We Help Firms Accelerate Growth and Build Legacies
Stop dabbling. Start growing with purpose.
Do you think growth in professional service firms is hard?
You’re right.
Anyone telling you otherwise is selling snake oil.
The trust-based relationships, intangible, fungible nature of solutions, matrix structures, billable hours, contradictory performance measures, competitive landscape, and up-or-out cultures make these firms unique. If not addressed strategically, these qualities lead to sub-optimal growth and can cost a firm its soul. Harnessed correctly they can build a legacy.
That’s where I come in.
How much is organizational dysfunction impacting your growth potential?
After 20 years in the marketing hot seat helping top consulting firms grow, I now help others accelerate growth and build legacies.
…few people know how to actively listen, ask provocative questions and penetrate to the heart of a matter…Perhaps, that is why most marketing strategists seem stuck; they can’t explore, search and understand businesses the way Jeff McKay does.
Gunnar BransonAre you a leader
Searching for a smarter approach to growth
You’re savvy, but just don’t have the marketing capability to deliver a more powerful result.
Pursuing meaningful growth
You’re pursuing growth with purpose; not mindlessly chasing a revenue number.
Stewarding your firm's legacy
Leading a powerful culture and leaving the firm stronger for the next generation, not managing some brand facade.
Looking for Ideas to Grow?
Listen to Rattle and Pedal: Divergent Thinking on Marketing and Growing Professional Services Firms with Jason Mlicki & Jeff McKay.
Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but it’s no way to build your marketing organization.
While firms share attributes, a marketing organization is unique to each firm. Your marketing organization shouldn’t be your competitor’s marketing organization.
Some outstanding firms growing with purpose
Purposeful growth requires translating growth intent into action, fabricating an engine for growth, and activating the firm.
Translate
Marketing strategy should support a firm’s purpose and everyone should be on the same page. If the tough strategic decisions don’t get made, the default is grow everything. “Grow everything” is not a strategy. It’s dabbling.
I help you prioritize, choose, and translate your growth intent into strategic actions.
Fabricate
Marketing can’t become a fulcrum for growth, unless leadership agrees on its role. There are two marketing schools of thought in professional firms. Not knowing which one you belong to leads to dabbling.
I build your marketing capability to deliver strategic impact—no matter your investment level, firm structure or culture.
Activate
Marketing is about a relentless pursuit of understanding, anticipating and meeting client needs. Marketing does not end because tactics have run out. If firm leaders accept tactical actions instead of strategic results, the firm is dabbling.
I drive revenue growth and increase marketing ROI.
Don’t build a brand. Build a legacy.
Conventional brand wisdom often misleads firms with the wrong priorities and tactics. In this guide, I share what I’ve learned helping rebrand some of the world’s top consulting firms so you don’t make the same big mistakes.
Impressive. Jeff saved me a lot of time and heartache. The guide is filled with insights demonstrating he’s been on the ground and learning the hard way, which makes it more valuable to me – it’s not academic.
Michael NikunenA Sample of Prudent Thinking
What is Marketing?
My wife says that I tilt at windmills when I try to convince the professional services world that Marketing is strategic and more than making things pretty. Alliance partners and business leaders say they have the “strategic stuff” covered. My marketing peers wonder why I expend so much energy and political capital fighting an undefeatable foe. After all, it’s easier to just ride a horse in the direction it is going.
In the immortal words of John McClane in the movie Die Hard, “Yipee ki yay,…!”
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12 Steps to Transform Professional Services Marketing
Professional services marketing is like no other.
Professionals services firms market complex, intangible solutions to what are big, public, and potentially embarrassing problems. The solutions are bought by the most sophisticated c-level buyers at top companies around the globe. And, professionals must operate from Byzantine, matrixed systems in one of the most political and contentious ownerships structures, a partnership.
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4 Steps to Buying Martech in Professional Services
Adobe’s recent acquisition of Marketo had the blogosphere abuzz on what the acquisition means to the martech industry (read here, here, here). Marketo is another in a long list of marketing automation platforms devoured by larger players (e.g. Eloqua, Aprimo,...
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