Services

We focus on implementing or fixing critical processes across strategy, sales and marketing, customer success, product planning, technology, legal, and operational finance.

Optimize

Business Alignment

In the normal course of business, companies sometimes go astray. Getting costs and revenue into alignment can be a wrenching experience.  We deliver an unbiased and workable plan that will get the company back on track.

  • A technology enabled services business was in the process of transitioning to a SaaS model following the acquisition of a product business. The Company was struggling with the transition as it attempted to integrate the two businesses while at the same time maintaining a certain amount of separation in order to properly track management earnout. It wasn’t working, so the board decided to seek outside help to effect the proper changes.

    MSP provided a full-time, interim CEO and other fractional CXO resources to facilitate the transition. The team completed a thorough Business Assessment process across multiple dimensions of the business. This resulted in broad changes across the business including value proposition, go-to-market, product strategy, distribution channels, organization structure and capital efficiency. Strategic clients were added, and the business returned to profitability. The business was ultimately acquired by a strategic.

Go-to-Market

The term ‘go-to-market’(GTM) is usually tied to a product launch or when a company is entering a new market. But a GTM strategy is also needed when a company has reached an inflection point of declining sales, marketing effectiveness, and efficiency. This is not the time to simply fire the Sales or Marketing leader only to roll out the same plan. Now is the time to reassess- the market, competition, product market fit, sales strategies, who you are selling to, the buyer’s journey, and key messages.

We gather the needed information and have the necessary conversations to identify the issues, then develop a plan to accelerate growth. Some, but not all, of the areas explored include:

  • Strategic Market Plan

    • Review and determine if TAM and SAM are still accurate and what the market trends are

    • Clarify your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

    • Identify the market segments where your ICP exists

    • Assess completeness of the persona list and accuracy of profiles

    • Create a persona value matrix and unique messaging

    • Develop plan to attract customers

    • Develop plan to engage customers

    • Develop demand engine for lead gen

    • Define lead qualification criteria and handoff (MQL/SQL)

    Competition and Product Fit

    • Determine the key features & services that differentiate and provide unique value to customer

    • Define who else sells a similar product to your ICP

    • Learn why you lose

    • Refresh your competitor analysis and determine how fragmented the market is

    • Assess you price competitiveness and policies

    • Refresh your positioning and value proposition

    • See Also: Product Opportunity Discovery

    Selling and Adoption Approach

    • Map the customer buying journey by segment

    • Define a sales process that maps to the customer buying journeys

    • Formulate short and long-term sales plans & revenue goals to meet objectives

    • Identify sales channels

    • Establish customer success plans to accelerate adoption

    • Develop a customer cultivation plan to generate referrals

    • See Also: Sales Organization, Sales Performance & Productivity

    EXAMPLE

    An established software company selling an enterprise level solution had never fully invested in sales and marketing. They had a world class solution that took a team to sell. And often they created a more complex selling process. They were the high-cost alternative but had documented ROI. They decided they wanted to expand sales and become a more market/customer driven organization.

    We started with an assessment that included the areas above. We created a questionnaire to dig into each area and understand the current situation and conducted many interviews with the executive team, sales, marketing, product development and product management, implementation services and support. We conducted workshops with cross functional teams to dig deeper into why they lost, why sales took so long, product fit, messaging, ICP and key personas. What developed was a comprehensive GTM plan that was focused on sales, marketing, and customer success. An action plan was created, and operation milestones developed to ensure to keep the team on track.

    EXAMPLE

    An established technology-enabled service provider specializing in data management transitioned from selling services to launching a SaaS Customer Data Platform.

    This shift demanded a complete overhaul of their go-to-market strategy. This transformation necessitated a new sales approach and execution plan, prompting our team to conduct extensive market analysis encompassing current trends, customer inclinations, competitor strategies, and potential risks. From this analysis, a promising opportunity emerged within the retail sector.

    Our sales strategy Identified two primary routes - direct engagement with mid-market retailers and collaboration with reseller partners. We restructured the organization to cater to both channels. The plan provided for all aspects of sales execution necessary to exploit the opportunity. In the inaugural year, efforts yielded multi-year contracts with prominent retailers and revenue-sharing collaborations with Market Service Providers.

  • • Design, build, and optimize sales and customer retention structures

    • Define operational models for targeting, selling, and supporting accounts

    • Establish roles, reporting structures, and leadership frameworks

    • Manage recruitment, onboarding, training, and territories effectively

    EXAMPLE

    A technology provider aimed to align its sales organization with a new strategic vision.

