AccelerAction’s marketing clients are all professional services firms — such as law and accounting firms — which the marketing firms believes makes it unique in this area.

Instead of selling a product, AccelerAction “sells intangibles. We sell people’s minds,” says Amy Hoppenrath, one of the firm’s principals. “The buying process is so very different. We build relationships; the people you know and trust.”

Hoppenrath and partner Kristin Wing previously had had more than 20 years of career experience — most of it with marketing agencies or in internal marketing leadership roles with professional services firms. Both have been involved in marketing program studies, and achieved many honors for their work. Wing also has a master’s degree in marketing.

“We have the professional firm industry experience that Kansas City agencies do not,” Wing says. “Our client base is exclusively the technical professional who doesn’t understand how to sell, has no internal marketing resources and doesn’t know where to start.”

How the business started: When Hoppenrath was hired as the Midwest region’s director of strategic marketing at CBIZ in 2000, she needed to top off her marketing foundation with some accounting knowledge. She called Wing, her old friend from an informal marketing group. Wing was then marketing director at a competing accounting firm, RSM McGladrey, and previously had led marketing efforts at Grant Thornton. Wing knew accounting.

They met regularly, and Hoppenrath says they talked about accounting and trends in the industry, but vowed to never talk strategically about their different organizations. “I called it co-opetition,” Hoppenrath says.

In 2006, they both launched individual marketing firms — Wing Consulting Group and AH Marketing LLC. The two entrepreneurs were in a roundtable at the Kansas Small Business Development Center when fellow participant and business strategist Sally Smith said, “You two have got to put this together. You’ve got some synergy going on.” And they did — with Smith’s continuing role as an adviser.

They bid against two well-established firms on a marketing contract with a major accounting company, whom Hoppenrath had come to know through a mentoring role with one of its accountants. “We had to really show them we knew what they needed,” Hoppenrath says. It worked. They had their first client, and that client remains the largest client today, she says.

Biggest challenge: Hoppenrath and Wing say the most difficult task was making sure they knew how they would be managing their business processes.

“We had to make sure we had the billing in place; had to be able to leverage the tools we needed, such as online file storage for clients,” Wing says. The two friends also had to take the steps to become a real partnership, “much like a marriage;” to make sure they were on the same page and had talked about what agreements might be needed up front, Hoppenrath says.

Solution: To kick-start their business and its “processes,” they put an advisory board together — a business coach, attorney and accountant. They still meet with this crew every few months to get a “tune up,” Wing says. They discuss every area of the business, including an “exit strategy,” Wing says.

Growth: In the past year, AccelerAction has expanded outside Kansas City, Hoppenrath says, through referrals from their clients’ sister firms and by the partners’ decision to seek out new clients through attending industry conferences. The regional business now accounts for 15 to 20 percent of the firm’s revenue.

Best advice: “Focus. When we dedicated ourselves to focusing on professional services firms, we were immediately perceived as experts,” Hoppenrath says. “People are afraid to focus, but the more you do, the more wages you’ll garner based on that expertise.”

Wing agrees. “We talked about who our target was—what it looked like, how big it is, etc. Those that don’t fit, we refer to other agencies.”