Achieving Marketing Excellence in Service Organizations

Introduction

Globally, high performing and reputable services organizations rely increasingly on people not product for their success, and pay unprecedented attention to marketing. This unique, specialized LAKESHORE ISL Sales & Marketing training seminar on Achieving Marketing Excellence in Service Organizations presents participants with a first-hand opportunity to gain robust, in-depth skills and insights specific to the marketing of a professional service.

Professional service organizations are different to other organizations. Nowhere is this more evident than in marketing. What are the aspects of marketing that professional service staff, managers and operators need to know to build an organization wide market orientation, and engage successfully with customers and other stakeholders? What are the specific marketing approaches that work in a professional services environment to build its most valuable asset-reputation?

This LAKESHORE ISL Sales & Marketing training seminar on Achieving Marketing Excellence in Service Organizations draws on a range of fields to provide a holistic approach including tools and sector best practices that drive successful marketing in professional service organizations – including strategy, reputation management, and organizational culture. This LAKESHORE ISL training seminar enables participants to get to the heart of marketing as it should be applied to professional service organizations. Delegates will take away from this LAKESHORE ISL training the most effective ways to market the people centric professional services sector, a significant void when it comes to general marketing seminars.

This LAKESHORE ISL training seminar will highlight:

• Professional services marketing approaches for reputational and performance success
• Informed insights, concepts, strategies and tools to achieve market excellence
• Practical frameworks to design implement and evaluate marketing specific to a professional service organization
• Provide leadership skills to build a whole organization marketing culture
• Techniques to build reputation, word of mouth and referral
• A comprehensive understanding of people centric marketing concepts and tactics
• Best practice metrics and benchmarks for professional services marketing

Objectives

This LAKESHORE ISL training seminar will highlight:

• Informed strategies and tools to achieve market excellence
• Practical frameworks to design implement and evaluate marketing in a service context
• Provide leadership skills to build a whole of organization market orientation (buy in and culture)
• Specific techniques to build word of mouth and referral
• A comprehensive understanding of professional marketing concepts and tactics in an age of consumerism
• Best practice benchmarks in professional services marketing
• Professional services marketing that creates a strong organisation wide impact

Training Methodology

This interactive LAKESHORE ISL Sales & Marketing training seminar on Achieving Marketing Excellence in Service Organizations presents participants with an outstanding opportunity to gain both the theoretical and practical skills for a comprehensive marketing approach in the professional services sector.

This LAKESHORE ISL training seminar will be:

• Pragmatic
• Participative
• Solution Oriented
• It will encompass practical tools, evidence based frameworks, and case examples illustrated through slides, facilitated group learning, expert feedback and commentary on group exercises, personal and group discussion, discovery learning and hands-on activities to convey best practice and impart skills.

Organisational Impact

Major benefits to the whole organization will include:

• Enhance the marketing understanding skills, efficacy, and effectiveness of those working in professional service organizations
• Specific capability development to enhance the quality and efficacy of marketing for a professional service organization
• Closer alignment between marketing rhetoric (what the organization says) and reality (what it does)
• Improved customer relationships, affinity and referral satisfaction and loyalty
• Enhanced brand and reputation through more strategic engagement with customers and stakeholders
• Improved definition of the organization’s market strategy, market ambitions, approaches and performance measures

Personal Impact

Participants will gain the following significant benefits:

• Increased understanding of how to market a professional service organization
• In-depth understanding, skills, concepts, and techniques for marketing
• Skills to develop a whole of organization approach to marketing
• Enhanced evidence led, strategic and holistic approach to marketing
• Increased marketing capabilities and career potential in professional service organizations
• Insight into sector best practice in building a people orientation to marketing

Who Should Attend?

This LAKESHORE ISL Sales & Marketing training seminar on Achieving Marketing Excellence in Service Organizations offers professional service organization marketing best practice insights, skills and practices. This LAKESHORE ISL training seminar will be of particular professional benefit to all those working in:

• Government Ministries
• Education Sector – government systems, universities, colleges and schools
• Lawyers
• Hospitality
• Tourism and Leisure
• Medical and Health
• Logistics
• Insurance
• Finance

Seminar Outline

DAY 1

Marketing in a Professional Services Context

• How is marketing in a professional services different and why?
• Key Features of Good Practice in Marketing Professional Services
• The Modern Consumer – implications for professional service organizations
• Where to start? – developing a market proposition that is valued
• Setting Marketing Objectives and Key Performance Indicators in Professional Services

A Framework to Develop Marketing Practices in Professional Services:

• Recruitment
• Retention
• Referral
• Relationships
• Reputation

DAY 2

Marketing Audit and Benchmarking Professional Services

• (6) Metrics of Sector Best Practice Internationally including Self-assessment
• Review Marketing Approach
• Review Brand and Positioning
• Review Market Research Capacity and Output
• Review Marketing Planning and Execution
• Review Communication Content and Channel
• Review Assessment of Marketing Resources and Capabilities

DAY 3

Key Marketing Tools and Concepts for Professional Services

• Brand and Positioning for Valued Differentiation
• How to Segment and Target a Market?
• Market Analysis and Research – What to Ask and To Whom?
• Service Portfolio Management from a Market Perspective
• Relative SWOT Analysis
• Integrating, Building and Measuring a Marketing Orientation
• Meeting Challenges of Staff Resistance to Marketing
• Stimulating and Nurturing Word of Mouth (referral)

DAY 4

Reputation and its Management in Professional Services

• Driver of a ‘Good’ Reputation
• How to build a reputation based market strategy?
• Components of Reputation
• Types of Reputation
• Evaluating Reputation
• Self-assessment using ‘The Reputation Assessor’

DAY 5

Action: Best Practice Professional Services Marketing Plan

• Strategic Planning and Marketing Planning – linking them
• Gathering a Suitable Evidence Base – primary and secondary
• Setting a Desired Market Reputation
• Market Objectives
• Marketing Priorities
• Evaluating and Measuring Marketing
• Delegate Presentations – draft plan