Who We Are
We are experts in business development for consulting, financial, professional services firms and technology companies.

For the past 20+ years the SAGE team has worked with industry leading firms - including Accenture, IBM Global Services, AMA Financing, KPMG and PriceWaterhouse Coopers.

     SAGE Principals

For the past 20 years, Michael Cummings, Allan Boress, and Barry Schneider and have worked with industry leading professional firms as trainers, coaches and business development consultants. They have built the entrepreneurial skills of thousands of professionals at hundreds of firms including personal marketing, building a network of allies and cultivating relationships with clients. They are award-winning instructors, best selling authors and world class public speakers for both associations and in-house meetings.

Although our prime business is to conduct in-house training for leading firms, we do a lot of personal training and coaching in the areas of personal marketing, selling professional services and managing client relationships.

 

For more information, contact
Mike Cummings at
630-572-4798 or
by email at mcummings@sageprofessional.com.



Your Personal Marketing Plan
Tool-Kit from SAGE

 

Do you have the following steps in place to ensure your success?

By now, you should have:

1) Developed your personal marketing plan
2) Identified how you will build a business advisor relationship with your top clients
3) Begun asking your top clients for 1-3 introductions to an ideal prospect for you
4) Built a co-marketing plan of action with 2-3 professional allies
5) Taken on a visible leadership position in an association replete with your ideal clients
6) Developed 1-2 core speeches and articles that will build your personal reputation
7) Established a relationship with an entrepreneurial mentor/coach

How many of these actions do you have in place? If you are missing any essential steps, now is the time to take corrective action. Block out some hours, schedule the time to get going on each of the 7 actions - and get back on track. It is not too late yet, but you must make some immediate progress if you want results.

The time is now for you to benefit from our set of guidelines, action planning tools and self-assessments to drive your personal marketing plan for the rest of this year. These are the same tools and rules that the Best Business Generators use themselves.

To order, see our special PDF electronic book offer. Click HERE.

And see our recent Newsletter below for a brief introduction to the toolkit,
an example of the kind of advice we offer monthly to subscribers.

It's all up to you...

As a professional, you must see yourself as an entrepreneur. It doesn’t matter if you work for a large firm – or if you have your own company. YOU are responsible for building your own business.

But, we find:

  1. Many professionals do not have a plan and blueprint of the actions they need to take to dramatically grow their business
  2. Most do not carefully evaluate what methods are working for them and where the results are lacking
  3. Most fail to market themselves systematically
  4. Most fail to take advantage of an integrated and complementary set of both tried and true methods – or the start of the art marketing enabled by the web.
  5. Many professionals waste time by pursuing marketing that doesn’t work, such as networking with total strangers who are unable to help secure their ideal clients
  6. Professionals often fail to plan and take sufficient marketing actions on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Work smarter in the coming year...
and achieve breakthroughs in building your business.

Use a personal marketing system and action planning methods that will deliver the results that you desire: a steady stream of “pre-sold” leads, high quality business, abundant word of mouth advertising, allies who act as your sales force and vital, enduring client relationships.

Invest In the System the Best Use...

The SAGE Personal Marketing Plan Tool-Kit
Only $ 24.95 (PDF format) — 60-plus pages

[Click the button to pay by Credit Card or thru PayPal
with our agent Intertexts Multimedia, Inc.]

We will send you by email the electronic booklet with the Toolkit (PDF format).

This kit offers you a practical and proven step-by-step approach to effectively marketing yourself — and gives you a set of guidelines, action planning tools and self assessments to drive your personal marketing plan for this year and the next. In the tool-kit, you receive:

 

• An overview of the personal marketing system based on the lessons learned for top producers

• A review of the key success factors for each step in the system, including:

1) Targeting your Ideal clients
2) Marketing to Existing Clients
3) Obtaining Quality Referrals
4) Building Powerful Alliances
5) Developing an Effective Network
6) Becoming A Celebrated Expert

• Goal setting exercises to help you to break down your revenue into the milestones that you need to achieve

• Action planning templates for you to generate your own personal plan. Step-by-step, you customize the marketing system for your personal practice and drive consistent and focused execution

Finally, develop Your Personal Marketing Plan for the New Year with the confidence that you're following advice from the best in the business.

