Every year or two, a firm’s management group should step back and look at the business from a fresh perspective.

We love working with firms to provide this big picture view of the organization. We research, analyze, and report about the firm’s:

• General economics, paying particular attention to performance and sector depth and growth, marketing investment return, and leverage behaviors;

• Market(s) focusing on market conditions, market-share, competition, trends of the industries in which the firm is involved, and local economic forecasts;

• Culture and operating environment looking primarily for customer service processes, areas of greatest and least interest to professionals, recruiting and employee retention concerns, progress with internal succession plans, and opportunities for collaboration among professionals for business expansion.

Resulting reports are extraordinarily useful in subsequent strategic and marketing plan development and they often result in positive organizational changes as well.

Marketing Plans and Budgets

Usually preceded by a marketing assessment, we work closely with your firm’s management team to develop simple yet sophisticated marketing plans for the firm to implement over one, two, or three year terms either with or without our on-going assistance.

Do you hate long, wordy plans that are difficult to follow and even more difficult to follow-up on? So do we.

Instead, our plans are in spreadsheet form for quick reference facilitating optimal follow-through.

Each plan item is clearly associated with a budget allocation that is slotted into the appropriate time-period so you can visualize—and modify—expenditure timing to see cash-flow needs for your marketing plan.

You'll get your tailored marketing plan, budget, and timeline in one easy-to-read document.

Our marketing plans generally begin at the firm level and, if desired, transcend to the practice group level and, when the firm is ready, to the individual level.

As needed, we provide coaching, support and tools on a per initiative basis to help firms accomplish their plans. Some firms rely completely on us as their marketing department—this optimizes results because we don’t get distracted with day-to-day firm operations. Instead, we focus on the planned initiatives and work hard to keep your firm on track.

Strategic Plans

Strategic planning is vital to a firm’s ability to focus a group of individually-minded owners toward a single destination. We’ve participated in strategic planning for tiny firms to large regional firms either as a participant on the “same side of the table” as the stakeholders, as an informed bystander and advisor, or as the neutral facilitator.

Understanding the dynamics in firm management and operations adds to Michelle’s abilities as a trained and experienced facilitator. She diplomatically yet effectively challenges owners/stakeholders to assure that ideas and plans are realistic and well thought-through.

No matter what form our help takes, we understand and value that the plan always belongs to the firm and must be totally "owned” by those who create it. We are merely the vehicle to an effective plan—we don’t force our own agenda or use the planning session as a selling situation for ourselves. Ever.

Unimplemented plans are far too common and we know how to help you shape the right kind of plan…one you can embrace and actually achieve.