Management

We've made an interesting observation. Most company Presidents tell us: "If only we could get my team to be better at ...." Most other executive team members say "If only you could work with the President to get him or her to ....."

No matter how much experience and training you have, or how many skills, you and your firm will benefit from some professional assistance. Where do you turn to get it? Who tells you what you really need to hear? We can deliver supportive and knowledgable perspective and informed opinions to you and to your leadership team members. Don't just assume it's the other person. The question is always - for all of us - how can we do better?

If you're a President we'll work with you on a regular basis so you can test your thinking and get respectful insights and new ideas. Are you getting locked in to a certain way of doing things? Are you stuck with certain challenges? Have you been talking about working on something for a long time now without ever getting to it? We bring experience as successful CEOs ourselves. It normally requires very little time each month; and the upside is dramatic.

Leadership and management are different. In companies between $2M and $40M they most often are done by the same people. Are you good at both? Do you need to be? Could you use some help on one or the other - or help deciding where you really should focus?

If your leadership team needs on-the-job development through training and coaching, we'll do it for you very efficiently. Sometimes you need an outside point of view and voice to pump up team competencies. We bring the perspective of having been part of executive teams, and having consulted to team members, in most roles in many industry sectors. 

Great management must include the implementation of real-world business processes and systems that actually support your customers and your staff's work. This doesn't just mean software - it means work flows and communication protocols, too. As companies grow, they must dedicate resources to assuring that your company has the processes to deliver efficiencies and therefore profitability.

The best management considers not just what all the functions do and how they do it, but how they all integrate together. 

Marketing

Sorry, but most companies don't have a clue about marketing. We're sure that your firm is much better than most. However we've seen few companies that fully understand the power of marketing and how to implement a great marketing program. The word gets thown around a lot - it just doesn't actually get done very often. It gets done right even less frequently.

Ask yourself "What is our marketing budget?" That's distinct from your sales budget. If you don't know, don't have one, or don't have any idea what would be appropriate or how to best spend it - please bring us in to talk. If you have a marketing budget, but you don't know what you are actually getting out of the effort, please talk to us.

Over the long run, an effective integrated marketing program can deliver the single greatest return on investment of anything you can do to grow your company. If you don't think that's true, we submit that you've never worked in a firm with a powerful marketing program. Of course there are various stages of company growth and times where different functions and efforts need more investment than others. But over the long run - the best way to build a business is through great marketing.

"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" is one of the biggest fallacies ever stated.

Do you have clear value proposition? Is it understood and consistently communicated?

It won't happen overnight, but you could have your sales team spending most of their time responding to qualified inquiries instead of beating the bushes. 

We've helped companies grow profitably by up to 400% in one to three years through great marketing programs.  Are you ready to really do some growing? 

Sales & Marketing

Hold on - isn't the third service supposed to be Sales? Yes, and we'd be delighted to come in to help you increase revenues by improving your sales processes and systems and by training and coaching your VP of Sales and the sales team. We can join you on some sales calls if you wish.

But read "Marketing" just above. Almost everywhere we go we find sales teams seriously hampered by the lack of an effective marketing program. Salespeople end up trying to dredge up qualified sales leads individually. That's a terribly expensive way to get leads.  Salespeople should be picking up qualified leads and moving them through the sales process to close deals!

When the sales effort and sales team need some help - at least part of that help needs to be to improve the marketing effort so sales can do the work it should!  Is your company one of those that has someone titled "VP Sales & Marketing" who actually works 97% on sales? 

Let's get your sales team following on to a strong, focused, on-going integrated marketing program. They can call people who feel they already know your firm. They can be supported with the tools they need to look professional, build their own confidence, and efficiently address customers' questions and needs. It's true that salespeople can use not having the right tools as an excuse. It also is true that it's very wasteful to have those talented people working so hard without the tools they need. We'll work with the sales team to get them selling as best they can under all circumstances. And we'll work with you to improve those circumstances so they can be more effective.

It may be that you would benefit by an outbound telemarketing program. We'll help you set it up so that it fits into your customer generation effort smoothly.

Our work will help your salesteam's work result in more revenue and more profits. We'll help you quickly implement or improve your sales processes to make your sales effort much more proactive and less reactive. We'll train and coach your sales people on question-based selling. We'll help them improve their presentations, their close rate and the margins on their sales.