    Working with company leadership, we redesigned their sales structure, optimizing sales and customer retention within the revamped approach to targeting, selling, and supporting accounts. This involved defining new roles, implementing reporting structures, and establishing leadership frameworks. We initiated recruitment, refined onboarding procedures, and enhanced training programs alongside territory management strategies to expand market coverage and provide sound client engagement. This overhaul fortified the company's sales infrastructure, allowing it to adapt and scale within a new and developing market.

  • • Streamline sales processes for efficiency and higher conversion rates

    • Set team and individual sales goals and performance metrics

    • Develop and deploy performance-driven compensation structures in alignment with sales target accomplishment

    • Track Key Performance Indicators for accurate forecasting

    EXAMPLE

    An early-stage software company sought a sales compensation program balancing scalability, sales efficiency, margin protection, and team incentives.

    In-depth evaluations of business offerings, pricing structures, sales organization, and historical performance culminated in collaborative efforts with sales leadership to develop a customized quota-driven system. This inclusive model covered base salaries, commissions, bonuses, and sales accelerators across various sales roles, encompassing direct and indirect sellers, pre-sales engineers, and business development reps, addressing both new and renewal sales.

    Simultaneously, the introduction of a KPI-based reporting system optimized pipeline management and forecast accuracy, fostering proactive obstacle identification, and driving enhancements in sales performance.

Customer Success

Emerging technology companies too often find that while their sales are growing exponentially, customer churn is negating much of the progress. For SaaS businesses in particular, the combination of low switching costs and high customer expectations requires a concerted Roll-out-through-Renewal Customer Success discipline.

That means delivering things like a quick and painless onboarding experience, on-demand support and training services, coaching to let customers unlock more value from your technology, and experts to take customer experience to the next level. If you currently have mediocre NPS/C-SAT scores, or if your Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is not over 100%, you need to take a close look at your CS function. 

  • We leverage a customized approach that collaborates with your team to identify and prioritize the areas which will generate the greatest impact on customer satisfaction, churn, and revenue. Then we develop a plan to accelerate this function within your company and work with you to see it through. This can include tailored improvement plans for the Customer Success function, onboarding/consulting services, support, managed services, and educational programs.

    Some (but not all) of the areas we explore include:

    • Customer Journey map creation and improvements

    • Maturing the CS function – customer tiering, touchpoints, NPS, C-Sat/Health scores

    • Streamlining the Onboarding processes for quicker time-to-value

    • Automating Support functions

    • Ed Services curriculum review (for internal and/or external use)

    • Define a consistent Product feedback process for R&D

    • Expansion Sales – playbooks, product pricing improvement, potential partnerships

    • Detailed analysis on product usage data and telemetry

    • Review/recommendations for financial and operational metrics and goals

    • Review/recommendations for supporting systems

    • Review/recommendations for team structure, competencies, and compensation plans

  • EXAMPLE

    A leading supply chain software company had a very underfunded CS team and needed help accelerating that group’s level of operations.

    We conducted several workshops internally and with a select group of customers to determine what would be the most impactful improvements. The recommendations were prioritized in several improvement sprints and executed over a matter of weeks.

    Based on the input received, we did an overhaul of how our client interacted with customers after go-live. More robust touch points and success plans were put in place, and we revised the mechanisms and timing of NPS and C-Sat scores. We improved and redeployed more formalized playbooks so that the CS team could focus on additional use-cases and unlock more value for their clients.

    We also created a customer Tiering model which allowed the company to allocate resources to the right customers, given the attributes of the customer and where they were in the customer journey.

    In addition, we implemented recommendations on how best to gather and merge customer feedback and put a process in place whereby the CS team would consolidate this information and share it with the R&D team monthly.

    This all resulted in a much higher level of customer engagement with improved C-Sat and NPS while also improving our clients churn and expansion numbers.

    EXAMPLE

    A leading enterprise modeling platform was having trouble keeping and expanding its existing customer base and this led to reductions in ARR.

    After conducting several interviews and workshops it became clear that while there was work to be done to stem attrition, the real issue was lack of expansion options and lack of focus by the CS team.

    We went to work quickly on those options and recommended changes to pricing plans to create a stronger mechanism for expansion based upon increased usage within bands that let customers continue to approximate their annual costs.

