Early Stage Companies

War Gaming

This is a powerful way to role play competitors and customers; we perform this with both hard and soft motivators, getting into the soul and psyche of competitors and customers. We will work with you to develop competitor and customer profiles and then conduct a war gaming session in which each member of your team assumes a different competitor and customer role. We facilitate this session and record key insights achieved as you and your team see the market dynamics play out in real-time.

Financial Planning

We help you build dynamic and thoughtful financial plans linked to the company strategy and practically designed not only for the CFO but also for each of your leaders to engage, understand, and own.

Organizational Design

Organizational design goes beyond hiring the “right” person. The organization should not be chaotic or change every month, nor should it be designed around any particular person. We help you build an organization that is aligned to your strategy, motivates your organization, and integrates talents in such a way that your team’s heart beats with that of the company. In our experience, this is where many leaders struggle.

Key Business Process Design

Rome wasn’t built overnight; you don’t need to scale up everything now. You need to focus on what gives your company a competitive and market edge now. We help you plan key business processes to enhance your position, lower costs, and achieve best practice levels tailored to your business needs.

New Market Entry

Entering into a new geography or new market segment requires precision and a no regrets approach. We help you identify the right customers, build the best commercial framework, and tailor your offerings that are critical to achieving a successful market entry.

Partnerships and Joint Ventures

Too often partnerships and joint ventures fail because of selecting the wrong partner, or more commonly, having misaligned goals and unrealistic expectations. However, partnerships can be highly beneficial to strengthen your offering and expand your market position. We will help you with the partnering strategy, including the partner selection and commercial terms. Once a partnership is launched, the operationalization of the collaboration is important, and we will advise you appropriately.

Due Diligence

Too often due diligence processes are controlled by the prospective investor causing significant work without a clear line of sight to the finish line. Make it smoother by letting us help you get into the heads of your prospective investors and help you prepare proactively for the due diligence process.

Technology Validation

A technology needs to provide at least one of the following: low cost solution, significant value, bundle several offerings in a valuable way, or be the cornerstone of a powerful brand. Let us help you sort this out and evaluate your technology. Our access to technical experts means that our results are backed up by technical understanding.

Market Identification

Your technology may be applied to new markets and therefore, you can expand your total business potential. We can help identify these markets, determine how to protect IP, and develop a prioritization for market development. Further, we can help you determine how to best target these markets and assess if a partnership can help accelerate additional value.

Market Sizing

Let’s face it, when someone puts up their Total Addressable Market numbers, eyes roll backwards and the BS detectors go off. We are the voice of reason and can validate your estimate with credibility and experience.

Customer Validation

Nothing matters unless the customer believes it matters. We will conduct risk free customer interviews and focus groups that will strengthen your customer understanding. In contrast to the typical “robo-surveys”, we deploy our EQ method of customer engagement by creating an environment where we listen empathetically to the customer to pick up on those subtle, yet crucial cues to help you position your technology correctly. Don’t Monkey Survey around.

Product Planning

Your technology is the soul of your company and can be molded into many offerings. We will work with you to create a development roadmap, focused not only on customer needs and product development requirements, but also marketing, organizational development, customer selection, and commercial frameworks to make your product roadmap powerful and complete.

Technology Development Planning

We will work with you to evaluate different technology development pathways, including key milestones, investment levels, and partnerships. We will evaluate each pathway against the market potential and competitive dynamics along with potential risks. In our experience, the sequence of technology development is critical, and each step needs to be validated and built upon the previous steps and line up with the business development and commercial plans.

Intellectual Property Advisory

We can help develop your patenting strategy to protect your future.

Marketing Strategy

Positioning your brand strategically is crucial for your company to thrive. We help you develop a consistent marketing strategy by identifying customers, building your story, and articulating your value.

Marketing Campaigns

Your customers want to know your story, and we will help you tell it in a memorable and engaging way. Our team is ready to take your marketing to the next level. We will bring your products and services to life and share your customer success stories in order to bring in high quality inbound leads. Your potential customers will understand your value and see how you can positively impact their business.

Customer Understanding

We uncover your customers’ needs, wants, and pain points with customer interviews using our EQ method of customer engagement. Our analysis will also include the economic benefits of your product or service. After our discovery phase, we will then collaborate with your sales and marketing team to discuss our results in order to strengthen your company’s customer understanding. We deliver actionable insights to bring in new wins and renewals.

