It's discouraging to see how much time you can waste on prospects who really aren't prospects at all but tire kickers. What are the characteristics of the best prospects, and how can you recognize those characteristics early in the process? We'll work through all the options, help you construct your own checklist, and then offer specific questions you can ask early in the process in order to make a fairly accurate assumption about how much time to spend with them.

This webinar will be 45 minutes long, including a short period for Q/A. It will be held on Friday, March 26, 1:00-1:45p CDT.

To register, go to Events > Seminars/Webinars and click the "Pay Now" button. You'll be able to pay with a credit card or your PayPal account, and will then be redirected to the actual registration, where you'll enter your first/last name and email address, after which you'll receive a confirmation by email.

The cost is $95 per computer.

The reason firms fail is not creativity, location, or the marketplace. It’s management ability. Your firm is a direct reflection of you, and you must take responsibility for it. Here are the most common dozen mistakes we see marketing firms make. If you are managing a firm now, you’ll identify immediately. If you are an employee, this might give you some context for the decisions you may not agree with. If you are considering starting a company, this will help you learn from the mistakes of others.

#01--Rely on Referrals and Repeat Business

Enough good work does not come from two traditional sources: referrals and repeat business, but rather from new leads. The problem with referrals and repeat business in a growing, changing firm is that a prospect’s perception of you will not keep pace with reality. Some firms wait around for work to drop in the door. Others look for new clients. Even better, some firms look for clients they can do effective work for and make money in the process.

#02--Confusing Why they Come and Why they Stay

When you talk about being cost-effective, responsive, and full service, you're talking about why clients STAY with you. If they COME to you for those reasons, you're screwed. And in the marketing phase, such language translates to "quick, cheap, and desperate." The only good reason to come is expertise. Keep 'em coming with those other things.

#03--Stay a Generalist

Specialization occurs in every area of life. We stay a generalist, not because the marketplace demands it, but because we get bored easily and because we don’t have a marketing plan and thus feel compelled to cast the net wide. Firms that specialize generally thrive. What will this do? It will make it easier to find business, to do effective work, and to make more money.

#04--Feed Gorilla Clients

It’s unsafe to have any client that represents more than 35% of your business. Our studies show that it’s difficult to recover from the loss of any client larger than that. (It doesn’t matter if you have different contacts in other departments.) If you have a large client, be honest; have a marketing emergency folder; set aside 4 months of overhead; have a maintenance marketing plan in place for at least 6 months; and job implementation out, retaining account service, project management, and actual work oversight. You can borrow money, but you can’t borrow marketing.

#05--Misunderstand Growth

Smaller can be better, based on what you want. Growth in employee count isn't about making more money, or even playing on a bigger stage. It's more about your individual role. If you embrace management, go for it. Otherwise, work at staying smaller and enjoy the hands-on role.

#06--Hire to Delegate To

So...you get really busy, and you have more than you can do. You hire people to delegate to. That moves the upside down funnel higher, and you become even more of a bottle neck. In the process, you want people to implement your ideas. You judge work instead of shape it. In effect, you are working “in” your business instead of “on” it. Instead, hire people who have something to teach the firm on their first day with you.

#07--Manage for Significance

Hiring all these people doesn’t solve the problem, and you are still too busy. You learn to be important because you can do everything. You are forced to peel off areas of significance and re-learn your role. If you continue struggling, you’ll likely refuse to put things in writing, insist on seeing everything in the shop, steal the credit, and manage for loyalty, not results. If this carries over into client relationships, you won’t be effective because you’ll take on assignments with hopeless budgets and schedules to be the white knight. In effect you’ll be looking for acceptance from clients instead of a fighting for a strong direction.

#08--Think Employees are Entrepreneurs

One of the reasons you left the big firm to start your own was because you hated structure. So you vow to avoid all those stupid rules. One day you begin to realize, though, that many of those rules have a purpose. And that the people who work for you aren’t entrepreneurs. If they were, they’d be starting their own firms. Employees usually always want more structure, communication, job descriptions, regular reviews, etc., than you think they do.

#09--Ignore Project Management Issues

Having more than 5 employees per principal/senior manager will feel big unless you have good systems. Without them, you’ll be unable to do a mind dump. The best systems have centralized responsibility for budget and schedule. Most firms are deadline-driven vs. profit-driven, and as a result they bill for only a portion of their time because it’s not as important as meeting the deadlines. That national average is 42%.

#10--Spend your Way into Prosperity

More than 80% of those making lots of money have no fixed obligations (leases, loans, or credit card balances) for depreciating assets. In a small service company, there is no separation between how a principal views money and how money is used in the business, and that can spell trouble. Is cash the best filter for acquiring a depreciating asset? It may apply the brakes for companies who are growing too quickly. And the act of spending cash makes it less likely that you’ll acquire more than you need. Avoid loans and leases for depreciating assets.

#11--React Slowly to a Downturn

Entrepreneurs are optimistic to a fault and believe that hard work can solve anything. They also react slowly, like a deer in the headlights. In a downturn, it’s tempting to try to hang on to the team so that they'll be in place when the tide turns. But given that most of your overhead is compensation (45% at an unburdened level), you can understand why no principal ever said: "I wish I'd waited longer to do the layoffs."

#12--Count on Selling Your Firm

It doesn’t usually happen. Often the likely buyer is someone in your firm with no money, who wants to use your money to buy you out. If you want to sell, institutionalize your firm. In the process, build a strong retirement fund, assuming you won’t sell it. Then try anyway.

Only held once per year, this revamped one-day seminar has been developed especially for design, advertising, interactive, and public relations firms, and it is crafted to cover everything about the creative director role (see the complete agenda on page five). It is appropriate for anyone functioning in that role: a principal, creative director, design director, art director, or just someone soon to be promoted to a role that includes managing people or the creative process.

You’ll learn what your role should be, whether you are a good fit for it, how to perform that role well, how to adjust for your own strengths/weaknesses as you deal with creatives, how to find and screen good creatives, and how to guide the careers of those in your care.

Most important, probably, we’ll walk you through the choices you’ll have to make in transitioning from doing the work to stepping away from such a hands-on role, and why you need to let your design skills wither a bit and work on your copywriting skills instead.

This year for the first time we’ll be presenting new research undertaken about making the transition to first time Creative Director, all based on a forthcoming book on that subject for RockBench Publishing.

Only held once per year, this revamped one-day seminar has been crafted to cover the best methods of research and the formulation of strategy for specific client engagements (see the complete agenda on page five). The seminar is appropriate for principals, account planners, account managers, and anyone integral to making recommendations to clients.

You’ll learn the historical background and how that matters, how research, strategy, and positioning of products/services are connected, and the best working definitions of all the key terms.

We’ll give you the right questions to ask and to whom they should be directed, the most efficient research methods and sources, and which ones you might use for any given desired outcome.

We’ll guide you through the crafting of insightful recommendations and how to deliver them as you build consensus along the way.

You’ll learn how to incorporate more process to yield better results and how to build a research and strategy component into your firm (and how to staff it). Finally, we’ll guide you on incorporating this offering into your own positioning through packaged offerings.