Launch
A shortage of ideas isn’t your problem. But the haze of too many ideas can lead you down the wrong path. We will help you FOCUS AND SIMPLIFY to ensure you are always headed in the right direction.
Grow
Growth is your goal. As both a former business owner and a Fortune 500 sales and marketing executive of CPG, food, tech and professional services companies, Carter knows what it takes to scale your business. Together, we will develop and execute the strategies to take you where you need to GROW.
Thrive
As a business owner, you are often in the loneliest place in the world. But it doesn’t have to be overwhelming, lonely or scary. Anyone who hasn’t walked in your shoes doesn’t know how it feels to walk in your shoes. As your partner, Carter will guide you to a place of CONFIDENCE AND SUCCESS.
Exit
Guiding you to a successful transition is a difficult task. We help you transform your thinking and your strategies to think of your business as an asset, not just an income generator, and we will help you with strategies to prepare for a successful EXIT.
Strategies to Grow, Change, and Innovate
Are you in the midst of growth? Have you concluded you need to grow but you would benefit from some help? Growth and change can present great challenges. Our passion and strength is helping companies grow – to identify the best opportunities for focus, change, and innovation to drive growth in sales, market share and profit.
To the leader go the profits. Market leaders have been shown to be significantly more profitable than their competitors. In fact, the single strongest correlation to higher ROI is market share. So how do you become a market leader?
Innovation, great products and service, strong marketing and outstanding sales execution can all drive you to the top. By successfully initiating marketplace change and guiding your team through implementing visionary change, we can help you find your own path to the top.
We can help you get in front of the pack and develop new products and services. With our experience in turning around businesses and growing categories, we can assist you in driving revenue. Our success in cost cutting and finding creative ways to take (and sell) price increases can help you find additional ways to improve your profitability.
Types of Support We Provide to Help You Grow
-Growth Consulting
-Becoming Market Leader…or a Strong #2
-Initiating, Leading, and Guiding Change
-New Products: Vision, Strategy, Research, Concept, Testing, Expansion, Hurdles and ROI
-Identifying and penetrating new markets
-Growing revenue, market share, AND profits
-Turning around a company or category
-Balancing Quality and Growth
-Managing inventories to support growth
-Repositioning or rebranding
-Imagination and creativity
-Reacting Quickly to Competitive Challenges
-Responding to PR Challenges
-Adapting to Marketplace Changes
-Staying ahead of the economy
-Knowing when to embrace change -Managing growth profitability
-Growing revenue and market share
-Benefits of market leadership
-Production challenges: quality, speed, cost
-Inventory management
-Production predictability
-Having confidence and justification to raise prices
-Finding creative sources of funding; partnerships
-Doing more with less
-Prudent cost cutting (identifying fat vs. muscle)
-Leadership: Culture and values, Openness and truth, Accountability vs. blame, Identifying and eliminating barriers to success, Leadership, vision, voice, Time Management to lead, Preparing for the unexpected
Get, Grow, and Keep Customers
In many business surveys, the biggest challenge facing small and mid-sized businesses is finding and retaining good customers. The process starts by IDENTIFYING who are the RIGHT customers. What makes a great customer? Size? Profitability? Loyalty? Every business has a different way of determining the best customers. And every business MUST take the time to define this. We can help.
Often your customer base needs weeding. You are unable to support some of your best customers because other customers are taking too much of your time and resources. We can help you ruthlessly weed out the customers who might be better off with someone else. Weeding customers can be tricky and uncomfortable. But just because it can be difficult does not mean you shouldn’t weed them out. We can help.
We can also help you develop strategies for generating leads and selling to your top prospects. Is your sales team aligned for success? Do you have the sales structure to target the top prospects? Have you put in place the best sales incentives? How well you measure both the activities and results of your sales team? Do you have ongoing sales training and management follow-up on goals?
Once you have brought a customer on board, how do you continually grow their business with you? Do you deliver business value and help them grow THEIR business? We can help you can conduct benchmarking for your own customers to help them grow. We can help you find the best means of delivering value, including providing marketing support. When you are able to help your grow your customer’s business, then your customer is much more likely to become a loyal supporter of your business.
