In more than four decades combined experience building and strengthening successful companies, we’ve helped solve some tough problems:

• Maintain performance in down markets (building products)
• Compete effectively against larger, richer, more established competitors (packaged goods)
• Turn promising ideas into successful new products (investment services)
• Expand into new categories (software)
• Insulate themselves from commodity pressures (technology hardware)
• Align disparate parts of their organizations behind a single, clear strategy (information services)

In each case, executives we’ve worked with found that critical talent they needed to tackle these problems came from outside their company. As one Marketing SVP told us, “We were a $5 billion company with below-average marketing and a brand that just wasn’t cutting it. Looking back, we were too close to the situation - everyone had a strong opinion, but none of us could see the answer. You gave us the objective perspective and the true picture we needed to solve our problem.”

Here are the kinds of things executives tell us most often about why they’re looking outside their companies for solutions they can’t find within – the kinds of problems that benefit most from external expertise:

1. “I don’t know what my problem actually is.” This can be tough for executives to admit: You know something’s not working, but can’t figure out exactly what or why. The longer it goes on, the more disruptive it gets. One client described this situation as his “ice cream headache.” If you can’t name a problem, you can’t solve it. This is why leaders and their teams ask for help to get their arms around a complex problem, pull it apart and analyze it, as a first step in finding a solution.
2. “I don’t know what compelling ideas to say ‘NO’ to.” Every CEO should be able to answer this question: What two or three attractive directions should we not pursue? Effective strategy is about elimination, deciding what not to do, concentrating resources and building unity of purpose. It begins by selecting a core strategic objective. What’s yours? Growth…profit…share? If your answer is “All of the above” you’re kidding yourself. An outside source of light will help expose the implications of choosing one objective over another, and help leaders pare away the plausibles in order to focus on the potentially ideal.
3. “I don’t know how to get on top of market changes.” Stuff happens. Conditions change. Globalism, technology and category morphing redefine competition. (Clients frequently tell us the challengers they fear most are the ones outside their conventional category frameworks.) Successful companies adapt to sea changes in the market. Sometimes, they initiate them. Experts can help you define and defend your position from competitors, current and potential—then re-imagine and re-tool your own offering for profitable competition in new areas—and make change your ally instead of your enemy.
4. “I don’t know how to maximize top-line revenue.” Marketing is, essentially, the process of creating a preference customers will pay more for. Sometimes this is a function of marketing communications. Most often, it’s about marketing strategy. Good consultants help leaders build plans that orchestrate and optimize all the marketing levers, to create preference and command premiums, even in commodity-driven categories. (There are no commodity products. There are only commodity perceptions.)
5. “I don’t know how to get my organization all headed in the same direction.” A compelling vision and clear objectives don’t ensure that the parts of your company all line up. Misalignment happens – a lot – in businesses grown through acquisition, or in companies organized by business unit. Writing in HBR, David J. Collis compares misalignment to, “10,000 iron filings, each one representing an employee….Drop them onto a piece of paper, they’ll be pointing in every direction — a big mess…But pass a magnet over those filings, what happens? They line up. Similarly, a well-understood strategy aligns behavior within the business.” Outside experts can combine an objective perspective with a broad range of applicable analogies. Their analyses and recommendations aren’t tainted by turf battles or organizational politics.
6. “I don’t know how to turn my strategy into action.” Plans are important, but it’s what a company does that defines its chances for success. We help leaders work through the implications of their strategy and agree on a framework for setting tactical priorities, eliminating activities that aren’t on strategy and establishing an effective way to measure progress.

These six problems reflect the frank and open-ended conversations we have with business leaders who want to move their company closer to success. These executives understand how external perspective and outside expertise can be the catalysts that lead to breakthrough ideas.

Bringing the answers to action is what we do, every day. Give us a call and let’s start the conversation.

A multi-billion-dollar technology leader faced the core challenge of growing sales and building consumer preference in a mature market and commoditized category. After decentralizing worldwide operations and giving business units autonomy, the company looked forward to new levels of innovation and growth. Instead, they found their overarching corporate brand eroding, resulting in share declines, indifferent customers and a decreasing selling price across all channels. The company was thrashing, trying to build a coherent corporate brand strategy while spending heavily on a small army of ad agencies, consultants and design firms to treat the symptoms of a deeper problem.

Solution

A comprehensive, unifying brand architecture that delivered a better, stronger grouping of the company’s brand assets. A carefully crafted, “negotiated settlement” that preserved business unit autonomy while leveraging corporate brand assets for maximum impact.

• Creation of proprietary case studies to illustrate and stress-test plausible strategic options
• Completion of in-depth stakeholder interviews that revealed and validated trouble spots
• Qualitative analysis of industry best practices (both inside and outside the company’s industry) that enabled company executives to see past industry conventions and adopt industry best practices
• A comprehensive stakeholder strategy to guide internal discussion and build agreement for ultimate brand architecture
• A clear, compelling presentation to gain approval at business unit, executive, and board levels.

Result

The Company’s executive board adopted a detailed, far-reaching brand architecture, bringing brand clarity and aligning the interests of corporate and business unit stakeholders. These guidelines, modeled on industry best practices but tailored to accommodate the client’s unique circumstances, provided a strategic roadmap for the company to optimize its corporate and business unit brand assets. The architecture emerged as a valuable marketing touchstone for the company, guiding all facets of packaging, merchandising and global product marketing. As one of the Company’s seasoned marketing leaders said, “We now have a clear brand strategy—it’s no longer just my opinion vs. your opinion. We have clear, agreed-upon principles to inform and drive all aspects of our marketing.”

A financial services start-up had developed a powerful and proprietary technology for online investment, but struggled to convert this asset into a compelling product offering. The value proposition was self-limiting, the benefit story overly complex. Business was stagnant. Venture investors were growing restless. The company drifted from one marketing strategy to another while burning through the remains of its early-stage funding.

Solution

A dramatic re-imagining and reinvention of the business proposition, effectively creating a new segment in the online investor category.

• Product reformulation based on dollar-based fractional investment
• Redefinition of the target audience from tech-savvy day-traders to the broader segment of novice investors looking to invest safely and easily.
• A new value proposition aligning product and audience, leveraging emotional and process and well as rational benefits.
• Brand parameters based on thought leadership and innovation.
• Naming strategy and messaging architecture synched to telegraph this new offering, gain traction, generate buzz and capture share quickly.

Results

The company launched successfully and grew rapidly, bolstering venture investor confidence and insuring continued funding. Unique, defensible market position and a loyal subscription base of more than 2.1MM. Revenue growth in excess of 850% over past five years leading to Company’s sale to to #3 financial services firm in 2007.

A leading sports entertainment company identified a potential opportunity to extend its assets and brand into the interactive channel, but wrestled with the implication this move would have on current product design, delivery and user experience. Executives were torn between the potential upside of substantial organic growth and the potential disaster of cannibalizing existing distribution lines and jeopardizing hard-won brand equities.

Solution

A detailed strategy for extending the network’s content assets to new distribution channels and new customer segments.

• A detailed audience needs assessment and thorough brand audit.
• A strategic plan based on these findings for developing and launching a new business division
• A financial model outlining new revenue streams and blueprint for monetizing content assets

Results

The company successfully launched the new business and became the preeminent provider of online sports content, commentary and analysis. Incremental sales rocketed to more than $1b within 5 years and paved the way for eventual acquisition by one of the world’s largest media conglomerates.