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April 2002, Borrow Their Strategy and Do It Better (excerpt)

Published in the Wells Fargo Business Advisor Webzine

By Alicia Bartz

Battling Both Sides
Shauna Bona says her Salt Lake City-based firm, McKinnon-Mulherin, doesn’t have a lot of direct competition. She and her business partner, Kate Reddy, have built a small corporate communication and information design firm that fills the gap between consultants-who usually don't implement their solutions-and implementers-who usually don't deal with the big picture. Still, McKinnon-Mulherin had to find a way to compete with both kinds of companies.

“This is a marketplace with two ends of the spectrum, and we wanted to position ourselves somewhere in between the consulting experts and the staffing companies,” Bona explains. “But we had to figure out how to articulate what we could offer.”

Bona soon realized that staffing companies won implementation projects by providing quick bids in easy-to-understand language.

“Staffing firms knew off the top of their heads how much they had to charge to make a profit on a particular project, so they were able to give a very quick response,” Bona says. “Now, when we're up against a staffing firm, we still talk about communications goals, but we are very specific about what clients are getting for their money. We present clear numbers, so clients can compare apples to apples because if a staffing firm is talking about man hours, and we're talking about business objectives, we will lose.”

Bona and her team also found another mimic-worthy idea. They saw that consulting firms often wowed clients with in-house return-on-investment studies based on former clients. So, they began incorporating such studies into their own practices.

“Originality in business is good if it serves a purpose, but it doesn’t help our clients if we’re always starting from scratch,” Bona says. “We learn from our partners and competitors and even our clients.”

Alicia Bartz is a Kalamazoo, Mich.-based freelance writer. She is a regular contributor to Twin Cities Business Monthly and other business publications.