Advisory services for Creative professionals

Creative professionals are hard-working, smart, and capable of producing good work for their clients. Yet they often find themselves struggling in these three areas: management, client relationships and profitability.

The quality of business decisions shapes the composition of a client pool which determines the quality of work and hence the bottom line of the firm. The ability to attract better talent is tied to the firm’s profitability which is a product of an abundance of better-fit clients.

While most creative firms have a similar set of business challenges, their composition and timing is usually unique, hence requires a different approach and a customized solutionWe use the word “solution” in alchemical terms — a special mixture with unique properties..

Working with professional firms, we have identified nine critical control points (CRICPs) where organizational entropy (left unattended) is responsible for huge losses of useful work. We labour alongside top management to reduce — and sometimes increase — uncertainty to move the needle effectively.

The benchmark revenue per full-time employee for an average-performing creative agency is $165k in the US.

The top challenges of Creative and Entertainment professionals

Principals of creative and entertainment firms report the following as their biggest challenges:

  1. Making strategic business decisions less challenging
  2. How to get more prospects without cold outreach
  3. Attracting better creative professionals
  4. Competing on price in a commoditized, oversatured marketplace
  5. Pushing back on growing client demands
  6. How to find a sustainable niche
  7. Balancing the workload, creative work and lead nurturing
  8. How to remain profitable while growing fast
  9. How to qualify clients
  10. Overcoming awkwardness of selling
  11. Closing the gap between planning & execution
  12. Keeping the best talent busy yet happy
  13. Creating a more efficient & less hectic business
  14. Filtering & prioritizing excessive business opportunities

Based on proprietary management models, our advisory services and management solutions were developed specifically for professional service firms to tackle the aforementioned challenges.

Solutions
Advisory Services

Win better clients with what you already have

Creative professionals often believe that their creativity is the most prominent strength and a differentiating factor. Executives of entertainment, music and creative industries often say — “We are more creative than other firms.” However, most firms make the same claim.

Creativity isn’t the primary reason why buyers choose one firm over another. It’s about experience, team, know-how, screw-ups, process, work ethics — in other words — competence. That’s why we need to build your marketing framework around the most valuable asset you already possess — your expertise.

We want you to radiate competence so that your clients could appreciate the difference between subjective vague creativity and objective deep expertise.

Profits are tied to your firm’s differentiation

The more competitive the niche and the less differentiated the firm, the less likely buyers of creative services will be willing to pay a price premium. By default buyers tend to commoditize offers, thus standard RFPs.

Buyers are rarely aware of all the intricacies of your work. Acting in self-interest, they attempt to belittle the value — ”We just need X.“

To create a win-win for clients and your firm you’d have to apply some tactics to your selling process. But first we’d have to revisit your positioning. A well-differentiated firm feels a lot more comfortable in its niche.

If yours is the kind of firm from creative, media or entertainment space that believes in doing the best work for its clients — you’re at the right place and at the right time. Let’s talk about your challenges and ambition.

Facilitate the kind of culture creatives flock to

Creative people gravitate toward other creatives. And money isn’t always a top priority for creative professionals. A great culture attracts better candidates. To solve the problem of talent a creative firm must address the problem of culture.

Managing creative people is always a challenge. They don’t like boundaries and rules by definition. A culture that facilitates creativity, flow of ideas, deepening and sharing of knowledge will help in keeping creative professionals engaged, motivated and happy.

By restructuring your service offerings, your positioning and lead generation system we will figure out what sort of employees your firm needs most, how many and who to let go of.

By working on your core: mision, vision, values and purpose, we will create a filter for your future hiring and management decisions.

Connect with us to discuss your challenges and aspirations

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