    We also made suggestions on several partnerships for data services commonly used in conjunction with our client’s software and even brokered discussions which led to two reseller agreements. The result here was a richer customer experience and more expansion potential for our clients.

    At the end of our improvement sprints, the CS team was making a positive impact to ARR.

    EXAMPLE

    One client was having difficulty staying ahead of competitors’ functionality. They had a sound product management function, but they were losing market share as new entrants leapfrogged their product’s best features.

    We formed a cross-functional team of product/market specialists and customer success leaders to remedy the situation. First, we worked with their engineering team to understand what product usage data was available in its various forms. Having a multi-tenant SaaS platform, they had a wealth of information on customer clicks, but never bothered to harness this information. Analyzing the data yielded new insights, and we leveraged their customer advisory board and customer success leaders to look at the problem further.

    The results were impactful. New processes were put in place to create a better procedure for identifying new enhancements. At the same time, the customer success team learned which advanced features clients were or were not using so they could coach customers to take advantage of those features. Importantly, the link between use of the software and the value that generated for customers was firmly established- insight that was leveraged by the CS team which in turn drove improved NPS, C-SAT, and renewal/expansion metrics.

Product Management

In early-stage companies founders often lead product efforts. But with growth, diversifying customer needs, and increasing complexity, businesses must have product people who can put a 100% focus on enhancing product, supporting new use cases, and creating new products. But this is not just a matter of getting features out the door. It’s a matter of understanding then achieving your customer’s most important goals through your products. It requires continuous discovery, innovation, validation, and ruthless prioritization to achieve product-market fit that can monetized. Enter the dedicated Product Management team.

But product teams are often stifled by haphazard processes, insufficient customer intimacy, and skill gaps. Missed deadlines, missed opportunities, and underperforming products result. We identify and focus on critical issues to help product teams solve problems and lift performance.

  • Product teams often suffer from haphazard processes, role confusion, and knowledge gaps. Missed deadlines and underperforming products result.

    We evaluate your current product management approach, whether formal or informal, and institute best practices based upon our PM Maturity Model.

    • Detailed assessment of the Structure, Processes, and People involved in creating and enhancing your products to identify gaps

    • Specific recommendations for changes/improvements to close gaps leveraging best practices in Product Management

    • Can include follow-on coaching and change management to support implementation as needed

    EXAMPLE

    A SaaS + Services solution provider had struggled to complete its critical new platform under management of a nascent Product Team.

    We held in-depth discussions with Senior Leadership, Product, Engineering, Operations, Marketing/Sales, and Customer Service to identify issues from each perspective and to understand the disconnects from product planning through release. We reviewed documentation including business cases, roadmaps, processes, design documents, customer & market research, and other materials. Loop-back discussions with stakeholders further probed to refine our insights, while interviews of each Product team member completed the basis for assessment.

    The resulting report detailed key people and process issues that were preventing progress. It then redefined-product related roles, specified hiring needs, laid out an improved PM process, and aligned OKRs across stakeholders. When implemented these changes sped decision making and facilitated both the completion of the platform and its ongoing product enhancements.

  • Product teams too often work from incomplete or outdated assumptions about customer needs, competition, and market trends. Suboptimal customer satisfaction and missed opportunities for horizontal or vertical product growth result.

    We work with your team to conduct refreshed customer/ market research to test assumptions and fill understanding gaps, laying the foundation for improved product strategy and for achieving product-market fit. Outputs can include:

    • Fine-grain Personas leverage the Jobs-to-be-Done model to clarify all the customer and related roles that are crucial to product success. These personas codify underserved and unrecognized needs & opportunities to fully inform your team’s thinking around new or enhanced products.

    • Value-based Customer Journey Maps are an extension to personas, serving to identify the high value parts of persona journeys, key obstacles, and unrealized opportunities for improvement. This understanding allows resources and effort to be targeted at the highest impact moments in the customer journey.

    • Market and Competitor Trend Analysis provides refreshed insight into product growth and extension opportunities, and competitive positioning.

    EXAMPLE

    The customer roll-out process for an API platform provider in the healthcare space was creating bottlenecks and revenue delays. The company needed to smooth and speed the process.

    We conducted interviews with a range of customers and internal users to establish a set of personas defining the differing needs, responsibilities, task flows, and preferences of each. A customer portal was envisioned to allow for self-service and automation of internal tasks. Based upon this discovery work, system capabilities and workflows were defined for the portal which ultimately increased customer satisfaction and efficiency dramatically.

