How We Work

When You’re Considering A Growth Consultant…

You Want To Understand How They Will Help You Build An Organization That Can Grow Profitably

When you company is pursuing profitable growth, you’ve got many choices. You want to know that the consultant you select can deliver on their promises. In order to make an informed decision, you want to understand how that consultant works with client companies and the kinds of results you can expect.

You Want To Know The Results You Could Expect

These Are The Kinds Of Results We Regularly Deliver To Our Clients

The first thing you want to know when considering a growth consultant are the kinds of results you can expect. This is a big job and a big investment in time, money and resources. Here are some examples of typical results that we deliver:

You now have an infrastructure that regularly surfaces opportunities that can move the “growth meter”. There’s a system in place to capture brilliant ideas from the front line and from your best customers. Innovative ideas get serious consideration and you have the tools to assess them. Risk is one of the factors considered, but you know that you have what it takes to judiciously explore projects with higher payoffs. Executives regularly get new ideas in decision-able form.
Your innovation confidently focuses on “Big Change” Opportunities. “Best Customer Syndrome” has morphed into “Best Customer Tomorrow Syndrome”. You still solve today’s problems for your customers, but you’re looking ahead to prepare for tomorrow. By aiming beyond products and services that currently generate revenue, you open up to opportunities and new segments. You explore the risk-reward profile and business case, and understand the implementation path.
You have filled in the gaps in capabilities, strengths and competencies required for growth. With clarity on a growth plan, it’s more obvious when and how to add needed skills. Risk and change—considered in the context of a growth-oriented strategic plan—seems less risky. Potential initiatives to expand or improve the business are pursued within a framework of the long-term growth strategy.
You have the customer information needed to pursue new opportunities, markets and customers. Together, we pinpoint where better or more complete information would make a difference to profitable growth. Your strategic marketing questions are supported by the research you need. When needed, data already in your files is re-examined to produce additional new insights. You have the tools to predict and gauge growth, profit potential and segmentation strategies.
Your strategic initiatives for growth are fully and successfully implemented to completion. You have both support and a process for implementing the growth plan at your company.We work with you throughout the implementation. If you hit an obstacle, together we overcome that obstacle. You have a VP of Strategy for hire alongside you ensuring that “hiccups” don’t short-circuit the growth strategy. Your designated point person deals with the complexities of shepherding the growth initiative.

You Also Want To Know The Guiding Beliefs and Values Of Consultants You Are Considering

These Are The Our Guiding Beliefs and The Values We Stand For

A consulting relationship is personal and can be long-term. For that reason, we think it’s important for you to understand a little about us. We want you to know why we are doing this work and what we try to accomplish in our relationships and engagements with clients. These are the beliefs and values that we hold close.

Our purpose is to help client companies grow profitably. We consider ourselves to be successful when we see clients fully commit to improving their strategies and acquiring the capabilities to sustain profitable growth. Unless we’ve helped you do what it takes to grow profitably, we can’t be satisfied. That means we fully commit and are there with you through the entire process. We don’t just come in and write up a plan and leave the execution to you.
We believe that profitable growth is predictably achieved when it’s driven by your team. When team members get to shape the company of their future, they fully commit. People want to be a part of something great and to have an impact on their own future. Tapping the energy of those higher motivations engages your team, keeps it energized and moving forward. You can depend on us to surface the brilliance among your team members and to harness that for your forward progress.
Consistent growth is not an accident; it’s customer-driven. When our clients discover ways to expand the value that they can deliver to their customers, profitable growth results. We get team members listening to their customers in new ways. We make sure you understand customer behavior, even asking them directly about the reasons for their choices. That’s the best way to surface and recognize opportunities for innovation in the value delivered to customers.
We provide tools that empower your team to choose the changes that bring profitable growth. For most companies, better growth performance requires changes in processes as well as people. We don’t force change on people. Instead we empower them, using tools to see the opportunities and solutions with their own eyes. They choose the solutions that will improve the lives of your customers. You lead them to help create innovative value propositions and methods of delivery. This process brings an innate sense of how to execute.
Top leadership must fully commit to complete execution. Alignment on priorities, goals, strategies and action plans requires agreement across the organization. Absent full leadership commitment, minor disagreements about priorities can throw entire initiatives off-track. Having the facts right is not sufficient. Getting to agreement on the facts and what they mean for the business is just as important.

On Top Of That, You Want To Understand A Consultant’s Approach

You Want To Know What You Can Expect From Me On Every Engagement

We all have an approach to problems, and understanding my approach is significant. These are the things you can expect from me every time we work together.

We create the conditions for successful implementation of change from day one. Starting with the end in mind, we dig into your growth problems to understand what needs to happen. We build buy-in from the start by working cross-functionally. Working with all stakeholder groups means that the solution comes from them. When they are creating the solution, they become invested in its success.
Whenever possible, face-to-face intimate exchanges with real customers drive the entire change initiative. For the most critical conversations, we don’t use a research company or surveys. There is no one between you and the customer. We conduct actual and in-person conversations one-on-one, many-to-many, face-to-face, team-to-team. Listening, engaging, and brainstorming brings customer insight. Customer input is validated, built upon, tested and refined throughout.
We maintain a big picture perspective during the change initiative process. It’s important to keep people focused on why we’re doing this, so it doesn’t devolve into just another meeting. Even though the process may seem complex, we constantly develop and maintain momentum for your process. We consistently do what it takes to maintain engagement and motivation. When the team realizes that they are literally creating the company’s future, you get the full energy of the team.

There Are A Lot Of Consultant Choices

You Might Want To Know What’s Unique About Us

When you’re considering many different consulting firms, you want to understand why or how we’re unique. These are some of the areas that set us apart from our competitors.

We make sure that your growth strategy is integrated with an effective strategic plan. That means that a growth strategy would be prepared as part of the strategic plan or is supported by the strategic plan. I’ve learned to build the growth plan into the strategic context with all of the pieces in place. We start with executive alignment and consistent high level execution. Strategic growth becomes part of the executive team agenda.
For me, customer insight drives a disciplined development of strategy and strategic execution. Many companies isolate knowledge about markets and the customer experience within the marketing organization. Typical strategic planning does not consider innovations based on customer input. When we work together, customer-centric input informs strategic decisions and execution.
We know what it takes to make change heads, hearts and hands in your organization. With extensive experience in large consulting organizations focused on operations improvement, change management principles and practices are second-nature. You can expect to have our energies focused on organic change within your organization.
I am able to listen to the voice of the customer with no agenda. My background includes several years at a boutique consultancy that specializes in business-to-business market research and analysis. That means I’m comfortable asking tough questions, listening empathically and keeping the conversation going. I take what I hear at face value, and earn the right to challenge my clients’ conventional knowledge about why customers say what they say and do what they do.
Decades of experience means that it’s easy for me to quickly do “what if” scenarios about potential growth initiatives. We can conceptualize and build potential offerings and business models on the fly. This can be done accurately with minimal input. We have enough experience on the financial side of business planning to quickly construct the pro forma case around a new concept.
I have 30 years of experience with more than 100 marketing and strategy-related projects for business-to-business clients. This means we connect quickly, and rapidly understand a complex situation. It’s a quick process to map out the moving parts and key questions. From there, it’s an easy next step to frame scope, objectives and approach. We can do “quick and dirty” first looks at a wide range of possibilities in blazing fast time.

Where To Next?

Now that you know more about how we work, what results you can expect from working with us, our values, and unique aspects of our business, explore the services we provide.