Dennis Kennedy

From the excellent SmartPros newsletter:

Client-Centric Marketing: What Clients Want makes a compelling case for August Aquila and Bruce Marcus's Client at the Core: Marketing and Managing Today's Professional Services Firm.

Here are some excerpts from the review's excerpts from the book:

• Because clients are more sophisticated in the ways of the law and accounting, they no longer accept the advice of the professional without questioning, challenging, demanding more reasoning and detail.
• Because of the complexity of business today, clients demand that their professionals know more about the clients' business and industry than ever before.
• Professional services always function best when trust is at the heart of the relationship, but the corporate scandals of recent years have eroded that trust. That trust must now be regenerated.
• Where once the narrow structures of a profession were sufficient to serve clients, clients now demand a broader spectrum of capabilities. The more broadly educated and well-rounded professional is the one with the greater advantage in meeting the needs of today's clients.

These excerpts are singing one of my songs - note the emphasis I placed on client-driven technology initiatives in the law firm portion of this post. I've added the book to my reading list.