    EXAMPLE

    An international medical information provider wanted to better understand the needs for, and growth opportunity of their products in China before making expansion plans.

    We conducted research on the clinical information needs of healthcare providers, administrators, and regulators, completing over 80 detailed interviews and leveraging dozens of secondary sources to analyze trends and growth by segment. The resulting analysis defined customer needs by segment and type, product fit, competitive positioning, and market trends. From this analysis the company established an expansion and product plan for the market.

  • Sometimes product teams get stuck because they lack the skills or experience to navigate an issue.

    We deliver customized team workshops to problem-solve and build skills in managing your specific products. These typically include exercises that let the team make progress against a specific challenge they face. They leave with valuable insight on current issues and with new skills to meet future challenges.

    Typical topics include:

    • Achieving Product-Market Fit

    • Continuous Discovery- Finding and Validating Customer Problems

    • Managing Continuous Improvement Using Opportunity Solution Trees

    • Leading with the Vision Press Release

    • Managing Product Managers

    • Establishing Prioritization Methodologies

    • Developing Personas and Customer Journey Maps

    • Building an Outcome-based Roadmap

    EXAMPLE

    A leading retail commerce platform provider wanted to improve the effectiveness of its many product teams, but team leaders lacked experience in managing teams of Product Managers.

    We conducted a workshop with the team leaders covering a range of topics that focused on company-specific issues and key PM management pearls. The workshop included in-session exercises and take-away materials such as a PM assessment guide. The training enabled team leaders to be more versed in PM process and more effective and confident in the evaluation, empowerment, and coaching of their PMs.

    EXAMPLE

    A national financial services firm had instituted the Product Trio model for its product teams but had difficulty managing the plethora of enhancement ideas and requests generated by customers and the teams themselves.

    We conducted an Opportunity Solution Trees workshop to teach Trio leaders how to use the technique to link goals to identified opportunities, to prioritize them through validation, and thus focus solution generation & validation efforts. Deploying this technique, the Trios were able to better manage the deluge of ideas by taking a more rational approach to product decisions.

Technology Reengineering

We apply long experience and a long-term view to the assessment of technology and the engineering team, to transforming technology from obstacle to enabler, and to alignment of technology around changing market needs and business goals.

  • Having multi-disciplinary technical leaders that understand all the different types of companies that may be considered for acquisition, funding, or post-investment growth is costly and often involves finding a unicorn.

    We have technical leaders with decades of experience throughout the historical evolution of technical architectures and coding standards and methodologies. Calling upon our collective experience, we can evaluate not only the adherence to coding standards and the robustness of the software but also how the products can scale and integrate. We establish the cost to maintain existing code, add new features, and meet the market needs of an ever-changing marketplace. Our technical due diligence includes:

    • Completion of our vetted due diligence checklist allows investors or acquirors to see a company’s readiness to grow product and technology post-event. The checklist reviews the maturity of the engineering processes through existing diagrams, procedures, and documentation. We also examine product roadmaps, bug backlog, release cycles and automation. By providing investors and/or acquirors with a broader view of the extensibility and scalability of the technology, we can help decision makers model technology costs and the company’s ability to integrate or pivot as necessary.

    • Technology to Market mapping allows investors and/or acquirors to examine growth opportunities. The mapping couples our market and competition overview with technical and product flexibility and extensibility. We work to establish levels of effort and technology team structure necessary to meet the company’s growth needs or the potential integration with a parent product suite or service.

    • Team dynamics and personnel evaluation provides information to the investor and/or acquiror about the culture of the technology team, the strengths and weaknesses of the team, and the identification of key personnel. This analysis aids in the establishment of the post-event fiscal requirements and use of proceeds. Through the identification of key personnel, we offer recommendations regarding retention programs and incentives. We also provide alternative staffing solutions or team structures depending on what we find during the diligence process.

    EXAMPLE

    The venture capital firm wished to invest in a company working in the video advertising market catering to large restaurant chains and physician networks. They had established a basic term-sheet and were interested in understanding if the product and technology could support a 5X growth in sales over the next 3 years.

