice President, Director of Strategic Sales, Parsons Brinckerhoff