Boress calls himself "the top business development consultant to the professions." He says of his coauthor Michael Cummings (whose consulting firm published this book), "I don't believe anyone knows more about the marketing of professional services than Mike does."

Boress claims in his introduction that he and Cummings have "done more research [than anyone else] into what makes marketing work in the professions." This self-serving hype continues ad nauseam.

Marketing substance
The authors define marketing as "anything that puts you in front of a person that [sic] you want to do business with." In other words, marketing is exposure. Seems like a narrow definition. After all, walking down the street naked puts you in front of a lot of prospects.

Their use of statistics is suspect because there are no footnotes or source notes. They frequently say "studies have shown that...." without citing the studies.

They are also into rhetorical questions, some of them unintelligible, like this:

Have you noticed that entrepreneurial/leader types tend to think and act differently than the typical attorney? What drives the business owner or executive? The details of your project or results? Aren't business owners and executives (the successful ones, that is) more similar to Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Parcells (the famous football coach)? Aren't entrepreneurs/leaders most interested in winning and producing results? Is that what attorneys tend to be like?

The authors don't answer those rhetorical questions (or explain the point).

Chapter 4 is titled, "Lessons From the Best Business Generators in the Professions." These people are never even vaguely identified.

In a section called "Hustling Smarter," the authors say you should "add one more business development action each day." They generously provide a list of four such activities (clip an article and send it to a few clients, join a new association, etc.). If you have to add 300 more activities each year, a longer list would help.

Regarding the use of newsletters, they criticize one firm's effort because over a three-year period only one inquiry and no new clients resulted. On the same page, they say that the purpose of a newsletter is not to generate leads for the firm, but to nurture existing relationships. This sort of inconsistency crops up regularly in the book. (To their credit, they advise that you shouldn't fold, stuff and mail the newsletters yourself if you can get a secretary to do it – truly a "best practice" if I ever saw one.)

Of the 376 pages in this book, 30 are blank. If you delete the excessive bold subheads, you'd probably lose another 10 pages. Still, in 336 pages (net), there's bound to be some good information and tips. You just have to wade through a lot of dross to find it.

Allan S. Boress, CPA, has been a business development consutlant to the professions since 1980. He also is the author of The I Hate Selling Book. Website: www.allanboress.com.

Michael G. Cummings, managing principal of Sage Legal Marketing, has been a marketing consultant for more than 20 years. He is a former partner of Mercer Management Consulting, and former member of the marketing staff at Andersen Worldwide.

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