RainmakerBlueprints.com

Your 6 Part Business Obstacle Course

In the last 26 years I've spoken with over 11,000 professional service firm partners, principals, vice-presidents and CEOs.

Would you like to know what every single one of them had in common?

They all wanted to know the secrets of how to improve their businesses while at the same time having time to enjoy a richer, fuller personal life.

The professionals that have managed to build great businesses and great personal lives have concentrated on overcoming the following hurdles to business success:

1. Avoiding commoditization. If you face fee pressures...you're facing commoditization. Today's world is filled with hundreds of thousands of competing professionals and competing businesses. Your clients don't know how to evaluate your services relative to other competing professionals. The result...downward fee pressures and decreasing client loyalty. The best firms know how to deal with commoditization through finding profitable niches and careful positioning of themselves and their firms.

 

2. Finding a way to contact and attract the right individuals in their target markets in a cost effective manner. Building relationships is essential to business success. You can't do that with a "one shot" marketing message and you can't do it with a national TV ad campaign (unless you have hundreds of millions of dollars in your war chest.) Selecting the right markets and the right way to send "educational" marketing materials to those market members is essential.

 

3. Creating methods and processes that quickly establish trust with new potential clients. Clients are people. People do business with other people that they know, like and trust. Trust is your most powerful business weapon. But, time is your enemy. You must establish trust and you must establish that trust quickly if you hope to capture the best clients before your competitors do.

 

4. Attracting clients that want long term relationships. The most profitable clients are long term clients. They will spend more money with you more often than the casual "one shot" deal type of client. The best professional firms have found a way to identify these clients in advance. Good firms don't take on "bad clients" and hope that they become good clients.

 

5. Creating entrepreneurial thinking in themselves and their teams. Clients want value added. They don't want run of the mill services. Creating value and delivering that perceived value to the client requires entrepreneurial thinking and attitudes. The best firms know how to encourage and foster the growth of entrepreneurial thinking.

 

6. Establishing and maintaining momentum. If you want a rapidly growing firm with a constantly improving client base you need more than the "marketing program flavour of the month." You need a long term (three years and up) commitment to growth and excellence...and...you need to maintain the same momentum from day one (when everyone's enthusiasm over shadowed reality.) You're going to face problems...every business does. The best ones solve those challenges over the long term.