I would bet your presentation decks, social media posts and collateral pieces all carry your brand colors and key messages - but what about your invoices? What about your contracts? How do you intentionally make clients and customers feel valued and wanted? Just delivering great work has never been enough. It’s always that plus how valued you make your audiences feel. Knowing where you are informs how you proceed.

Business loves predictability and stability. When clients are turning over and employees are continuously being replaced, it hurts profitability, client service and reputation. Everyone wants the type of brand that clients want to hire, and talent wants to flock to - and you can have this kind of business. Auditing what’s working and what isn’t - and also measuring against best practices - will inform what types of initiatives should be woven into the internal culture and external client touch points to ensure your brand promise is delivered.

How valued do your employees feel? Does the language you use to attract top talent pay off for the employees you already have, too? Employer branding is the promises made, and the promises kept to those who make your company what it is - your employees. This audit will include messaging on websites and in job postings, past employee engagement-and-enablement survey data, cultural experiences filtered through core values and, if needed, interviews with a cross-section of long-term and new employees. This sets the benchmark to build from.

Customer Relationship Management is both the art of creating, building and sustaining relationships, but it’s also the systems used to help manage it all. CRM systems are imperative for any business seeking to grow - especially if you want sustainable growth that can build on itself. CRMs will help track performance metrics for anyone with set growth goals, be a repository for contact info and relationship info of any clients, prospects or vendors, and it can house and track any and all business development pursuits based on any number of desired inputs and fields. This is how you will be able to have even better leading indicators to set budget and revenue expectations, thus being able to run a more robust business.