Prudent Guides and White Papers
The BS of PS
Your guide to overcoming the roadblocks to growth and legacy in the wonderfully dysfunctional world of professional services.
Growth in professional services is essential. It provides scale, opportunity, strategic options, and wealth. But, pursuing growth for growth sake is the mindset of a cancer cell and it can cost a firm its soul.
You’ve Stopped Growing and Redesigning Your Logo Isn’t Going to Fix It
The capability, service or consulting model that built your brand becomes commoditized, trite or simply out of fashion. All firms reach this place. What distinguishes professional services firms from others is how they see, interpret and transcend what is happening.
Here’s how to get growing again.
As a marketing leader, I have helped rebrand some of the world’s top consulting firms. I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes along the way.
The 20 Biggest Brand Mistakes Firms Make (and How to Avoid Them) is written for firm leaders to help you avoid mistakes professional services service firms repeatedly make with one of their most precious assets.
Podcast
LISTEN to the Only Podcast Addressing “The BS of PS”
Rattle and Pedal, hosted by Jeff McKay and Jason Mlicki, offers divergent thinking on growing professional services firms. Be prepared for an unorthodox exchange on life in professional services.
LATEST EPISODES:
- Solve the Problem That’s Limiting Your Growth Potential
The post Solve the Problem That’s Limiting Your Growth Potential appeared first on Rattle and Pedal.
- Avoid These Annual Planning Mistakes to Reach Your Growth Potential
The post Avoid These Annual Planning Mistakes to Reach Your Growth Potential appeared first on Rattle and Pedal.
- Growth Conversations-Michael Burton, CEO of Lev, Growth Inflection Points
The post Growth Conversations-Michael Burton, CEO of Lev, Growth Inflection Points appeared first on Rattle and Pedal.
Infographics
Do you want to grow faster, be more profitable, and differentiate your company?
Then, identify your ideal client. Identifying an ideal client is the fundamental building block of a profitable, growing business. Some firms wait until they have stopped growing and need to painfully retrench. Others do it when they are king of the hill and have the luxury of excessive demand.
Take the single action that has the greatest impact on your firm
Strategic Marketing Tools
Growth Readiness Self-Assessment
Most firms think a “marketing” or “brand” problem is slowing their growth. Don’t be so sure. Self-score your firm’s effectiveness in 11 critical growth enablers because you can’t fix a growth limiter until you know what it is.
Marketing Capabilities Gap Assessment 2.0
You can’t build a high-performance marketing machine without knowing your starting point. This simple, powerful tool allows you to quickly, cost-effectively create a heat map of your firm’s growth capabilities.
There exists no more powerful and dangerous organizational structure than a matrix. Properly managed, it unleashes innovation, collaboration, client-centricity, and high-performance teamwork. Mismanaged, it is the sand–pebbles, rocks, and boulders–in the gears of the machine. This tool helps you unleash the power of the matrix.
Popular Articles
A Professional Services Marketing Self-Assessment
I'm releasing a new Professional Services Marketing Assessment. Here's what makes it different and why it's important. Leaders who seek me out as a consultant are frustrated with their marketing results. They don’t have enough leads; their brands lack awareness; a...
How to Get Strategic Marketing Done in a Professional Services Firm
I received an email from a talented, self-described Young Turk marketer named Cannon. He was frustrated, exhausted, and struggling to overcome several onerous Sales and Marketing impediments at his firm. He wanted to know how to get strategic Marketing done in a...
12 Steps to Transform Professional Services Marketing
Big or small, if professional services firms want to survive, it's well past the time to change how they think about marketing. In this article, I cover the steps that professional services firms can take to transform marketing and how they generate revenue. Anyone...
10 Reasons Why Partners Don’t Understand Marketing
One of my more popular and controversial blog posts is “Why Your Marketer Doesn’t Understand Your Firm’s Business.” The title alienates professional services marketers before they get to the first sentence. It satisfies partners because it recognizes what they might...
How Much Should a Professional Services Firm Spend on Marketing?
"How much should a professional services firm spend on marketing?" is one of the most common questions asked by practice leaders and marketers in professional services. An agency colleague told me recently that the correct answer from most marketers is always “more.”...
Stupid Sh*t Professional Services Marketing Should Not Do
Professional services marketing teams get asked to do A LOT of things that partners want done but have little strategic impact in accelerating the firm's growth or building its legacy. If you’re a practice leader or partner, you’ve probably received your sales...
Presentations
Building the OPTIMAL Marketing Organization
There is no perfect marketing structure, but there is an optimal structure for your strategy, firm culture, and desired level of investment. This presentation recorded at the Association of Accounting Marketing: Summit 2018 helps you think through the 5 Tough Questions you must answer before building your marketing organization.