Janet Schijns

Influence is everything but not if it doesn't work to drive real profitable revenue impacts for your firm. Do no fall for "everyone likes X influencer so I will pay them to like me". Instead think about the authentic voice of your firm, create a "social hero" within your firm and invest in someone helping them with content, posts etc. to build their influence over time. Sure, you might need to augment that at the start but if you invest and take time you will have your own influencers that deliver to your bottom line!

As long as high profile equals high value you should be able to set up a process to ensure you are proactively managing these clients. If high profile does not mean high value then you need to change your offer strategy so that you can afford the level of hand holding needed.

This is the skill too many sales and marketing organizations miss. You must have a strong follow-up strategy, a process or system to track it, and a ruthless eye on execution to ensure it happens. Following up can be very demotivating so I like to seed a few accounts in the list that are actually functioning as "Secret Shoppers" and when they receive the email follow ups and the more direct requests to start meeting, proposing etc...that the rep gets a spiff for having done the process right!

There is no such thing as just rebranding - that's just an arts and crafts answer that no profit oriented company would ever approve or invest in. Instead focus on redefining the business plan with things like updated company value prop, offers, services, and profit centers. Then you can talk about what/if needs to be done to ensure the brand is representing these new business imperatives. In this way you will get much more engagement from and with senior leadership.

Embrace agility but do not shift your business too much due to the economy as that can be a deadly mistake. You can adjust offers (remove features to lower price as an example) or offer special incentives for specific behaviors but be careful not to create a pricing or offer strategy that will cause you to struggle when the economy stabilizes. As for Social Media, invest here to drive more leads....nothing else you do on Social matters!

Don't be afraid to be realistic and honest in your marketing / dialogue of what things will take. I find too often consultants and service providers in an attempt to "win the deal" over promise on results and under estimate effort of work and timeline! Differentiate yourself by being the provider who is honest and shares a realistic version of what it will take!