Experienced thought leaders from a number of related fields come together to analyze a specific company to find out what’s working well, what’s not, and how to improve both. An outside perspective ensures the proper amount of neutrality — and very necessary realism — as part of the equation.

Initiatives are created based on the company’s stated objectives (growth, increased sales, expansion to new markets, etc.) as well as those the company is best positioned to achieve both short-term and long-term. Each effort is designed to impact and benefit others in the strategic process so that real progress is made internally and externally.

Efficiency Tracking

We help marketing and sales professionals make sense of often insurmountable amounts of data gathered from various sources within their organization. After the initial refinements and improvements to marketing and sales initiatives, we measure the results and suggest further improvements where necessary. This ‘closed loop’ approach ensures you know if analyzing data has actually led to improvements in your organization. Key areas we monitor are: campaign effectiveness, correlating spending with sales, over- and underachieving services, products, and channels.

Budget Planning

Be prepared for upcoming business expenses beyond just typical cash-flow situations. We’ll help you understand where your business is at from a operational, technological, and personnel standpoint to establish plans to save towards those expenses, or, in cases where improvements could result in substantial additional earnings, financing those improvements for immediate as well as long term benefit. You’ll then have a strategic plan you and your staff can use as a template for future situations.

Market Research

It’s one thing to think you know your audience and it’s another thing to be sure of it. Market research is what bridges the gap, and it also happens to be one of our core services. We’ve spent years working in numerous industries to understand drivers behind B2B, B2C, and general economic trends as well as how they apply to your unique business scenario. Simply tell us what you’re hoping to discover, and we’ll uncover that answer, plus many other related piece of information you may never have considered.

Social Media Management

Staying in front of your customers and prospects these days means reaching them where they already are… and almost invariably that includes social media. While there are many technology tools that can streamline the process of updating news feeds, image galleries, and comments; it also pays to have an established procedure in place for how and when updates are made. With our experts on your side, team members will gain confidence at the same time you’re gaining exposure so you can keep social media efforts running as long as you see fit.

Sales Management & PERFORMANCE TRACKING

Red Zone Production – in football, it’s the telling statistic that shows whether a team can execute when in scoring position. If a team marches down the field, but can’t cross the goal line that means there’s a fundamental breakdown happening that’s holding everyone back. Likewise, in business, if you’re generating solid interest, cultivating strong leads, making competitive proposals, and it’s not showing up in the sales column, it may be time to examine your approach. We’ve been there for many companies as they’ve encountered this challenge – sometimes through a rapid expansion period or after a merger or acquisition. In all cases, instilling some accountability and performance tracking, through metrics, time tracking, CRM solutions, project management, accounting, and more, identifies trouble spots on both the organizational and personnel sides – and reveals methods for improving them for closing more deals.

Work Process Mapping

Using data as a basis for business decisions can be challenging if you do not have the capabilities, resources and expertise to integrate and process your data. Our process can consolidate multiple databases to help identify untapped markets, increase cross- and up-selling and provide you with an understanding of what motivates your customers to buy. Our analytic tools include: Predictive Modeling (Retention, Attrition, Risk and Response), Customer Profiling, Response Analysis, Customer Segmentation, Geographic Mapping.

Operations Manual Creation

Life may not come with an instruction booklet, but your business certainly can. It’s one of the first things we recommend to our clients, no matter what stage they’re in when we meet them. As your operation grows, you’ll encounter more and more people all with different styles and ways of doing things. While it may seem high minded to let people be themselves, what happens when one person prefers handwritten sales notes as opposed to using the company’s collaborative CRM? Such situations are we enjoy helping companies set up operations manuals and update them regularly to keep pace with real-life shifting business scenarios.

Reputation Management

If public relations is the voice you use to communicate to the world, then reputation management is the voice (or tools) you use to respond to what the world says about you. In a digital information age, news stories (whether accurate or misleading) can spread quickly. Re-links to the same article can drive it up search engine rankings, ahead of your carefully placed positive messages. We not only help simplify this challenge, but we also empower your people to do the same by establishing codes of conduct and procedures regarding appearances and comments to the press, and information and imagery about the company on personal social media sites. This preventive approach not only avoids bad publicity, but helps remedy unintended slip-ups from time to time if they should occur.

Sales Training

It used to be that junior sales representatives had the chance to learn and grow under a seasoned veteran, developing their own relationships and sales style along the way. The speed of business has shortened that learning curve significantly, often replacing it with technology tools that are only effective in the hands of someone who already knows how to sell. As veteran salespeople ourselves, we’re happy to step in and complete the learning curve for your team and set up benchmarks to follow for cultivating future talent.

WEB MAINTENANCE

One of the greatest advantages of online media is that it has the ability to change and evolve alongside a brand or company. However, that means that keeping your website current is an ongoing task – one that often proves challenging to balance the time and resources towards doing well. Even if it only takes an hour or two every few months, it can be difficult to find a dedicated team member to prioritize web updates. Because of our comprehensive web abilities, we make an excellent addition to your in-house resources for keeping sites up to date with events, new services or products, staffing changes, blogs and social media, software updates, mobile optimization etc. More about web maintenance »

Feedback

Having an objective team available to help review and provide feedback keeps your initiative healthy. Many ideas atrophy because the principals are not able to look beyond their own bias and disposition. Results can be construed to mean many things, but frequently internal teams either cannot see the results objectively, or don’t have the courage to state it.

Testing

Will it work better if you say it this way or that? If you build it under these conditions or those? Target these groups or those? Testing provides an opportunity to engage limited segments with targeted deliverables to test for higher and higher acceptance. Sometimes a failed test can prove to be the most valuable investment a company can make.