As you can see from the date of the post before this one, I’ve been somewhat “pre-occupied”.  I thought I’d provide an update on where I’ve been, and what I’ve been doing.

In early 2015, I met the business owner of an established $25 million manufacturing company. I had been invited to spend time with their marketing team to assess their strategy, approach and effectiveness. That initial conversation led to a coaching engagement, and then eventually to full time employment as the Chief Sales and Marketing Executive.  Now mind you, I had said for years, “I’ll never work for a company…I like being independent” (The lesson here is “never say never”). But the opportunity and challenge to build a marketing and sales “machine” were intriguing enough to have me go against that stance, and join his company.  

What made this opportunity so alluring was that I was being given a platform to build a marketing and sales framework from the ground up. Branding. Demand generation. Content marketing. Integrating marketing and sales. CRM. Marketing automation. There was an outright need for all of it, and a chance to build it all from the bottom up. In addition, I was given the opportunity to build a team — to invest in those who were currently in sales and marketing roles, and to add “A” players to the staff.  

So, I got to work, and over the last 14 months, we have…

• Assessed, realigned and hired new team members to ensure that we had “the right people in the right seats on the bus”
• Created personnel profiles for ideal marketing and sales positions
• Conducted a market analysis to see where our biggest opportunities lie
• Conducted branding research to determine how our company is perceived both internally and externally
• Based on the research, developed a persona driven content marketing plan
• Launched a company wide strategic rebranding program
• Implemented a lead-to-sale lead management process, supported by integrated marketing automation and CRM platforms
• Launched both outbound and inbound demand generation programs
• Hired industry specific sales representatives that matched the aforementioned profiles
• Developed a metrics framework for assessing effectiveness

I’m proud of the amount of work we’ve accomplished in just a little over a year. I’m even more proud of the results we’ve achieved, perhaps summed up by this one metric: We grew the new business sales pipeline by 10x in the last 12 months!

As rewarding as this engagement has been, it’s time to move back to my coaching practice. I’ve missed working with the variety of leaders and companies with which I worked before, and I’m looking forward to using both my experiences and expertise to help them get to where they want to be. In case you’re wondering, I’ll continue working with the manufacturing company. My role will be to provide strategy, leadership and oversight for marketing.

So, “I’m back”.  Looking forward to seeing what the next season holds!