The SAGE Personal Marketing Plan Tool-Kit
Only $ 24.95 (PDF format) — 60-plus pages

[Click the button to pay by Credit Card or thru PayPal
with our agent Intertexts Multimedia, Inc.]

We will send you by email the electronic booklet with the Toolkit (PDF format).

SAGE Advice:
(excerpt from our recent Newsletter)

Business Development Resolutions for You

Excerpt from our best-selling book, Best Practices In Building Your Personal Network - For Professionals.

It is natural each quarter or at the start of a year to set goals for the upcoming period. So, what kind of results do you want to create for your personal practice? Do have revenue or loan or project goals? Do you have a set of ideal clients that you want to cultivate? Is there a new or favorite type of service or product you want to sell and deliver?

In our consulting and training work, we’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the top business producers in the professions over the past twenty years. The purpose of this article is to coach you towards building your personal success strategy and action plan – by "modeling" or emulating the behavior of the best business generators. Here are some New Year Resolutions to help you be more like the top producers in the upcoming year:

  • Have a plan: Take a few hours and develop your personal marketing plan. Define your goals in terms of revenue, hours billed, number of projects, revenue by client and type of work/service. Keep these goals in a prominent place and measure your progress against them each week. Each week, write down at least 10 marketing actions that you will take to achieve these goals.
  • Do some business development every day: The best business generators make sure they set a minimum daily requirement for business development. Do the same. Each day put 2-3 business development steps on your to-do list – no matter how busy you are. They don’t have to be major. Clip an article and send it to a client. Have lunch with a referral source or client. Thank a client for their business. But...make business development a daily habit.
  • Create your 30 Second Commercial: How did you feel the last time that somebody introduced himself to you as a consultant? What does that mean? How do you introduce yourself? Instead of saying that you are an investment advisor, describe how you help to solve your client’s “pain.” Here’s a good example: “I'm Jill Swill and I'm a partner with the firm of Joe Blow and Associates. I'm in the business of helping business owners organize their estates and achieve a secure retirement.”
  • Market to your clients each month: Your first priority in business development is to market to your clients – both current and past clients (don’t lose touch!). Create a database of the individuals you have worked with over the past year or two. Rank order them in terms of future revenue potential in terms of high, low and none. For the “highs,” figure out a way to connect with them on a monthly or quarterly basis. Meet them for lunch or breakfast. Consider sending a newsletter or article to the “lows.”
  • Ask your best clients for referrals: Your clients should be your best source of referrals. Let them know that you expect and appreciate referrals. Tell them the precise type of person that you would like them! to introduce you to. After you have finished working with them, take them to lunch and ask for their help in making introductions for you.
  • Get a mentor: Think of somebody that you know, like and respect – and who is good at business development. It can be another professional in your business – or even somebody in a related field. Now, think about how YOU can help them. Then, take them out to lunch and ask if they would be willing to “coach” you on building your business. Agree to meet on a monthly or quarterly basis.
  • Create a mastermind group: Find 2-3 people in related fields that you have a good working relationship with. Make sure they are targeting the same type of clients as you are. And make sure that they are good at business development. Ask them if they’d ! be willing to co-market with you. Commit to monthly meetings Create action plans and make mutual commitments to follow through.
  • Learn to network: Take a course/study up in how to network and then develop a specific network building plan for the year. Who are your target clients? Where do they congregate? Who knows a lot of them? How can they help you to make contact?
  • Become a celebrity: Commit to writing 3 articles and making at least 3 speeches at gathering, but only those with clients and referral sources in attendance.
  • Build skills : Business development is a skill not solely a natural talent. It should be part of your skill building plan. Read business development books, listen to tapes or CD’s and take seminars. Given the vital importance of business development in all the professions today, it is worth the investment.

Make this a record breaking year
for your business!

If you want more Best Practices tips and suggestions for Building your Business, please sign up for our free monthly newsletter :

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