Consulting and Facilitation
Methods That Unleash Your Revenue Growth Enthusiasm and Results
Use Best Practices and Lessons Learned To Expedite…
Rick uses three decades of revenue growth experience and lessons learned from the Fortune 500, middle market, small caps, and start-ups to enthusiastically solve revenue growth problems.
Rick is a great fit for you and your company if you are passionate about:
- Connecting People so their collective knowledge, skills, experience and wisdom can be used to achieve great things.
- Transmitting Energy so people are inspired to see the possibilities, seize the initiative, and control the tempo of their efforts.
- Embracing Friction so people can have their voices heard, achieve greater situational awareness, and feel respected.
- Simplifying Complexity so people can gain context, know what to do, and execute with passion rather than emotion.
- Celebrating Inquisitiveness so a better way can be found and dreams are brought to life.
Lets work together to build revenue growth knowledge, skills, practices, and enthusiasm!
Rick quickly grasps issues, asks tough questions, formulates solutions, helps you execute and measures your progress. A business savvy, well experienced executive who can teach individuals and companies terrific tools and techniques. You will really like the value that Rick adds to you, your team and your employees. I continue to learn from Rick and enjoy his friendship.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Investors are skeptical about revenue growth initiatives because they involve higher risks, longer time frames, uncertain execution, and external market forces outside their control. They prefer an internal focus on extracting value from synergy initiatives.
But what would happen to valuation if revenue growth initiatives could be implemented with lower risk, shorter time frames, more precise execution, and fast adaptation to external market forces?
Rick equips investors to simultaneously grow short revenue while implementing synergy cost savings through:
- Due Diligence to understand revenue growth risk with product and service plans, pricing models, sales management and salespeople.
- Integration Planning to mitigate differences in revenue growth plans, forecasts, structure, culture, procedures, technology, knowledge transfer, data fields and collection, analysis and recommendations, reporting and process improvement.
- Talent Retention and Upgrade to mitigate differences in revenue growth strategic management knowledge, skills and style, as well as management practices, policies and systems.
- Culture Alignment to mitigate differences in mission, values, goals/vision, strategic initiatives and metrics.
Lets work together to expedite value creation by simultaneously growing short term revenue while capturing synergy with precision!
Due Diligence on Revenue Growth Capability
- Evaluate cross and up-selling capability
- Assess products and services for synergy
- Evaluate executive teams knowledge and skills with formulating, executing and evaluating growth strategies
- Evaluate sales management knowledge and skills
- Assess sales processes and technology
Integration Planning for Cross and Up Selling
- Sales forecast alignment
- Sales strategy alignment including prioritized Industry, geographic, and customer plans
- Product and service plan alignment
- Pricing and discount model alignment
- Knowledge transfer approach for product and service information to salespeople
Talent Retention for Revenue Growth
- Identification of key sales managers and salespeople
- Sales incentive comp alignment for cross and up-selling
- Career development to quickly build morale
- Hands-on coaching for sales managers and salespeople
Rick did a great job of helping a business unit accomplish a complete overhaul in the structure and accountability/financial metrics for their business. Skillful handling of the considerable change management issues that came with the overhaul.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is fraught with challenges including ever increasing time pressure. Rick uses an iterative approach with shorter, more frequent meetings to keep pace with external changes and internal time demands. Rick’s services address common obstacles including:
- Unclear Vision and Mission with little alignment to core purpose, leading to fragmented efforts and confusion.
- Lack of Leadership Buy-In to a shared direction.
- Inadequate Data and Analysis with insufficient market research and/or poor data quality, and misguided decisions.
- Resistance to Change due to personal agendas, ineffective change management and communication strategies.
- Failure to Anticipate Challenges including lack of measures, monitoring of changes in the external environment, and lack of scenario plans to address unforeseen issues.
- Lack of Alignment between business units, departments and job descriptions.
- Short-Term Focus that can undermine strategic plans and initiatives.
- Poor Communication that lead to misunderstandings, lack of engagement, and ineffective execution.
- Resource Allocation including time, money, and personnel.
- Infrequent Changes To The Plan to distract and derail revenue growth initiatives.
Lets work together to expedite strategic plan formulation and execution to drive revenue growth with precision and results!
Audits
- Strategic Intent including vision, mission, and core values.
- Plans including strategic, operations, and tactics.
- Forecasts including revenue, sales pipeline,
- Performance Measures including KPI’s and monitoring approach.
- Structure and Resource Allocation for implementation.
Facilitate Workshops
- Vision and Mission development or refinement.
- Core Values and Behaviors development or refinement.
- Strategy Formulation including objective and goal setting.
- Strategy Implementation including cascading of objectives, goals, and accountability to departments and employees.
- Performance Measurement including monitoring and cascading.
Research and Analysis
- Market Scope and Viability including total available market (TAM).
- SWOT Analysis for competitors, industries and customers.
- Operational Viability including resource allocation.
