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High Growth Professional Services Firms

We recently completed a market study for our client SAP, on High Growth Professional Services Firms:  http://www.roivision.com/en/b2b/resources

This study was based on conversations with executives from a total of 294 Canadian Profesionnal Services firms. Annual revenues from the 900 organizations contacted range from $5M to $100M. Interviews were completed with business owners, managing partners and other key executives.

In many ways, the Canadian Professional Services industry is thriving. It is considered one of the top sectors in the country, representing more than 10% of the employers and over 700,000 jobs.

The High Growth Firms:

Our study analyzed strategies used by the High Growth Professional Services firms, lessons learned by these successful entrepreneurs, while also highlighting their greatest challenges.

Specifically, we found that High Growth firms were much more likely to rate themselves as being highly specialized. Consistent with the description of their firms, High Growth firms tend to emphasize narrow targeting of customers and have specialized services.

Greatest challenges:

The four greatest challenges that were identified were leveraging the knowledge and experiences gained in past engagements to improve profitability, maximizing resource utilization, acquiring, training, and retaining the highest-quality personnel and  improving forecasting and billing accuracy. When asked about managing and forecasting their cash flow and resources, a surprisingly low 22% of companies felt confident in the accuracy of their business planning.

Below you will find an Infographic that provides an Executive summary of our report. I’m looking forward to your comments and feedback : mailto:sleroux@roivision.com




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The Top 5 reasons you aren’t getting enough referrals (and what to do about it)

Making the most of client referralsIf you have read the Little Black Book of Connections, you’ve probably learned that :

  • All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends.
  • All things being not quite so equal, people STILL wants to do business with their friends

The truth is that your business network, your connections and your clients could represent a tremendous business opportunity if you only learn how to use them.
I recently conducted a training session for a group of business development executives in a Fortune 100 company. Given that these are smart, qualified people who are experts at what they do, I tend to believe them when they tell me that they are delivering excellent customer service to a majority of their clients. But I was there because they wanted to know how best to generate referrals from existing clients that could eventually turn into new clients. Isn’t it the best lead generation program?

After years of sales experience and careful observation, I’ve come up with the top 5 reasons you might not be getting enough referrals.

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Innovative uses of social media in economic development

Talk bubbleThe small town of Cambridge, Nebraska is working hard to attract investment. They have developed an attractive website that cleverly evokes the wide-open spaces of America’s heartland. And they have the requisite Facebook and Twitter accounts, on which they – like so many other EDOs – are trying to build followers and establish content. But what really got my attention was their creative use of Pinterest pinboards. They have eight of them, labelled “Cambridge – Life is Good,” “Economic Development,” “Parks & Recreation” and so forth. You can check them out on Pinterest under their username: Cambridgeecodev.

The images are clear and attractive. Descriptions, while short, nevertheless make use of key words and often feature URLs for searchability. One pin is devoted to a poster of their contest advertising a free housing lot in the community. There are very few EDOs on Pinterest, so this helps them stand out from the crowd.

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Executive coaching on social media for business development

PosterA little while back, I found myself at a conference chatting over a glass of chardonnay with the director of a medium-sized IT company. Although his company was very successful, and he was highly regarded for his accomplishments, he had an uncomfortable confession to make.

He looked around, leaned in and spoke in a low, conspiratorial voice, “I know I should, but I don’t really understand how social media can fit into to our marketing efforts.” Read More




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5 reasons lists make great blog posts (and 5 ways to write them well)

ListSocial media posts are littered with lists: 10 Reasons to Use Twitter, 3 Ways to Generate More Leads, 5 Best Places to Live, etc. They may not be the most creative way to get our attention, but get our attention they do. Experienced bloggers are well aware that lists drive traffic and generate very high-quality click-throughs, borrowing a page from experienced legacy media journalists and writers who’ve been doing this kind of thing for many years. Read More