Firm Management and Growth

Wellesley Hills Group was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in the nation. We’re number 1,125 in the country and 46 in our region.

I’m always fascinated by the annual Inc. 5,000 rankings and featured businesses. This year is no exception. Here are some of the companies (besides, you know, mine) that jumped out at me.

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A RainToday.com recent webinar attendee asked via email:

Many mid-sized professional services firm have no business plan and I’ve had to use the marketing plan to “back into” a business plan or general direction for the year. I find this is the case more often than not. Do you see this as well? It’s almost impossible to get “deal makers” at all levels (CEO on down) to take the time, and more importantly, make the decision on building a business plan, which should then facilitate the marketing strategy.

Often times, the businesses don’t need a plan. That’s why they don’t have one. Why?

Strategy at professional services firms is different than strategy at other types of companies. At many firms, strategy boils down to a set of industries to target, services to offer, and geographies to serve.

Revenue projections are often based on arbitrary measures such as the leaders’/owners’ desire to make a certain amount of money, percent of delivery capacity (i.e. we have this many people who can bill this much, so we’ll make this much money), or picked-out-of-the-air percentage growth targets.

General direction for the year, depending on the firm’s stage of growth, often consists of strengthening quality of services delivered, improving operational efficiencies, adding the right amount of staff to match historical growth pace, perhaps offering new services, and here and there something more strategic like acquiring other business or entering new markets. (And, of course, most firms state the obligatory “we’re focusing on our people” strategy messages internally.)

Because these strategies don’t always change year to year, you often don’t see a firm with a written business plan per se. And if you do, it’s in a PowerPoint deck…a short one, and maybe an Excel spreadsheet with projected revenue and costs.

Thus, not having a business plan in a formal sense is neither bad nor good. What’s not good is when firms get lazy about trying to be better or more competitive, get lazy about delivering the value they say they deliver to the market, or aren’t serious about focusing on their people.

Business plans do become important if you’re looking to raise capital because you need investors. Without the need for capital (or the need to satisfy another stakeholder like a board of directors), many services firms don’t need formal business plans.

Regardless of whether a business plan exists, marketing can still be the impetus for something interesting or strategic to happen at the company.

Marketing can:

• Be the key to unlocking growth in particular industry segments.
• Radically change your overall ability to generate leads and win new business.
• Create new service packaging and pricing such that revenue, margin, and repeat business increase.
• Force the company to study its own messages and value propositions, thus creating a stronger shared understanding of the purpose and norms of the firm.
• Uncover service or industry segments that are stronger prospects for revenue and margin growth than others, and focus firm efforts on these strong opportunities.

In the end, it doesn’t matter much where the energy, passion, enthusiasm, and innovation come from, be it business strategy, marketing strategy, or individual team members. What’s important is that it comes from someplace.

Last week I delivered the first of two webinars on the topic of Marketing Strategy, Planning, and Budgeting through RainToday.com. We had quite a number of questions that came in during the webinar and throughout the Q&A time.

One attendee wrote in:

How does one generate leads to serve clients that have enough need and finances to take advantage of me, as a solo practitioner with management consulting, financial planning, tax, and accounting expertise? I am not looking for a large practice, 10 to 15 clients that will spend $15,000 to $25,000 or more a year.

If I were to rephrase this question, it might go something like this:

How do I make a quarter of a million dollars as a solo practitioner in my field?

A simple, but broad question. Broad though as it may be, it got me thinking of the basics of building a solid small practice.

First and foremost, you need to be good at what you do. Obvious point, you say? In my experience, everyone thinks their services and their value are all that and a bag of chips. In reality, they’re not that good. Making sure your services are, indeed, top quality is top priority.

Regarding your marketing and lead generation strategy, you need to:

• Know who your target market is, and know as much about them – company by company, buyer by buyer – as possible.
• Know the value of your services; you might want to charge $15k to $25k per year, but someone might not see the value enough to buy it for that much.
• Be able to communicate that value one-to-many, such as in a website, and one-to-one, such as in sales conversations.
• Be able to uncover need, craft solutions, and win business.
• Understand who your real competition is for your services.
• Stick with a program to implement your marketing and lead generation. (Most solo providers that I’ve met haven’t been able to stick with anything long enough to make it work.)

In terms of lead generation tactics, there are many ways up the mountain, especially for solo practitioners. People want to know does cold calling work? What about PR? Should I speak and write to establish myself as a thought leader? How about direct mail and email? Search optimization for my website? Good ol’ networking and referrals? The answers to those questions are…yes in general. And, for you specifically…it depends.

You need to figure out for yourself a) which tactics you are going to use and why, and b) how to get them done well. There’s no simple, good answer or secret lead generation tactic that’s going to work for everyone.

