Consulting or Research?
That's a choice clients typically face. Do you assume you've correctly assessed business and market issues and hire a research firm? Or do you hire a consulting firm and hope they adequately handle the research end? Either choice can lead to strategies formed from an incomplete picture, and that are hard to activate. Our collective skills and access to data allow us to deliver more comprehensive and actionable solutions. As warranted we can provide research, strategy development, or a combination.
Working With Us
Every initial meeting begins with a casual discussion. We listen to objectives and challenges. We prod and ask questions. We help people think about issues, implications and timelines. If a good fit exists between a business’s needs and our capabilities, we follow-up with a written proposal indicating work we could conduct, timeline, and pricing options. We have no hidden fees. Mutual interest and transparency drive our process.
What Services Are Most Frequently Desired?
We developed the services below to address needs encountered most frequently.
Loyalty Insights – a process of understanding and managing customer loyalty. This involves identifying factors that create and discourage loyalty, determining how to increase loyalty, and providing a tracking system that assesses ongoing performance for loyalty.
Market Insights – a process that diagnoses a market and brands. This involves examining why and how customers buy and use products, how customers view competing brands, and determining where opportunities exist.
New Product Insights – a process of identifying product and service opportunities. This involves evaluating the degree of anxiousness in the market for new products and services, determining what products and services have highest potential, and how they should be introduced.
Prospecting Insights – a process that solidifies and grows the sales foundation. This involves building a picture of the right prospect, assessing how these prospects can be most effectively found, and providing support tools for the sales force.
Business Accelerators – a team of experts that manage and coach business growth. This unique platform provides growing businesses with highly accomplished business-accelerator practitioners, typically semi-retired. This involves a partnership lasting one to three years and a a profit sharing model with few up-front costs; business-accelerator practitioners grow your business with you and for you, and are compensated based on results.
Tailored Options
For every type of project, we can provide support in three ways. We work with clients to determine which support option(s) best fit their needs.
Mainly research. Some clients mainly need research. We can progress through an upfront meeting to clarify the scope of insights needed and to set reserach objectives. We then conduct the research, analyze results, develop basic recommendations and confer with managers to review this material. This service is most useful to marketers who have a strong grasp of current market dynamics and who have time and resources available to follow through with strategy development and implementation.
Strategy development. Some clients have a desire for deeper strategic work. In these instances we work with clients to conceptually examine a wide range of potential market and business issues. This conceptual work helps identify information needs, which determines what research is needed, if any. We conduct research as warranted. We then provide more comprehensive work at the back end to develop a strong set of marketing and strategic recommendations and implementation plans. This service is most useful to marketers who have a strong implementation abilities and seek an outside perspective for strategy.
Implementation. This support can be coupled with research and strategy or can be provided as a stand-alone option. Implementation support involves providing an experienced marketing professional to work part time with a company, typically over a six to eighteen month time period. This service is most useful to businesses who face new market opportunities and desire support for implementation.