Ignition works with marketing communications and other professional service firms to help them in three essential areas: Defining a differentiating positioning, realigning their structure and business model, and adopting a more progressive approach to compensation.

Consulting Programs

Getting Paid for Value Instead of Time

There’s a pricing and compensation revolution underway in professional services, and Ignition is helping to lead the charge. As a leading advocate of value-based compensation, Ignition can help your firm price its services to achieve maximum profit by moving from the old model of selling hours to the new model of selling value. As part of this process, Ignition will help you make value-based pricing a core competency of the firm.

How it works: This program begins with interviews of key managers and associates — part of a Value Audit that assesses the firm’s current ability to both create and capture value through its service offerings and compensation practices. Ignition then teaches the new value-based compensation paradigm to the firm’s key managers through onsite and/or online workshops, and then helps select and train key people to serve in the role of a Value Council, whose job it is to ensure that the firm is compensated based on the value it creates rather than the hours it works.

For a detailed description of this program, click here.

Positioning Your Firm for Profitable Growth

Building on the success you have already achieved, Ignition works with advertising agencies and other marketing communications firms to help develop a relevant, differentiating positioning strategy.  By engaging in this program, your firm can expect to attract and win not just more business, but better business. By developing a clear focus that makes the most of your strengths, you’ll become intensely appealing to a select group of clients who want you for what you do best.

How it works: This program begins with Ignition’s comprehensive Strategic Positioning Assessment, an online survey that serves both as an insight tool and a baseline for how your firm is positioned in the marketplace. It also helps assess how the firm is performing in the important areas of product, people, promotion, process, and place. Using a combination of onsite visits and online sessions, Ignition works with the firm’s management team in four phases: discovery, definition, alignment and execution.

For a detailed description of this program, click here.

Refining and Realigning Your Business Model

Ignition helps advertising agencies and other professional service firms define their strategic plan and align their organization around not just best practices, but “next practices” — the things progressive firms are doing to reinvent themselves to compete successfully now and in the future.

How it works: This program usually begins with Ignition’s proprietary online survey, “Leading Indicators of Success,” which identifies how the organization rates on the most critical success factors for professional service firms. Ignition also conducts interviews of key managers and associates. Ignition then facilitates a series of planning and follow-up sessions designed to identify the key initiatives needed to move the firm forward.

For a detailed description of this program, click here.

Self-Guided Agency Positioning Program

For agencies and other marketing communications firms who are interested in completing Ignition’s agency positioning program, we now offer several different ways to accomplish this work. This is in response to requests we have had over the years from firms who would like to implement a mostly self-guided version of this program, with the option of varying levels of assistance from Ignition.

For a detailed description of this program, click here.