A Marketing Succession Plan for Your Services Business
Many of the aging and well-respected services business owners and leaders in our marketplace wish they could retire tomorrow.
They have worked hard for many years to build their businesses, and love their companies, but are now clearly counting down the years until their superannuation hits the target value, and their businesses can be transitioned to the younger generation of staff in their offices.
But, are they thinking ahead to build a business that is ready to transition? Because the let’s face it, the only products a services business really has is its people! And if the people your customer knows and trusts are sitting on the beach, and they know it - they will go elsewhere for services.
So are our boomers building the marketing and personal brands of their mid-tier staff now? Are they ensuring that the target markets recognize them when they reach the helm of the firm and their grey hair slips away to the beach?
The building of a new generation of faces within a services business can take years to occur, particularly in today’s society where older staff are so accustomed to “running” all the business development and marketing, while operational staff remain billable-only. Marketing and personal branding are a multi-year transitional process that should be at the core of succession planning.
There is no hiding the generation gaps in many of today’s older and more traditional professional services firms. The grey hair leads the teams with wisdom and respect, bringing in the business, and managing the relationships with clients. The middle management works to deliver the outcomes, dealing with clients when they have to, and leaving at five to their flexible and supportive work life balance; and the young ones swan in, work just hard enough and expect pay to celebrate it.
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