Reflection. Excitement. Anticipation. The end of the year and the beginning of the year carry many emotions and feelings. As you end the year, we wanted to share various strategies to kick off 2019 strong. The firms we speak with are reviewing the budgets and plans, looking to their internal growth plans, and determining the best courses of action. As you review these, also look to your marketing for opportunities to put these plans in super growth mode.
New Markets
There is a good chance that you are looking at making strategic hires and opening new markets. But, how quickly will success come for both? Work with your marketing team to identify a heatmap of current clients within those markets. Create a client referral campaign to leverage existing relationships to assist the speed of market launch. Bring in a valued client speaker as a way to draw other clients to an open house. The list goes on with ways to increase the speed of opening a successful new market.
Margin Expansion
Have you identified what you do best? Have you looked at your margins to see if you are getting paid for your best? Clients will ask why they should pay more, even if they are not asking it directly to you. Breakdown the current state of your margins and define your differentiation. Don’t have true differentiation? That’s a problem. Margin expansion can be accomplished by creating value statements and documentation for your clients. It can also be done by engaging your sales and recruiting team through contests.
Getting Horizontal
How are you looking at expanding within your current clients? Is marketing providing a coordinated effort to drive that success and be a true asset to the sales team? Do you know (documented) how many managers you are working with at each of your clients? Do you know why you are not working with more of them? Marketing helps drive these activities and we would be happy to share how.
New Logos
What marketing activities are you doing to make the sales team job of driving new logos easier? If you are simply relying on the sales team, then you are pushing a boulder up hill. Coordinated campaigns that are run in conjunction with the sales efforts will bring in the new logos you want and make your sales team more profitable faster.
2019 is the year to kick your firm into another gear and marketing is essential to that goal. We would love an opportunity to share with you how to do that.
About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.