- Buyer Analysis including problem mapping and messaging
Rick knows more about B2B revenue growth for start-ups than anyone I’ve worked with. He helped transform our sales process at both SlideRocket and CustomShow, where our team worked with him to double sales in under a year. I’m constantly amazed at how far ahead he thinks—which is proven by the fact that he’s already created a slide to explain any question I ask!
Innovation and Product Development
Developing and enhancing new products and services is critical for staying competitive, but they come with a range of challenges. Rick uses a bootstrapping approach to ideate, accelerate, prototype, develop and go-to-market. His services overcome common barriers including:
- Idea Generation and Selection by educating sources of ideas, screening ideas, and prioritizing which ones to work on.
- Market Uncertainty by monitoring industry, political, economic, customer and competitors for changes and trends.
- Resource Allocation by project planning, traunching funds, and attracting outside funding sources.
- Execution Risks by prototyping to address technical feasibility, production difficulties, or supply chain problems, and service challenges.
- Speed to Market by using TheNaviGuide to map the exchange of information required by buyers to make a purchase decision.
- Cross-Functional by involving every process to develop TheNaviGuide to force effective communication among diverse teams.
- Customer Validation by using TheNaviGuide to facilitate conversations with prospective customers to validate/invalidate assumptions prior to building or testing the prototype.
- Organizational Resistance by using TheNaviGuide to facilitate conversations, gather input from, and communicate updates to internal stakeholders.
Lets work together to expedite strategic plan formulation and execution to drive revenue growth with precision and results!
Audits
- Strategic Intent including vision, mission, and core values.
- Plans including strategic, operations, and tactics.
- Forecasts including revenue, sales pipeline,
- Performance Measures including KPI’s and monitoring approach.
- Structure and Resource Allocation for implementation.
Facilitate Workshops
- Vision and Mission development or refinement.
- Core Values and Behaviors development or refinement.
- Strategy Formulation including objective and goal setting.
- Strategy Implementation including cascading of objectives, goals, and accountability to departments and employees.
- Performance Measurement including monitoring and cascading.
Research and Analysis
- Market Scope and Viability including total available market (TAM).
- SWOT Analysis for competitors, industries and customers.
- Operational Viability including resource allocation.
- Buyer Analysis including problem mapping and messaging
Rick’s guidance led to rapid growth. He’s an invaluable mentor and guide that helped us navigate the complexities of growing multiple SaaS companies. His proactive approach and emphasis on staying ahead of challenges significantly reduced stress and drove productivity. Rick changed our approach to building and leading our company.
Start-up and Expansion
Start-up and rapid expansion challenge entrepreneurs ability to transform their product passion into customer acquisition and revenue. Rick’s services overcome common obstacles including:
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Funding to enable revenue growth while managing cash flow.
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Market Research and Competitive Intelligence to identify the target market and effectively analyze competition.
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Customer Acquisition to find, engage, win and onboard prospects.
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Customer Retention to serve, engage and ensue their loyalty.
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Strategic and Operational Planning to develop a clear and realistic plan for growth while anticipating potential obstacles.
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Marketing and Branding to develop effective marketing strategies and build a recognizable brand are essential yet challenging aspects of business growth.
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Team and Leadership finding and retaining skilled executives and employees, along with demonstrating strong leadership.
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Adapting to Change staying relevant by adapting to market trends and adopting new technologies to meet customer needs.
Lets work together to expedite first revenue and rapid expansion with precision and results!
Assessments
- Executives including technical knowledge and skills
- Strategic Intent including vision, mission, and core values.
- Plans including strategic, operations, and tactics.
- Forecasts including revenue, sales pipeline,
- Performance Measures including KPI’s and monitoring approach.
- Structure and Resource Allocation for implementation.
Research and Analysis
- Market Scope and Viability including total available market (TAM).
- SWOT Analysis for competitors, industries and customers.
- Operational Viability including resource allocation.
- Buyer Analysis including problem mapping and messaging
Facilitate Workshops
- Vision and Mission development or refinement.
- Core Values and Behaviors development or refinement.
- Strategy Formulation including objective and goal setting.
- Strategy Implementation including cascading of objectives, goals, and accountability to departments and employees.
- Performance Measurement including monitoring and cascading.
Audits
- Strategic Intent including vision, mission, and core values.
- Plans including strategic, operations, and tactics.
- Forecasts including revenue, sales pipeline,
- Performance Measures including KPI’s and monitoring approach.
- Structure and Resource Allocation for implementation.
I have never worked with an executive that had a better combination of business passion, process orientation, networking commitment, and entrepreneurial strength. Rick is an asset when developing next generation leaders and salespeople.
Sales Process Optimization
Scaling revenue requires a sales team to execute with precision from sales conversation-to-conversation and from sales person-to=person. If you’re struggling with low close ratios, low average revenue per sale, low customer satisfaction, and high sales cycle times when:
- Generating referrals and leads
- Acquiring new customers
- Retaining and up-selling customers
- Cross-selling
- Winning back past customers
- Getting partners to sell
Lets work together to expedite first revenue and rapid expansion with precision and results!
