Situation: A professional services company wants to grow while maintaining the small company atmosphere that has been the key to its success. There is a limit to how many clients a manager can manage, and with this the reality that if the firm is to grow they will have to bring on more client managers and support personnel. How do you maintain your culture as you grow?
Advice from the CEOs:
- To maintain your boutique atmosphere, consider hiring to fit your needs rather than to maintain a culture. Use team meetings to direct team members while communicating and instilling the culture that you wish to maintain.
- Don’t risk diluting the strength of your client relationships. A $250K client who is fully committed to your service may have more demands than a $1M client for whom you only represent 10% of their business.
- Service companies with the highest profit ratios rotate customer contact among several qualified people. What matters is the level of service provided, not the individual providing the service.
- Grow by adding locations. Instead of growing vertically in the same office, grow modularly by spawning additional offices.
- Create an optimally sized model for the level of service that you wish to deliver.
- Design the organizational structure for this model and identify the order in which slots will be filled as business grows through each office.
- Develop a service and organizational template with standard operating procedures, metrics, technology, and reporting.
- Once the model is created, spawn it.
- Focus your business. Define a niche that you can serve better than your competitors. Focus on this niche and develop a sustainable advantage over your competition.
- Assure that your service delivery is seamless to the client and make sure that it remains seamless.
- Offer a menu of service options and price options by the level of service delivered. Some will want to buy a Mercedes, and some will be happy with a reliable lower priced sedan.
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