Marketing Content Design

Our marketing team can develop and design marketing content including website design, brochures, case studies, digital marketing content, videos, and other marketing materials to tell your story. We will ensure high quality and consistency in order to build your brand, articulate your value, and reach your target customers.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing allows you to interact with your target audience and is a necessary part of your marketing strategy. This is a cost-effective way of generating high quality leads and building your company’s brand. Our marketing team is ready to be your voice and build your brand on multiple digital platforms. We offer an annual plan so you can focus on nurturing leads while our team handles all aspects of your digital marketing.

Account Planning

We can assist you and your sales team in building robust account plans. Do not short circuit this critical strategic element that will help you drive sales, particularly with enterprise customers. We will develop customer personas, understand buying habits, and map decision rights within the organization of your key customers. Our account planning methodology is thoughtful, proven and ready to deploy for your company.

Trade Show Strategy

You can’t just show up to a trade show with a table and expect results. You need to select the right trade shows as well as develop a creative and thoughtful trade show strategy to successfully showcase your brand and set you apart. Our team can evaluate your current approach and pragmatically identify ways you can improve. We can develop a pre and post trade show engagement plan, design, create, or enhance your booth, plan customer and booth events, and design and order promotional products in order to increase traffic and maximize customer engagement.

Software Development

We will develop software tailored to your business priorities that can include off-the-shelf software with customized interfaces and features for your back office, customer facing presentations and deliverables, and CRM.

Back Office Design

Are your overhead costs eating away your gross margin for as far as the eye can see? Does this overhead advance your market position or is it wasteful spending? We can assess your cost and capability situation against your business strategy and best-in-class performance. Financials always matter. Don’t waste another nickel on an inefficient or oversized back office.

Operational Planning

Your dreams are valid, and you need a plan to make it a reality. Let us work with you to develop a flexible operations plan that will ensure that your delivery matches exactly what the customer needs for renewals, runs efficiently, and allows you to scale appropriately.

Lean Processes for Excellence

Do you have processes that set you apart, or are they setting you back? Let us look at your key processes, including sales, operational delivery, sourcing, and project management to reveal areas of inefficiency. You can be world-class in execution to reinforce your world-class products and services.

Project Management and Delivery

Whether you offer a product or service, there cannot be any slippage to deadlines or quality. We can work with you to evaluate each process step to make sure it contributes to customer delivery success and eliminates complexity or burdensome work that adds little value.

Metrics and Performance Management

We can help ensure that your leaders and organization are being measured on what matters and keeps them motivated and excited. Tie these metrics to compensation to get the maximum drive. We will develop scorecards that align to your business priorities and strategy and promote accountability within your team.

Smart Scaling

When should you scale your organization to the next level, or invest in another facility? In our experience, companies do this way too early and end up burning tons of cash and lose sight on today’s urgent business priorities. We can assess your current growth plan and advise you on the necessary pivots to ensure your scaling efficiently supports your growth.

Organizational Structure

Functional, geographic, or matrix? You are a leader of a growing enterprise - you don’t have time to flip flop your organization around when things change. Your team does not have the capacity or the desire to go through endless change. Do not let your organization become confused or jaded. Start with the right structure that is scalable and adaptable to your changing business. Make sure your organization is aligned to today’s priorities!

Culture Assessment

Ensure your organization’s passion is as deep as your passion. Using our experience combined with our EQ approach, we will engage your team and draw out the good, the bad, and the ugly from their perspectives. The results can confirm your organization is healthy or it can identify areas within the organization where issues need to be addressed. A healthy culture is necessary for your company to succeed. Our experience suggests that a buried hatchet brings greater pain later; communication lines need to be open, individual passions understood, and two-way commitments made at every level of the organization

Organizational Coaching

You hand-picked your organization and understand that many on your team have the potential to grow into experts and leaders to drive more value for your company. We can coach individuals to help them fill bigger shoes while motivating them to take on larger responsibilities and providing confidence in the face of fear.

High Performing Teams

Ninety percent of investors think the company’s teams are critical to the success of a new company; however, most companies fail to create a culture of high performing teams. A high performing team consists of people with skills and attitudes that complement each other. The individual performance and recognition needs to co-exist and thrive with team recognition. Each team member supports the other’s growth and tirelessly works towards the impossible - making it possible. We will assess your team and create a custom workshop to build the foundation for a high performing team at your company.