Audits
- Sales process maps
- Bottlenecks and improvements
- Work management technology i.e. sales and marketing automation, phone systems
- KPI’s and measures
Assessments
- Job candidates for sales management and/or sales positions
- Underperforming sales managers and/or salespeople
- High potential sales managers
Build/Update Sales Processes
- Stakeholder identification
- Flowchart current activities
- Identify bottlenecks
- Evaluate efficiency, effectiveness and predictability
- Brainstorm improvements
- Design improved processes
- Plan implementation
- Monitor implementation of improvements
Rick’s attention to detail and process development skills are second to none. His passion and high energy is contagious. Working with Rick is inspiring and extremely valuable. He has taken my career to the next level. Rick gets RESULTS!!
Sales Conversation Management
To close a sale salespeople are required to facilitate the exchange of information with buyers during sales conversations. If your salespeople are doing one or more of the following things during sales conversations then it’s time to engage Rick:
- Jumping from topic-to-topic and point-to-point.
- Over-explaining (talking too much) or under explain things.
- Forgetting what to say and not to say.
- Prematurely ending sales conversations to find answers.
- Over or understating company capabilities.
- Using jargon, buzzwords, and language that confuses buyers.
- Becoming confused when buyers change the subject.
- Paying limited attention to what buyers are saying.
- Frequently losing their place in conversations with buyers.
- Using sales presentations that confuse buyers.
Lets work together to equip your salespeople to execute consistently from sales conversation-to-conversation and salesperson-to-person!
Assessments
- Job Candidates for sales positions
- Underperforming salespeople
- Sales teams
Map Buyer Decision Making Process
- Situations
- Problems, Wants and Needs
- Impact of problems
- Need to quantify and ROI on solutions
- Common objections
Build/Update Sales Conversation Approach
- Opening
- Buyer needs investigation
- Demonstration of offerings/solutions
- Pricing and proposal
- Negotiation
- Objection handling
Collaborating with Rick is an absolute pleasure. He creates immediate value and challenges folks to think outside of the box in terms of their influence and performance. He brings an approach that is client specific, delivered based on his experience and served with the highest degree of integrity and value. This will be a long lasting relationship for sure.
Change Management
Internal challenges and improvements combine with external market challenges and opportunities to make change never ending. The principles of change management are straightforward but are elusive to implement for many executive teams.
Rick translated The Principles of Change Management into a framework for assessing, coaching, and training people how to expedite change with precision – – effectively, efficiently, and predictably.
- Resistance to Change due to fear of the unknown, loss of control, or skepticism about the benefits.
- Lack of Communication resulting in misunderstandings and confusion about the change process.
- Inadequate Training on change readiness and new processes, tools, or technologies.
- Insufficient Leadership including lack of direction and motivation.
- Poorly Defined Objectives including unclear or unrealistic goals as well as frustration and disillusionment among employees.
- Neglecting Organizational Culture including impact of change on values and norms that conflict with new initiatives.
- Employee Commitment including not getting employees involved in the process and addressing disengagement.
- Change Fatigue from poorly managed previous changes that overwhelm and make employees apathetic.
- Measurement Challenges including understanding the impact of change that leads to uncertainty success and continuous improvement.
Lets work together to expedite change management impact on revenue results!
Assessments
- Change Readiness evaluation of individuals and teams.
- Evaluate executives and managers knowledge and skills.
- Screen Job Candidates knowledge and skills for executive and manager level positions.
Knowledge and Skill Development
- Coach underperforming executives and managers
- Develop future executives and managers
- Train executives and managers
Facilitation and Workshops
- Change Strategy Development to define vision, goals and objectives, and accountability.
- Stakeholder Analysis to define their influence, interest and potential resistance.
- Leadership Alignment to create shared assumptions, actions, and accountability including cascading alignment.
I have never worked with an executive that had a better combination of business passion, process orientation, networking commitment, and entrepreneurial strength. Rick is an asset when developing next generation leaders and salespeople.
Leadership Development
Leadership skills are critical to building sustainable revenue growth. But do your executives and managers possess the strategic management knowledge and skills required to:
- Formulate vision, mission, plans, forecasts, and structure?
- Execute procedures, technology enablers, people management practices, and knowledge transfer to employees?
- Evaluate strategic, operational, and tactical data, analysis, reporting, and process improvement?
Rick translated The Principles of Strategic Management into a framework for assessing, coaching, and training people how to manage with precision – – effectively, efficiently, and predictably.
Lets work together to expedite leadership development impact on revenue results!
Strategic Management Assessments
- Evaluate executives and managers knowledge and skills
- Screen Job Candidates knowledge and skills for executive and manager level positions.
Knowledge and Skill Development
- Coach underperforming executives and managers
- Develop future executives and managers
- Train executives and managers
Facilitation and Workshops
- Team Development for companies and departments
- Succession Planning
- Career Development Planning