New Business Audit

New Business Audit

Attract good work with great clients.

Our New Business Audit is a subset offering of our flagship Total Business Reset. This service is focused on helping you get the kind of work that is lucrative, personally challenging, meaningful to clients, and reputation-building. We approach this through three modules: Positioning, Service Offering Design, and Lead Generation.

When should I get a New Business Audit?

There are many symptoms that might signal the need for a New Business Audit, including:
Sales funnel overly reliant on outbound sales
Lack of differentiation in the marketplace
Constantly responding to RFPs
Regularly building customized engagements for clients
Lack of specialization in any particular area or industry
Always competing on price

Why trust Punctuation to help me figure out my new business strategy?

We know the industry.
We only work with independent marketing and creative services firms like yours, after owning and running our own agency. As the industry has changed, we have also evolved, and have now helped hundreds of firms level up their business development.
We address the underlying symptoms.
It can be easy to dismiss an exercise like Positioning and move straight to Lead Generation, and there are plenty of firms that offer lead generation services that illustrate this point. But developing a new business strategy is an exercise in “garbage in, garbage out,” and unless we start with how you got here and what needs to change, we will never help you fix the problem.
We’ll give you an action plan.
We will walk you through the process, help you prioritize decisions, and help validate these big decisions for you.

Deliverables

Concise recommendations.
Our secret sauce is the process and knowledge that we’ve built working in this industry for years. We won’t give you a polished PowerPoint presentation, but we will give you carefully and concisely stated recommendations for your note taking.
A soft copy of best practices and thoughts.
Before each module, we will provide you with a full PDF that explains the theory behind our Positioning, Service Offering Design, and Lead Generation work, along with suggestions on how to apply this to your firm.
Multiple focused one-hour phone consultations.
We will conduct working sessions for each of the three modules. All calls are recorded, with transcripts delivered to you afterwards.

What to expect

You’re ready to get started. What happens next?
1.

Paperwork.

Once you reach out and confirm, you’ll receive a consulting agreement, a materials request list, an NDA, and an invoice.
2.

Materials review.

We will send a survey to all principals, and review all materials you send.
3.

Positioning.

We will address your firm’s positioning in the market, looking at both horizontal and vertical options, and weighing the pros and cons of each. Positioning is the only module that might require multiple meetings. We will provide homework between sessions (thoughtfully considered, and no more than an hour or so each week).
4.

Service Offering Design.

We will guide you through how to craft service offerings that build upon a client journey, touching on topics such as bundling, value-based pricing, client on-ramps and off-ramps, and proprietary IP.
5.

Lead Generation.

We will help you build a lead generation strategy that harnesses your new positioning and points towards specific service offerings. Over time, lead generation should become less outbound and more inbound.
6.

Implementation.

You continue your growth journey with newfound clarity, and our team will assist with execution over a period of up to two months.

Logistical matters,
for your perusal

Duration.
4-6 weeks, plus two months of implementation
Scheduling.
A New Business Audit can usually be underway within 1-2 weeks, depending on the time of year.
Participation
Requirements.
  • A principal gathers materials for roughly two hours.
  • Principals participate during each scheduled call, roughly 3-5 hours spread out over the course of the engagement.
  • Selected managers and key employees participate for several hours, based on their role.
Cost.
$18,000.
Payment Terms.
Prepaid and non-refundable. Via wire, ACH, check, or credit card (+3%).
Schedule a Consultation

You can also
visit our FAQ page.

You will almost certainly find answers to additional questions on your mind.