When sitting face to face with the buyers of your services, remember you’re not just selling the value of the work you create. The value your firm brings to the table is deep and multifaceted. But don’t count on your client to point them out for you …

Knowing the costs of serving your clients is important, but it’s not the same thing as knowing how to price your services. Costing is objective and tactical; pricing is subjective and strategic. Costing uses formulas; pricing requires judgment.

When we walk into a store to purchase a product in a category in which we have no prior experience, how do we make our choice?  Mostly, we depend on value signals.

Exceptionally talented professional firms are distinguished not by what they do, but what they believe.  Their work is unique because their beliefs are unique. They create dissimilar solutions because they have a dissimilar mindset.

Take away timesheets, and most agency executives will proclaim the end of the world.  But back when agencies were earning average profit margins of 30%, there were no agency timesheets.  Talk about cognitive dissonance.

If your firm uses the term “full service” on its website, here are two good reasons you should stop. First, “full service” is one of the phrases that has officially joined the lexicon of expressions so overused they’ve lost their meaning — words like “quality” and “excellence.”

Like all humans, we business executives are subject to what behaviorists call “confirmation bias.” Nowhere is this dynamic displayed more prominently than in professionals’ perception of how well their firm is differentiated from rivals.

Strengths contribute everything; weaknesses contribute nothing. Such was the conclusion of the brilliant Peter Drucker after decades of consulting with some of the world’s best companies.

If every agency in America is a “full-service, integrated marketing communications firm” (like they say they are), why do clients chronically complain about the lack of integration from their agencies?

What are the key criteria you use when looking for prospective clients? More importantly, what criteria are your key prospects using when they’re looking for you?

What exactly constitutes success in context of a professional services business like an advertising agency? Should success be defined exclusively in financial terms? Is it more about reputation and recognition?

Answer this simple question: What is the value of three hours of your time spent on a client’s business? You can probably tell me what the cost of your time is (salary plus overhead), but assigning a value to the time is a much more subjective question.

Despite decades of books and literature supporting the importance and value of a clear, well-defined focus, most business firms persist in trying to be a little bit of everything to everyone.

Imagine you’ve just received a notice from the IRS that they’re going to audit your most recent tax return. You’ve never been through an audit before, and because you’re in the habit of preparing your own tax returns, you decide it’s time to get some professional help.

Has your billable time ever been scrutinized? If you work for an advertising agency or other type of professional services firm, chances are you have been subject to a battery of billable time evaluations, all designed to achieve one thing in the mind of the agency owner: maximize productivity.

Does this look like a familiar list of criteria for new business prospects?

When you think about the concept of positioning your firm, what comes to mind? A tag line you can put on your business card? A headline for you the home page of your website? A theme you can give to a new business presentation?

Most businesses start out with a fairly simple business model. As time goes on, they add new services and capabilities and extend out to new markets. Some of this diversification is strategic and deliberate, but most of the time companies start sprawling in ways they never intended.

Countless agencies confuse having a philosophy with having a positioning. A positioning is a strategy, not a tag line.

When creating an investment portfolio, no reasonable person would put all their money in just gold, just Certificates of Deposit, or just stocks (especially in today’s economic climate).