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.
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.
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.
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:
- Revisiting the BS of PS: Are Things Getting Better? Or Worse?
There’s an inherent dysfunction that keeps firms from reaching their full growth potential. Jason and Jeff revisit one of the podcast’s […]
- The Rebranding of Twitter to X. Brilliant Move or Colossal Mistake?
The marketing world is all “atwitter” about X. Was this rebrand a brilliant move? Or a colossal mistake? What can professional service […]
- The Cobbler’s Children Have No Shoes
Some strategy firms lack a sound business strategy. Some HR consulting firms lack effective people discipline. Why do firms struggle to […]
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
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.
Matrix Madness Harmonizer™
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.
Growth Readiness Self-Assessment
Self-score your firm’s effectiveness in 11 critical growth areas.
Popular Articles
A Professional Services Marketing Self-Assessment
This professional services growth and marketing assessment allows you to self-score 11 critical growth-enabling areas, then, weights and prioritizes each area for attention.
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
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.
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?
This is one of the most popular questions asked among practice leaders and marketers in professional services. An agency colleague told me recently that the correct answer from most marketers is always “more.” Yet, most partners and busines…
Stupid Sh*t Professional Services Marketing Should Not Do
If you’re a practice leader or partner, you’ve probably received your sales “number” for this year. Your primary goal is hitting it. If you want your marketing team to improve your chances of hitting it, then stop asking them to do stupid s…
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.