If you’re interested in digging in more deeply and coming up with those answers for yourself, you can start with: this webinar on lead generation, this white paper on lead generation, and this research report on what’s working in lead generation.

It is 3:02am, and I am on the redeye from Alaska back to Massachusetts, via Atlanta, of course. Sitting next to me is a partner of a CPA firm in Miami who is flying back from the Kenai Peninsula. He just spent 30 days there with a construction team working to build his dream vacation cabin on the water.

For the last two years, that dream has been a nightmare. The service provider he hired two years ago to build the house started it, and then poof he was gone…vanishing into the great Alaskan bush. A few years, a few lawyers, and a lot of heartache later, he flew his own team to Alaska from Florida to finish the cabin. Now, he’s got a great cabin to go along with the lingering bad taste of bad service.

Meanwhile, I spent a week at the Bear Bay Lodge fishing for Alaskan salmon, trout, char, and grayling. On the ride to the airport before the long journey home, Josh, the Camp Manager, spent quite a bit of time talking about how he strives to deliver the Disneyland Experience (minus the clean shaven look…this is fishing in Alaska after all) through each member of the staff to all the guests at the lodge. Since I was a recipient of that service, I knew quite well he meant it, too.

When we got to the Dillingham airport, the woman at the ticket counter was having quite a bit of trouble with the computer (Don’t they all?). Most of the lovely patrons in line seemed annoyed by their extra wait even though, once they were done waiting in line, there was no waiting area to speak of, no coffee shop…no nothin’. No one was harsh, but they were semi-snide, semi-irked, and semi-quiet about it. She could hear what they said.

Josh, on the other hand, had a different reaction to the situation. After the frustrated ticket agent finally got some love from the computer, and we were done checking in, he told her that she was doing a great job.

If I worked in Dillingham, AK, I’d work for Josh—but I don’t. So instead, I’ll just recommend other folks to visit him. It seems you can get good service in Alaska as well as good fish.

Joshes inspire loyal teams. Loyal teams deliver great service. Great service gets referrals from happy clients.

Are your leaders Joshes? Do they make your team understand what it means to deliver the Disneyland Experience? And then, do they lead by example by making a positive comment when it might have been unexpected?

It’s often been said that management is seeing the forest through the trees, and that leadership is picking the right forests.

Why is it that good often-said things are not often-heeded? Day-after-day, I encounter leaders and managers in organizations toiling away at tasks, and chugging their way down paths, that will lead nowhere. Or nowhere good.

People so often miss the big picture. I think they’d miss it less if they did a better job asking themselves, and other folks, more of the right questions. Here are some examples:

• “Big picture, what do we need to do to grow our company 25%, and 25% again?”
• “Big picture, how can we improve our overall level of client dedication and service across the company?”
• “Big picture, what do I really need to do to make the transition to Rainmaker at my firm?”
• “Big picture, what will success look like for this client engagement…for this internal project…for our new website?”
• “What are we missing, big picture, that might derail our ability to achieve our 2 year goals?”

In service businesses, it can be more difficult to think big picture. Service business leaders, more often than not, need to sell, deliver, and manage client teams as well as guide the ship. They have precious little time to step back and ask the big picture questions, as well as take the necessary time to come up with worthwhile answers. What’s a service business leader to do?

Stop making excuses.

Everyone else is as pressed for time that you are. Everyone else faces seemingly insurmountable challenges. And few people do something about them in real ways.

One of the most innovative service businesses I’ve seen is Gem Plumbing. They’re not a traditional professional services firm like a consulting firm, law firm, technology services, accounting, engineering, etc. But plumbing businesses in general have many similarities with professional services firms:

• They’re typically run by professionals themselves. (I.e. People don’t get MBAs from top schools and go to work for plumbing companies…plumbers and family members typically run plumbing companies.)
• It’s tough to differentiate. There is a guy down the street who says he can do the same thing.
• Referrals are important.
• Repeat business is important.
• Reputation is important. (And it only takes one bad experience to spoil the reputation.)
• Managing the professional staff can be a challenge.
• Plumbers have to balance technical expertise, people skills, and business operations prowess to make sure clients get a complete service experience.

Meanwhile, the two brothers that took over the firm in the 1990s when the firm was about $3m in revenue, plus or minus, for about 20 years asked themselves one important question. “Big picture, what will it take to build a world-class plumbing company?” They came up with relatively few big needs to solve regarding people, operations processes, quality management, inventory systems, and pricing and marketing. Now, they had to work day in and day out on executing against their needs, and not a day goes by when they don’t stay on top of it, but the major big-picture needs haven’t changed.

Seven or so years later, they’re a $35,000,000 company with good profit.

Big picture, what will it take to get your business to the next level?

Elwood: It’s 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.