Types of Support We Provide to Help You Get, Grow, and Keep Customers:
-Strategies for gaining customers
-Lead Generation
-Selecting and retaining profitable customers
-Reducing dependency on one client
-Directing sales activities and approaches
-Sales metrics
-Customer Marketing
-Delivering business value
-Managing multiple channels
-B2B, B2C (direct and online)
-Sales Team compensation, incentives, evaluation
-Sales Team recruiting and on-boarding
-Sales reorganization
-Identifying and meeting customer expectations
-Creating raving fans and referrals
-Reducing toxic customer discounts
-Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
-Sales Support
Develop Marketing That Wins
Do you ever find yourself thinking, “I know marketing works, but how much should I spend, where should I spend it, and how do I measure it?” Which marketing approaches make the most sense for your business?
We develop marketing that works by starting from the Outside-In, rather than Inside-Out. What does that mean? First, we help you tighten your focus by determining who your best customers are. What drives their behavior? We identify customer and consumer insights to develop marketing communication that actually changes their behavior to buy from you instead of your competitor.
After developing the message, we help you determine how to most effectively (and cost efficiently) deliver that message, in the right frequency to your target customers. TV, print, radio, digital media, social media and direct marketing all have the potential to be effective. The challenge is to determine what marketing mix is most efficient for your business.
How do you make sense of digital marketing? All of the following have potential value in your marketing mix, but you must understand how to profitability implement strategies in these various areas: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), pay per click advertising, Social Media, content marketing, retargeting, remarketing, display and banner ads, automation, e-commerce, and online activation. We can help you make sense of the world of digital and online marketing and develop a targeted approach to work for you.
We welcome the chance to learn your marketing challenges to see how we might be able to help you develop marketing that wins.
Types of Support We Provide to Help You Develop Marketing That Wins:
-Marketing strategy, segmentation, planning, budgeting and execution
-Target audience identification and understanding: customers, consumers, influencers
-Analysis, measurement, and data management
-Brand positioning and repositioning
-Insights and needs identification: Outside In vs. Inside Out
-Digital Marketing: SEO, SEM, Content strategy, Social Media, e-commerce, e-mail direct marketing, retargeting, mobile
-Brand and corporate identity: website, materials, communication, USP, differentiation
-Competitive and category knowledge
-Collaborative marketing, partnerships, licensing
-Marketing Mix: advertising and media, direct marketing, public relations, sales support, lead generation, promotion
-Long term & annual strategic planning
-Product management and rationalization
Lead, Macromanage, and Empower a Strong Team
Leadership is perhaps the greatest challenge in any organization. Is a leader macromanaging or micromanaging? Are your leaders guiding teams or doing all the work themselves? Do they effectively set direction? Are the leaders sufficiently coached on empowering teams? Do you regularly train people on selling, marketing, leading, or managing time? Do you evaluate how to create a better “fit” for your team through tools like DISC testing?
One key to becoming a great macromanager is finding and keeping great talent. This starts by understanding your needs and the composition of your team. Are the right people in the right positions to support your growth? Have you benchmarked your lineup against the best companies in your field? Perhaps you have a solid team that simply needs some additional training or help in goal setting, planning, project management, leading and following up. Are you managing (micromanaging) too many details…or are you empowering (macromanaging) your strong team to be successful? We can help review your needs and your team to develop a plan to ensure your team is firing on all cylinders.
An often neglected role is getting new hires up to speed quickly and becoming sufficiently knowledgeable in your business, your customers and your industry. Once on board, do you have processes to set goals and measure individual and team progress? Have you identified barriers and developed tools to overcome them?
Once you have identified, trained and empowered a talented team, the final step is to implement strategies and processes to retain your best people. Contrary to what some believe, salary is not always the biggest motivator for people. Research has shown that the association between salary and job satisfaction is actually very weak. So are you knowledgeable in the other more important factors that drive employee satisfaction?
Types of Support We Offer to Help You Lead, Macromanage and Empower High Performing Teams:
-Identifying leadership needs
-Macromanaging vs. Micromanaging
-Setting a clear and bold course for your team
-Accountability and tools for measurement
-Staying on the business, rather than simply in the business
-Identifying, recruiting and landing leaders
-Onboarding, training, and support new hires
-Skills development and ongoing training
-Empowering and encouraging strong leaders
-Rewarding and retaining top talent
-Understanding personality fits and DISC testing
-Managing email and information overload
-Creating barriers to procrastination and distraction
-Circle of Influence vs. Circle of Control (Proactive vs. Reactive)
-Creating a collaborative environment