Stop focusing on logos, colors, and taglines.
Building a brand takes time—and starts from the inside. With the right marketing strategy, you take the first steps to meaningful growth.
Is failing to make growth decisions causing your firm to fail?
Who owns growth decisions in your firm? Confusion often reigns in professional firms about who makes decisions that affect a firm's growth. Is it the leadership team, practices, geographies, individual partners, BD, or marketing? Not knowing creates sub-optimal...
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Marketing Strategy or Marketing Calendar: How to Tell the Difference
As firms finalize accounting of last year’s performance, sort through bonuses and deliver employee reviews, partners are turning their sights to this year’s revenue bogey. Many are wondering where the revenue is going to come from and turning to their marketing...
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Do you have high expectations for your marketing team?
With year-end approaching, many organizations are beginning their requisite employee evaluations. While evaluations are intended to provide fairness, paper trails and opportunities for "improvement," they are of limited value in either helping marketers become...
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4 Steps to Align Buying and Selling Mentalities
My marketing education began before kindergarten, but I "officially" began working in my family’s auto parts business when I was thirteen years old. By working in our company’s many stores over the years, I came to appreciate the business, our employees and our...
read moreThe Marketing Brochure and the Peter Principle
When a prospect asks for a brochure, what is s/he really saying? “Wow! I really love what I am hearing. I want to share your brilliant solution with my colleagues. But, there is no way I could articulate your sales pitch as well as you. I need a brochure to do it for...
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When it’s time to reinvent the firm
At some point, the capability, service or consulting model that built your brand becomes commoditized, trite or simply out of fashion in the business world. You have stopped growing and redesigning your logo isn’t going to fix it. It happened to actuaries at the HR...
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Why top firms share good, bad and ugly client references.
Why do firms only give out good references? Before making most purchases—large or small—I do my research. Amazon, Yelp, REI, Angie’s List and retail sites all give me opportunities to read client references. When I read reviews, I first read the five-star reviews and...
read moreIntegrity Test
I was in a meeting recently where a leadership team was grappling with their long-term direction. They’re doing what many leadership teams must do – trying to discern how to kick-start growth in their business. It complicates things that they work in the healthcare...
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How to eliminate the pain of CRM in your firm
Recently, I was in a meeting of senior accounting marketers. As we were discussing challenges, ALL were bemoaning the use of—or the lack of the use of—their firm’s CRM system. I heard complaints like: “It’s like pulling teeth to get our partners to use it. “ “It’s too...
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