Customer Relationships - The most fundamental tenet of professional services marketing is trust. How can you expect potential clients to retain you if they don't trust you? You can't. Until recently, only one ...
Here's what I wrote in the comments to this blog article:
I get a few leads in my professional services business from my online activities. My online activities are primarily focused on clients who want to start with something for FREE and then escalate by buying my book, a kit, online training, and other tools. Once they've tried these inexpensive solutions out - then some will be moved along the traditional sales funnel path to real conversations and engagement for the primary element of my business - professional services consulting (in this specific case: executive search and hiring process improvement consulting).
The online model is great for two things: Creating a passive income stream based on your expertise and moving a few of these folks into your real business revenue stream. This model works great when the purchase cost ranges from $25-$500. It does NOT work when the fees/cost go from $2500-$50000.
99 percent of my business over 25 years for projects where the fees are $2500, $10000, or upwards of $50,000 - the focus of my business - require numerous personal meetings, constant interaction, and a tremendous reference/referral network.
It's impossible to "sell" or "market" high value personal services on the Internet. You can start a lead generation process of taking prospective clients baby step by baby step through your sales funnel - but nothing really beats Word of Mouth, personal referrals, giving webinars, seminars, and workshops to get in front of prospective clients.
The second thing the "online model" is good for is reinforcing your expertise, thought-leadership, branding, messaging, and positioning within your target audience/network. Just collecting a bunch of names on facebook, twitter, or LinkedIn is a useless exercise. You've got to communicate frequently with your networks in a way that is both helpful and where you don't come off as irritating.
Barry Deutsch
http://www.barrydeutsch.net/vistage-speakers-trusted-advisors