SMA’s Mission Statement
Our Core Beliefs
Business:
- Understanding the work of a business is not the same as understanding how to manage a business that does that work… in order to run a successful company, you must become a “student” of business.
- It’s vitally important to know what you don’t know and seek wise counsel.
- The best prepared person usually wins.
- Accountability is a great motivator… and why SMA often becomes our clients’ accountability partner.
Marketing:
- Marketing is the “Art and Science of Getting and Keeping Profitable Customers” . It is the heart and soul of every business… particularly as it relates to customers’ experiences.
- Excellent marketing is a company’s best leverage (control) for growing and maintaining a successful business or organization. Superior marketing is far more about knowledge, know-how, creative thinking and passion… than money. It is our job to help our clients use their limited resources – time, money and people – to achieve the best possible outcome. Marketing consists of two elements: strategies and tactics. One cannot be substituted for the other.
- Success begins with a written business and marketing plan… there are no exceptions to this rule.
Advertising and Public Relations:
All advertising and public relations efforts should result in a positive return on investment (ROI) … including our fees. Therefore, if you can’t track or measure something… don’t do it!
Consulting / Coaching Philosophy:
- How we (SMA) act is far more powerful than what we say. We only promise what we can, and will, deliver.
- It is our job to help you use your limited resources – time, money and people – to achieve maximum results.
- We work hard to ensure that our clients are thrilled with our world-class consulting and coaching services 100% of the time. In the unlikely event that we fall short of that goal, we will do “whatever it takes” to make it right. Guaranteed.
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Our Coaching / Consulting Goals:
To establish a collaborative (mutual, shared) relationship with our clients.
This is important because:
- It makes best use of ours and our clients’ resources
- Spreads the responsibility for success or failure
- Allows us to act as models for problem solving methodologies
Solve problems so they stay solved and transfer our expertise to our clients. In this way, they become far more competent and learn how to work through similar situations in the future. That’s why we’ve approach every consulting/coaching project as a learning experience – for ourselves and our clients.
Goal: To identify all the factors – technical, business, marketing and personal – which may be affecting our clients’ ability to reach their objectives. In almost every case, our clients’ stated goals cannot be achieved by focusing solely on one tactical issue. Rather, projects have two elements – the problem itself and peoples’ reaction to it. Both must be addresses.
What Our Clients Can Expect
- A decision to say no or postpone a project that in our judgment has less than a 50/50 chance of succeeding.
- Questions, questions, questions… In accordance with our belief that excellent marketing involves every part of your business, we will ask direct questions about you and your company. These will be in the form of questionnaires and interviews. Additionally, we will ask you to provide us with any / all written documents, samples, reports, etc. that will better enable us to help you.
This is the hardest part of the entire project for many of our clients. Why? Because it doesn’t seem like anything is getting “done”! However, this is this single most critical component of the process and one we never skip.
- Plain-speaking, honest, and candid advice and counseling. Although we’d like to, we do not always say what our clients want to hear. We firmly believe that it’s our responsibility to offer the very best professional advice in order to increase your odds of success. Does this mean you have to accept and act on our advice? Of course not… that decision is entirely yours.
- As they say, “time is money,” and in the client/consultant relationship it is even truer.
Therefore, we have developed time-saving, thus cost-cutting, tools for our clients’ use, such as the following:
- Questionnaires that you can fill out on your time and email back to us.
- Scheduled calls and/or meetings with pre-planned talk points or agendas.
- Proactive advice on ways to save money throughout the project.
- Maximum of 24-hour response to your emails, phone calls, questions, etc.
- On-time delivery of materials, reports, feedback, etc.
- Frequent and scheduled project updates, status reports and feedback requests.
- We do our best to honestly and accurately provide hourly estimates for our work when requested. However, each quote is based on certain assumptions – some, or all, of which may not occur – resulting in additional hours. In this instance we will notify you before we exceed our hourly estimate, affording you the opportunity to change or postpone the work.
The Client / Consultant Relationship:
The essence of a successful client/consultant relationship is the value each receives from the other. For example, we receive value from our clients in the form of compensation, lessons learned, healthy relationships, etc. and our clients receive advice, deliverables, solutions, and the like.
We believe there are two key concepts involved. They are:
- Mutual consent: Both sides must enter into the agreement freely and by their own choosing.
- Valid Consideration: Strategic Marketing Advisors and their clients agree to deliver this value in a consistent and expected manner.
