If you are like most professional service firms, early on in your selling process you offer some sort of free initial consultation. There are many ways to conduct this initial meeting. Some firms meet for coffee or lunch. Others may offer a free “audit” or evaluation....
So, it’s time to work on your marketing budget for the new year. Before you jump in and start crunching numbers, make sure you pay attention to the important (and often overlooked) first step of writing down your goals. Without a set of goals, your budgeting...
As a provider of professional services, you spend time trying to generate referrals from customers and strategic partners. You may even have a referral plan. But do you have a plan in place for turning away business? Sounds crazy, I know, But we are all guilty of...
Word of mouth plays an important role in growing a professional service firm. We spend a lot of time and effort trying to influence customers and referral partners to talk about our services to others. When marketing our firms with WOM one question we have to ask is...
We marketers often talk about the perils of competing solely on price and how to create a marketing system that helps you move from competing on price and in many cases, charge a premium for your services. This idea of narrowing your focus and raising your prices is...
Sometimes the biggest challenge in correcting your marketing problems is defining exactly what kind of problem you have. There are many kinds of marketing problems. Here are a few broad categories that may help you to define and solve marketing-related problems you...
In the February edition of Optimize Magazine, Editor-In-Chief Brian Gillooly shares 3 questions he likes to ask CIOs and others to get them to expand their thinking beyond their day to day minutiae. The questions (which Guillory attributes to his colleague Bob Evans)...