Pro Serv Blogs Archives - Collective 54

Nail It Before You Scale It in the Age of AI

Greg Alexander / December 29, 2025

“Nail it before scale it” is powerful in professional services because scaling multiplies whatever and wherever you are already. This is especially true of quality delivery, margin discipline, and operational chaos. When your core offer and delivery system aren’t repeatable, growth forces constant reinvention, creates overpromising in sales, and drives margin leakage and burnout. Nailing it first means you’ve defined a clear ICP, a standard engagement with consistent outcomes, and a delivery playbook that average talent can run without heroics. Then you can scale with confidence because you’re replicating a proven, profitable system rather than amplifying variability.

Pro Serv Blogs

How I Tried to Keep My A-Players (And What I Learned)

Greg Alexander / December 26, 2025

Every professional services founder knows the feeling. You’ve got a handful of consultants who are genuinely excellent. They deliver for clients. They make you look good. They’re the reason you can sleep at night.

Pro Serv Blogs

Strategy Isn’t the Race. Momentum Is.

Greg Alexander / December 23, 2025

Most professional services firms don’t lose because they lack strategy. They lose momentum—often before the year even begins.
For CEOs, this shows up in familiar ways: leadership teams stuck in planning mode, decisions deferred until January, and organizations waiting for “clarity” while the market moves on. By the time the year officially starts, speed has already been lost.

Pro Serv Blogs

Why AI Should Do the Heavy Lifting and Humans Should Do the Thinking

Greg Alexander / December 22, 2025

French novelist Marcel Proust once said, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.”
That’s exactly what AI enables when it comes to win and loss analysis.
For years, firms knew win–loss reviews mattered. But the way they were done made them slow, incomplete, and easy to deprioritize.

Pro Serv Blogs

The Secret to Winning Enterprise Clients? Start with Their Strategic Plan

Greg Alexander / December 19, 2025

As the co-founder of a consulting firm that has spent years inside boardrooms, C-suites, and crisis war rooms, I’ve learned that the quickest way to lose credibility with an enterprise client is to show up selling services. The quickest way to earn lasting trust? Start with their strategic plan.

Pro Serv Blogs

Leveraging Executive Debriefs to Drive Re-Engagement

Greg Alexander / December 18, 2025

When a consulting engagement concludes, the formal deliverables are often complete, but the relationship with the client is just beginning. Too often, firms end projects with a handoff and a “thank you,” leaving future opportunities to chance. At Empactful Advisors, we believe one of the most overlooked tools for creating long-term value is the executive debrief. Done well, a debrief not only reinforces the outcomes of the engagement but also opens the door to deeper partnerships, new projects, and expanded services.

Pro Serv Blogs

Beyond the Platform: The Case for Vertical Depth in Agency Positioning

Greg Alexander / December 16, 2025

In the agency world, positioning often gets treated like a tagline exercise. Pick a platform, pick a service, polish the capabilities deck. But real positioning isn’t cosmetic. It’s a set of choices about who you’re built to serve and the problems you’re willing to own. And when you commit to those choices, entirely new opportunities open up.

Pro Serv Blogs

Execute for Success in 2026: Turning Plans Into Pipeline

Greg Alexander / December 15, 2025

If Part 1 was “plan via the journey” and Part 2 was “fund the journey,” Part 3 is about putting it all into motion. Planning and budgeting only matter if they lead to results. Execution is where growth happens or stalls.
By January, most firms have their plans and budgets approved. The question now becomes: how do you turn those plans into measurable progress your executive team can see by the end of Q1?
From May through August, most executive teams, whether at brands or professional services firms, are knee-deep in building strategies and budgets for the coming year. But many are using outdated models: departmental budgets created in isolation, growth projections rooted in past performance and plans that treat customer experience as a byproduct rather than a priority.

Pro Serv Blogs

Strategic Insights from a Client Advisory Board

Greg Alexander / December 12, 2025

What if your best strategic insights didn’t come from consultants, books, or conferences, but instead from your own clients?
When we launched our first Client Advisory Board in 2022, I quickly realized how true that was. The experience reshaped how we make decisions, identify blind spots, and improve our service. Here is what we have learned about building a board that actually works.

Pro Serv Blogs

The Dunning–Kruger Effect: The Hidden Risk Undermining Boutique Firms

Greg Alexander / December 11, 2025

There’s a pattern I’ve seen over and over again: the people who know or have done very little often speak with the most certainty and entitlement, while the people with true expertise are far more measured (even hesitant) in their recommendations.

Pro Serv Blogs

Nail It Before You Scale It in the Age of AI

How I Tried to Keep My A-Players (And What I Learned)

Strategy Isn’t the Race. Momentum Is.

Why AI Should Do the Heavy Lifting and Humans Should Do the Thinking

The Secret to Winning Enterprise Clients? Start with Their Strategic Plan

Leveraging Executive Debriefs to Drive Re-Engagement

Beyond the Platform: The Case for Vertical Depth in Agency Positioning

Execute for Success in 2026: Turning Plans Into Pipeline

Strategic Insights from a Client Advisory Board

The Dunning–Kruger Effect: The Hidden Risk Undermining Boutique Firms

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