SOCIALLY FORMAL
CONSULTANCY
Seven services, built around one job: making it obvious why a buyer should choose you, before price becomes the deciding factor.
In a technical sale the buyer is a committee, the cycle runs for months, and by the time a formal document is issued the field has usually narrowed to two or three names.
Most marketing is built to produce enquiries. That is the wrong instrument for revenue decided this way, which is why firms with the strongest technical record often lose to whoever was easier to argue for internally.
Three situations bring most firms here. Any one of them is enough to start a conversation.
The capability was never in question. What separates you from two equally competent firms is, and right now nothing does.
Projects that should be reference-grade never leave the office as anything a buyer can actually read.
A website, a company page and a proposal template, with no one deciding what any of it is for.
Positioning and messaging, executive visibility, pursuit and RFP marketing, brand and proposal collateral, key account marketing, social media and content systems, and fractional marketing leadership. The four below carry most of the work. The other three are underneath.
A clear, defensible answer to why a buyer should choose you before price enters the conversation, written in the language your buyers actually use. Almost every engagement starts here, because everything else is built on top of it.
Your principals are the most credible asset you have and usually the least used. We build their visibility on LinkedIn and the other channels your buyers actually read, with the specific people who award work, so recognition exists before the sales conversation begins.
Most firms meet a pursuit when the RFP lands, by which point the shortlist is often informally set. We position you ahead of a named pursuit, so you are already credible and already pre-qualified when the document is issued.
Senior marketing judgement on your team without carrying a senior marketing salary. Useful when there is real activity happening but nobody qualified to decide what should stop, what should scale and what was never worth doing.
Three more services that tend to arrive once the positioning is settled.
Capability statements, decks and proposals that look and read like the premium firm you are. Technical firms routinely lose on material that undersells work of a far higher standard.
The next contract is usually cheapest to win inside an account you already have. Most technical firms are known by their largest clients for a fraction of what they actually do.
A repeatable way to run social media and owned channels as one system, so your expertise actually reaches buyers and visibility does not stop the moment a project goes sideways. We build the strategy, the content and the cadence, then hand it over.
Every engagement is scoped to the work in front of you. These are the shapes it normally takes.
One live bid or one key account, worked end to end. The quickest way to see whether this changes anything, on real work rather than a proposal.
Fixed scope. The message, the collateral and the plan, built once and handed over for your team to run.
A day or two a week holding the strategy and the standard. Set out in full on the Fractional CMO page.
Three stages, in this order, every time.
You bring a live pursuit or a stalled account. We establish whether this is the right kind of problem to bring here.
A defensible answer to why a buyer should choose you, settled before any tactic is chosen.
The material and the cadence, built so your team can carry them without a marketing department.
With positioning. Until there is a clear, defensible answer to why a buyer should choose you, everything built on top of it inherits the vagueness. It is also the fastest thing to change how your team talks about the firm.
Yes, though the ones below the top four tend to work better once positioning is settled. If you arrive with a live pursuit or a stalled account, we start there instead.
Access to the people who actually win work, and about an hour a fortnight from them. Most of what is needed already exists inside the firm as proposals, drawings and post-project debriefs. It has simply never been written for an outside reader.
Yes, and usually two do. What does not work is running visibility or collateral before the positioning is settled, because everything downstream then has to be rebuilt on a foundation that changed.
A written positioning document: who you are the obvious choice for, in the language your buyers use. Everything else on this page is built on top of it, which is why it comes first.
Either. Fixed-scope engagements are built to be handed over with the system documented, so your team can carry it. Ongoing leadership is a separate arrangement, set out on the Fractional CMO page.