http://www.thebigskyview.com a blog about professional services Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:13:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Our friends, Andrew Dietz and Mira Leonard, over at Creative Growth Group were kind enough to allow us to contribute some thoughts on thought leadership to their blog "Growing Professional Services". You can read the piece here. Andrew also has a spot-on post on the over-used term "Trusted Advisor". http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=186 This article was originally published in the July/August 2008 edition of MarkeTrends the publication of the Association for Accounting Marketing If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.  So if a sales pipeline is worth having, how do you know if it’s working well?  Welcome to the world of sales ... http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=183 I believe that for professional services firms (PSF's) to achieve sustained growth they need, just like in any other industry, a deep understanding of their competition.  We also believe that this is a significant blind spot for PSF's - one that we are focused on helping our clients address. If you ... http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=175 Bruce MacEwen at Adam Smith, Esq. makes some great points about the need for challenging and validating new market entry plans in order to increase your chances of success. But it got me thinking about the ways in which professional services firms (PSFs) go about entering new markets (and ... http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=174 The answer to that question is probably quite a lot, but I want to focus on the recommendation engines that are such an important part of Amazon and Netflix' success.  Michael Schrage has an excellent article in the May/June 08 edition of Technology Review that discusses the strengths and weaknesses ... http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=173 Based on our research, 8,311 is the number of individual marketing communications outputs* that 100 of the leading professional services firms have produced so far in 2008. That's roughly 88 new white papers, press releases, web seminars, newsletter articles etc. every single business day - or close to one ... http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=172 Welcome to "The Big Sky View". This is my new blog (me being Paul Gladen). I plan to share my thoughts and opinions on the trends and issues shaping the professional services industry (primarily law, consulting, accounting and technology services). "The Big Sky View" name comes from the fact that I ... http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=170 For professional services firms, attracting and retaining talent is a critical issue - and if recent conversations are anything to go by, it's the number one issue in CPA firms right now. In April, I co-authored, with Dr. Teresa Beed of the University of Montana, an article in the Journal of ... http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=168 First off - apologies for the radio silence here in the last few months - it's just been way too busy to blog. Hopefully some semblance of regular blogging will be achieved over the next few weeks. So to get things re-booted, so to speak, have you noticed how ... http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=167 Matt Homann of "the [non] billable hour" blog nails the billable hour issue: "Ask your clients what they are buying from you. If they answer “time,” then by all means continue to sell it. If they answer something else (and it will be something else), learn to sell that ... http://www.thebigskyview.com/?p=166