Human Resources and Payroll Systems

We can help you determine the best way to administer strategic HR, including talent management, development and career advancement, compensation, and incentive strategies. In addition, we can assist with evaluating administrative systems in order to efficiently and prudently administer payroll and benefits.

Interim Leadership

CEO, COO, Finance, Marketing, Operations

Sometimes you just need a leader to step in and lead. We have a network of executives and functional experts ready to take action.

Execution Assessment

Scorecards, Metrics, & Accountability

We will conduct a health check on your business, ensuring that your organization is moving in the same direction as your vision and strategy. And we will identify performance and accountability gaps that could take you off the rails.

Competitor Assessment

We say NO to SWOT. It ends up getting buried with the other consulting frameworks that have no use to your organization. We will roll up our sleeves and dig deeper into your key competitors by understanding how they position themselves and understand how and why target customers select your competitors.

Performance Improvement

Every company could use a tune up. We will help improve sales velocity, delivery, aftermarket care, product development, and other key aspects of your business. We are laser focused on the improvement opportunities that matter now.

Triage Services

Sometimes it takes a village, and we are here to support you and your company. We will pour our passion, heart and soul into your organization and do all it takes to help you survive and pull through. If failure is inevitable, we will be there to coach and support you, in addition to identifying key lessons and learnings. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” -Winston Churchill

Financial Management

Managing cash for returns can be critical - make at least 3-4% on your cash in safe assets using our screeners for high quality AAA bonds and low risk principal protected dividends. Working capital can be a killer, so let us help you manage this appropriately while protecting customer relationships.

Strategic Rationale

Sometimes doing it all by yourself leaves opportunities behind and makes your workload intolerable. We will work closely with you to find strategic partners (or acquirers if appropriate) that will help advance your company without giving up any significant future potential.

Opportunity Due Diligence

Whatever questions you have about a potential target, we can quickly assess the target and ensure that their products and customers are robust, their financials are solid, and their future aligns with your business goals.

Negotiation Support

Your deal structure needs to align with your strategy and commercial goals, and deliver financial returns. Whether it's upfront structuring or helping you get the deal done, we stand ready to be your support.

Integration

Once a deal is done, it is not over. Most deals fail during implementation. Integration and implementation fatigue sets in and malaise replaces excitement and passion. You cannot afford for this to happen! We can work with you to develop a robust integration plan complete with milestones and tracking mechanisms to help you lead and assess the progress of your integration.

Marketing and Sales Training

We offer half day to one week sales training workshops that are tailored for your business needs. The cornerstone of our approach is Situation-Problem-Implications-Needs Based Implications which is proven to open the discussions more broadly and identify customer needs. The pipeline can be better measured, leads strengthened, and the proposals expanded and made precise to customer needs. More importantly, we will engage your sales team so they understand and appreciate the approach fully and shake off the tendency to say “this won’t help” or “I’m already doing this."

Pitch Presentation Practice

Whether you have a three minute or full day pitch, we can help polish your presentation and give you presentation coaching advice. Ensure that your offering is well understood, the need being met is clear, the opportunity compelling, and the business plan is laid out so that key points are clear and geared towards your audience.

Executive Coaching

We know you have a larger than life ambition and strategy for your business. It can be lonely and the path is riddled with obstacles. Our coaching can go a long way towards providing you the support and empathy to help you push forward with confidence.

Leadership Training

Our team includes both functional and business leaders who have run a range of companies, from startups to large organizations. These leaders can work with a team or an individual in your organization to help them become stronger, more confident leaders, and help them advance and take on more responsibility.

Culture Building

How do you define you company’s culture? This definition is critical. How your people interact and respond to each other and to priorities can make or break your company. Define your company’s personality and win over the hearts and minds of your people.

Retreats

Get out of the office to focus on a strategic issue, or seek feedback on customer understanding, or just have fun as a team! We can design and implement a memorable, productive and impactful retreat to suit your needs.

Speaking Engagements

From former CEO’s to leaders from Private Equity and Venture Capital firms, we can arrange for speakers to inspire your organization. Bring an outside perspective to your retreat or strategic planning sessions.