Jake: Hit it.

Many professionals and leaders at services firms appear quite efficient. They’re always busy, running from thing to thing. But what kind of progress are they really making towards reaching their proactively set goals? Do you, as the steward of your own effectiveness, reach your goals in the time frames you set for yourself?

I often observe time slipping away from professionals and managers because:

• Busy as they might look, they often focus on urgent issues (that need immediate attention but may not have significant consequence in the grand scheme of things) vs. important issues (that may not need to be done now, but are of great consequence).

• Firm leaders too often do work that can be delegated to others, work that, for one reason or another, they “buckle down” and do themselves.

• Firm leads allow themselves to be distracted by unproductive meetings, random telephone calls, putting out fires, interrupting visitors to their office, and a host of other lampreys of time.

Books have been written about the subject of time management. I could expound upon each one of the points below for paragraphs on end to drive them home. But I don’t have to (and thus it wouldn’t be a good use of time). Follow the summary and you should be in good shape.

1. Set goals and accomplishment milestones. If you find yourself working on anything that will distract you from achieving those goals, step back, look at what you’re doing, and figure out how to get back on track. (Willie Hall: So, Jake, you’re out, you’re free, you’re rehabilitated. What’s next? What’s happenin’? What you gonna do?)

2. Practice saying, No. Why practice? When you really need to say no, it will come out. Often people don’t want to be disagreeable, so they don’t say no. Learning to say no at the right time will help you actually deliver on the important commitments you’ve made to yourself and others. (Mrs. Murphy: You want butter or jam on that, honey? Elwood: No ma’am, dry.)

3. Heed Occam’s Razor – Plurality should not be posited without necessity. In other words, don’t do more than you need to do. Once you’ve achieved success on any particular task, move on. Sometimes you need to polish the polish to make sure something is just perfect, but more often you should begin to invest your time in the next important endeavor. (Elwood: Ah, what kind of music do you usually have here? Claire: Oh, we got both kinds, Country and Western.)

4. Ask the question, “Is this what I should be doing right now?” You might save yourself days of time just by catching yourself in the act of less productive work than you could be doing. (Little Kid: Will you please put this in the window, lady, ‘cuz it’s real important.)

5. Be proactive. Habit #1 of Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is habit #1 for a reason. Proactive people are productive and reach goals. Waiting around and reacting isn’t a good way to get where you want to go. (Jake: We’re putting the band back together.)

6. Control the clutter. Messy desks and disorganized to-do lists derail many a manager. Some folks can work through the piles-o-junk, but not many. Some may disagree with this point, but I’ve found disorganized managers to be less productive even if they don’t know they’re being less productive.  If you want to step on the gas, sometimes you have to clear path first. (Elwood: Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don’t fail us now.)

7. Check in with yourself frequently. Ask yourself first thing in the morning, “What do I want to get done today?” Check in later in the day with yourself to see how you’re doing. If you find yourself getting derailed from the important work that will help you reach your goals, you can often re-rail yourself with a simple check in. (Elwood: Then we gotta figure out some way to collect the gate money and get it to the Cook County Assessor’s Office as soon as they open in the morning.)

8. Kill unproductive activities. I know some folks in sales who are constantly analyzing their sales activities and results to the nth degree. After their exhaustive analysis, they learn month after month that they’re still underperforming. Perhaps ten hours less of analysis would give them ten hours more of productivity. Perhaps there are 4 sets of ten hour activities that they can replace with more productive activities. Most people don’t question what they do and how their activity patterns affect their success. They should. (Elwood: You want outta this parking lot? Okay.)

9. Don’t suffer time wasters. Squash unproductive meetings. Turn off the phone and the email (that’s right…I dare you.)* Nip the office chit chat in the bud. If your colleague is not getting to the point, get them there. Sure, sometimes having a relaxed and meandering conversation is important for relationship building such as with clients, with prospects, or with colleagues during lunch or after work. Most of the time you can cut the conversation in half and get right to being productive. Time wasters…don’t heed them. Don’t notice them.

If you find that anyone you work with unduly derails you from reaching your goals, confront the issue. How you confront the issue may be a subject of quite a bit of thought, but that you confront the issue is a must. If you don’t, you’re no longer pursuing your own agenda. You’re pursuing someone else’s, whether that person be your superior, subordinate, or colleague. (Jake: How often does the train go by? Elwood: So often you won’t even notice it.)

*I’m not advocating you should be unresponsive to clients, prospects, and team members. Perhaps you can get more done for them with four hours of undisturbed time. Unless it’s one of those days that you have to be accessible 100% of the time, or must return a call immediately, non-emergencies can usually wait a reasonable short while.

Now, what do I want to get done today? Right! So without further adieu, back to it. “She caught the Katy…”