Craig Phillipitch had a problem most agencies never hear about, because owners rarely say it out loud: nothing was wrong, and nothing was improving. The phones had stopped growing. Visibility had flattened. His incumbent provider had excuses. Six or seven years later, The Meridian Company has almost doubled in size — and there are stretches where they shut paid search off because they can’t answer the phone fast enough.
Craig Phillipitch of The Meridian Company on the plateau, the switch, and the constraint that replaced it.
| Company | The Meridian Company |
|---|---|
| Market | Greater Lansing / East Lansing, Michigan |
| Services offered | Plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical |
| Speaking | Craig Phillipitch |
| Before the switch | Plateaued phones and flat internet visibility |
The plateau is the hardest problem to sell against
A company in freefall knows it needs help. A company on a plateau just feels vaguely stuck, and the incumbent vendor can keep explaining it away for years. Craig’s description: the phones weren’t ringing anymore, internet visibility didn’t seem to be increasing, and the provider “was sort of just giving us excuses and wasn’t really helping us move the needle.”
So Meridian went shopping. They interviewed two other prominent companies in this industry alongside us before deciding.
“Josh and his team are very responsive, very industry specific. Their sales reps, marketing reps — they speak our language. It's almost like they're in-house, even though they're many, many miles away to the south.”
Craig Phillipitch, The Meridian Company
What actually happened
Craig was careful, and we’ll keep his qualifier: he does not attribute all of that growth to marketing. He calls our work “certainly a major component” of it. That’s the right way to read every case study on this site. Marketing creates opportunity. It does not hire technicians, train CSRs or manage gross margin.
The reporting has to be readable
One thing Craig raises that owners rarely hear promised: he can actually follow the reports. Monthly reporting on how each program is performing, tracking numbers included, laid out in plain terms — and a real person available every month to walk through it and decide what happens next.
Growth just moves the constraint
Turning off paid search because you can’t handle the calls is a good problem, but it is still a problem — it means demand is outrunning capacity, and every paused campaign is revenue deferred. This is why a growth plan has to be sequenced against your current constraint. Sometimes you need leads. Sometimes you need conversion. Sometimes you need technicians and dispatch capacity before you buy another lead.
“These guys are pros at what they do. They command a fair price for their services. I would put them up against some of the other top players in this industry — we've never looked back.”
Craig Phillipitch, The Meridian Company
Are you stuck on a plateau?
A strategy session is the fastest way to find out whether your ceiling is visibility, conversion or capacity — and which one to fix first.
