Personally, I don’t mind if you call me a grayhair.  What I would ask you to do is run the numbers.  Spend $2,000 a day (ouch, I know) for six months (yikes, I hear you) to get …  Well, if I could get you a million in new sales by helping you focus, by crafting a winning communications plan and by coaching your sales and marketing teams to perform, the ROI pencils out at (well, well, well….) 4:1.

Yes, but be prepared:  I’m going to ask lots of questions and question all your assumptions.  I’m going to drag you into face-to-face interactions with your customers and your prospects.  I’m going to put your team through rigorous market research and financial analysis to make sure there’s a there there.  I’m going to challenge you to come up with creative solutions through a structured but fun ideation process.

And I won’t just be sending you emails from my office.  I’m going to roll up my sleeves, loosen my tie and work side by side with you to make it happen.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers.  But I know how to get them, I know how to act on them, and I’ll work with you every step of the way.

I firmly subscribe to the philosophy of my first marketing vice president, Leo Kiely:  An 80% solution implemented today is better than a 100% solution that doesn’t get going until next year.  But whether you go with a 60% solution or a 95% percent solution is really a matter of how much risk you’re willing to tolerate and how quickly you can adjust if you got it not quite right.  The discipline comes into play when you ask yourself, “What’s the downside of being wrong?”

Humility, to me, means acknowledging that I can’t possibly know everything and that I might get it wrong.  It means asking questions and soliciting ideas that run counter to my own.  Discipline means putting some analytical rigor into the decision-making process so I know both the upside and the downside, and then creating structures and processes to make sure my plan gets implemented well.

Arrogance and uncoordinated activity reflect mental and organizational habits.  To break those habits, you need a neutral third party who can come in and have a good look and then work with you and your team to analyze, focus, plan and implement.  That takes a little humility and a willingness to impose some discipline on a free-wheeling organization.

• I help you get more customers
• … get your customers to buy more often and to buy more each time they buy from you
• … take customers from your competition
• … do all these things at the lowest possible cost – which helps your bottom line, too.

To get more customers, I look at who you’ve got.  Who are they?  Why do they buy from you?  What could you do better?

Who have you lost, and why? If they switched to someone else, why?  How can you win them back?

Those answers get at why someone should buy from you, in the words, phrases and images that change perception and change behavior – because they come from your customers.  Use what you learn to get your customers to perceive you in a certain way, and do things differently:  Buy from you instead of someone else, or instead of doing it themselves.

How do you deliver those words, phrases and images to those you want to influence?  We’ll evaluate all marketing tactics, from advertising to PR to online.  I take a “media-agnostic” approach:  What will work?  And what will produce results at the lowest possible cost?

Once we’ve defined your communications campaign, I’ll coach you on the implementation.  What resources do you need, either internally or externally?  A key hire, a group of vendors?  Then we’ll work on how to manage them.

All along the way, I will focus on teaching you and your staff how to do all of these things.  Because you can never stop growing your top line.

Sales growth depends on getting buyers of your product or service to behave differently than they might otherwise:  Buy vs. not buy, buy again, buy more often, or buy more per order.  In Flexcar’s case, the insight was that you can influence people, but you can’t influence cars.  We changed the way we kept score, counting new drivers, the number of days it took to get a new driver to reserve a car, and the number of days it took for that member to drive again.  We found ways to influence those drivers, and the drivers produced more hours per vehicle.

So check your score-keeping system.  Does it help you focus on doing the most important things you can do to generate sales?  Does it focus you on how to influence people rather than machines?

We should talk  if you want to grow your business but aren’t sure of the best way to do it, or if you have opportunities but aren’t sure which to exploit first.  With my experience, I can help you crunch through the fundamental analysis that should precede any business investment, guide you and your team through the process of choosing a smart strategic direction, and then coach you through the planning and implementation of your initiative in a way that will energize your organization.

To answer these questions, I take a holistic, analytically rigorous and customer-centered approach to help my clients develop and implement a fully integrated business, brand or marketing strategy.  If needed, I can step in as temporary or part-time CMO.

My “best fit” clients are emerging business units in large companies, and privately held businesses based in the Pacific Northwest.  I partner with other interim executives as well as advertising, PR and graphic design firms.

I look forward to hearing from you and exchanging experiences and ideas.