These are general guidelines. What is most important to me is that my clients are committed to growth and open to outside ideas.  I do not choose advisory clients based on budget or vanity. Above all, I only accept advisory clients who are an excellent match – both personally and professionally. 

My ideal client: 

• Is a fractional executive, coach, consultant, trainer, speaker or other expert – either a solo operation or with a small team. 
• The decision maker(s) works directly with me – not through other staff members.
• Is uncertain how to grow the business or make a major transition.
• Is hiring me because of my depth of expertise, unabashed truthfulness and insight.  
• Allows me to lead the process to decide which issues are relevant, and suggest the best solutions.
• Is willing to be engaged from the very beginning, participates with intense focus, and then jumps into implementation with commitment and passion.

• Has no hesitation about my fee against the background of the potential impact on their business, pays on time without reminder.
• Is open to a different perspective, an objective third party looking from the outside. They don’t blindly accept my advice but test and measure for impact.

I will work the individuals and teams but only a limited number at a time. Once that limit is reached, I have a waiting list that works on a “first come, first service basis”. 

I have worked with clients with a single employee to thousands of employees. However my advisory practice is limited to companies with between 1 and 20 employees. I will sometimes make exceptions to this rule if the fit is particularly good. 

My entire practice is built on knowing what is appropriate for different size businesses with different levels of resources.

I possess no magical abilities to solve all your problems, however, my clients enjoy an outside perspective on how they are really doing.

• I don’t pull punches
  
• I never reinvent the wheel.
• I don’t use boilerplate. Everything I do is specific to each client. 
  
• I care more about solving your problems, than taking your money. (I will earn your money.)

My clients understand change is still dependent on them, but they want to leverage my knowledge of what has been successful for other companies.

You can expect me to keep our word, come to you with solutions and give you 100% of my abilities 100% of the time.

You will work directly with Pete Monfre. We have no junior people or interns that work on client accounts. All of our team is US based. 

More about Pete Monfre’s background here.

Four things:

1. My approach. I have developed unique processes to get to the heart of the issue and solve problems quickly and more reliably. These processes center around rapid discovery, targeted research, positioning and putting systems in place that can be measured using the scientific method.
 
2. I have been doing this same work for almost four decades with 2,000+ consulting clients and tens of thousands of others who have attended my workshops.
 
3. I only accept clients who are coachable and who are committed to changing the status quo. I’ve been in business too long to waste time trying to lead horses to water. 
 
4. I am very direct and candid, holding nothing back (although it’s always done with kindness).
   
   For example, if I think your baby isn’t cute, I wouldn’t say “Your baby is ugly.” I might hold up a picture and say “See this ugly baby? Your baby looks just like this one.”

I have found that I am not a good fit for most would-be clients. It’s always a good idea to explore working with other talented advisors in this field. If I can’t help solve your problem, I will do my best to recommend someone who can. 

Many of my clients feel like they must first solve their problems so they can tell me what they want and what to do. As facilitators my value is in rapidly analyzing circumstances and coming to the table with solutions.  The heart of my value is in helping unravel the complexity of the business and leading your team in determining the path to success. 

Most of my clients already have some kind of marketing plan – usually in their heads. At the same time most are disappointed with the plan’s performance or are frustrated that they can’t execute.

Perhaps my biggest value is that we know how to build plans so that they can be executed. This is often the problem with many marketing plans – they fail to drill down to details and responsibilities. 

It’s best to work with me as early as possible, before spending a lot of time doing “internal planning”

I will systematically clear the fog and create a clear road to your objective.

Austin Texas is my home base and since 2003, I have worked with clients remotely around the world.  We also work from a cabin in the Rocky Mountains and from our sister agencies in Wisconsin and London. Clients hire us because they believe I know what I’m doing and not because I am nearby.

There are two phases in how we work. 

First, there is a period of time during which we are developing the plan together. During this time, I am at your service. This typically takes 60 days although for some clients with limited availability or complex products/markets it can take up to 90 days.  

Once the plan is in place, I remain available for an additional 30 days in an advisory role as the plan is implemented. For a few clients, I may also be retained to advise over a longer period during which I would provide execution services and support as needed to execute the plan.  

My main deliverable is insightful analysis and transformative advice. My focus is not on long reports or even reports at all. My clients gain an instantaneous depth of marketing experience. 

My recommendations are short, concise, and in outline form and usually delivered as a deck. I use shared documents and folders to deliver these recommendations. I can then expand personally by phone for leadership, teams or both. 

Of all the FAQs, this is the toughest one to answer and there are so many ways that you might misunderstand this or write me off because of it.

When prospective clients asked, I used to give references. I have worked with so many firms that the logistics of it are no problem.

After decades of doing this, I don’t and here’s why:

• My clients have not signed up to give you advice, nor help us sell our services. There is no assurance that what worked for them is applicable to you. Finally, our clients don’t have time to field dozens of calls from people considering hiring us.
• In most cases asking for references is a sign of skepticism. And if you feel references are very important, you may be too skeptical to benefit from a client relationship. We recommend that you read everything that interests you on this site to get a feel for how we think and work with clients and then just go with your gut. There are dozens of testimonials scattered through the site and on LinkedIn. Feel free to ask around or Google our names. 
  
•  Some prospects would abuse the process and ask them each more than a dozen questions. Why should a non-paid reference bother? Often they’ve had an assistant do the calling. If you don’t have the time to check me out yourself, I won’t be a good fit.
• In many cases, the work I have done for a client is confidential, as my work with you will be. 

We will sometimes make exceptions to this, but rarely. When we do, we will trade references so that each of us can call the other party’s references. Just give us the names and contact information for the last two or three professional advisors, consultants or agencies that you’ve worked with and we can introduce you to the same.

Work is paid in advance and non-refundable, for any reason, unless other terms are agreed-upon and stated in the Service Level Agreement. 

What gives? 

The reason is not cash flow. Rather, it gives me the freedom to be completely transparent with you, not harboring any fear that you’ll be upset and withhold payment. 

It also allows me to respond “yes” to customer requests and accomodations and pay any subcontractors their advance fees depending on what we are doing. 

Finally, I am a small company and my business model is not that of a bank. If you are concerned that I will abscond with your money and/or not deliver to your expectations, you might be too suspicious and/or cynical to be a good fit. 

This policy is applied uniformly with every client, from smaller firms to Fortune 500 companies.

The best way is to connect with me on LinkedIn or sign up for my steady stream of marketing know-how and knowledge through my blog, podcast, workshops and articles at the bottom of this page.