    We started by asking the video company to provide both a sales and a technical demonstration so we could understand how the company positions their solution and how they describe their technology. After the demonstrations we provided an initial set of information requests (i.e. technical diagrams, organizational charts, product roadmap, etc.). Using the provided information, we scheduled four “deep dives” with key personnel to understand the fundamentals of the solution, the technical infrastructure, and the team. Our report to the VC firm identified 3 key areas that needed attention and could impact the pricing of the funding round.

    • The need for the team to invest in a more robust and reliable software release process to increase existing customer satisfaction.

    • Removal of proprietary caching technology which ultimately would lessen the value of their solution to a longer-term exit. We also established a rough level of effort for this task using either existing staff or staff augmentation.

    • The potential loss of key software architects and engineers in the next year due to their wishing to retire or move to different geographic areas.

    Upon completion of our due diligence, we stayed on for a short 2-month engagement to help the company establish a technology plan for the caching solution and new product and engineering team structure.

  • Many technology teams are driven by two competing interests, the opportunity offered by new technology and coding methods and the need to refine and fix existing revenue generating software platforms.

    We have navigated these difficult conflicting interests by first thoroughly examining the existing technical architecture and infrastructure. We then dissect the product roadmap, market needs, and engineering backlog. Using the information gathered we establish a technology migration path to achieve technological advancement while protecting existing revenue. These migration paths can include:

    • Establishment of parallel technology tracks allows organizations to work on re-platforming while continuing to sell and modify the existing product. A small break-out team of existing engineers or the addition of a small, outsourced team are tasked with creating the new architecture and code. This allows existing product and code to be maintained and extended with the remaining engineers.

    • Modular upgrades involve the deep examination of existing functional areas of the existing code and re-architecting small modules in a way that allows new code to integrate seamlessly with the legacy architecture. Establishing a service architecture allows the old and new code to coexist. Each functional area is re-architected piecemeal until the entire code base has been upgraded.

    • Lift and Shift involves taking all the existing code and transferring it to auto-scaling technologies and cloud infrastructure. No fundamental changes are made to the code except that which is necessary to get the code to run on container-based environments. This allows scalability and the shift away from on premise hardware to cloud resources.

    EXAMPLE

    The customer had colocation-based hardware and a code base with portions that were 6 – 8 years old. While the software was running for a significant customer base, it often had scalability issues and release timelines were long due to accumulated technical debt.

    We conducted a thorough review of the product roadmap, interviewed customers, and reviewed the existing architecture. Most immediately, prospects and competitive pressures were driving the need for a new data-driven smart scheduling module. However, the estimate for this feature was 15 months due to its impact on the existing technical infrastructure. We determined that the true goal should be to re-platform the existing product using a modular upgrade. The new smart scheduling module would thus interface with an extended data model and be written as a stand-alone service called from the existing code. This methodology would allow the team to start to establish a new architecture, deliver the new scheduling module in 9 months, and create a go forward plan for the eventual rewrite of their product.

  • With ever changing customer and market requirements, companies often wonder if their product technology is agile enough to pivot to new customer needs or new markets. The question is not IF they can service new customers and markets but how much and how long would it take to accomplish this pivot.

    We have technologists who can “connect the dots” between technical solutions built for a specific purpose/market and the growing needs of customers. Our executives have worked across over 25 different vertical markets. We understand that technology is simply the enabler of a market solution and that having the ability to ride the market adoption curve will lead to corporate value. We can outline the connections between future market potential and how to create a technical pivot-point to grow with the market without incurring technical debt. We accomplish this through:

    • Mapping market direction allows companies to broaden their knowledge about possible movements in their market and how their existing technologies can or cannot continue to meet expanding market needs. Our team starts with a broad review of the company’s products and technologies. We then conduct a review of materials from market analysts, customer interviews, and discussions with experts. The market analysis results in a technology extensibility assessment that maps possible required technology modifications to meet emerging market needs.

    • Technology to Market mapping allows executives to examine near-term growth opportunities. The mapping couples our market and competition overview with technical and product flexibility and extensibility. We work to establish the levels of effort necessary to meet the needs of an adjacent market or expand the company’s existing customer base.

    EXAMPLE

    A mid-sized software company focused on data collection and analysis from machine tooling devices wished to know how to expand their market share.

    We conducted a thorough examination of the company’s software and the technical architecture. In parallel with the technical examination, we investigated other software products that are often installed at similar sized and larger machine shops. We identified that large machine shops typically had Quality Control (QC) software. We examined the data requirements and methodologies used to measure QC for the three QC software packages that had the largest market share. The result was a technology assessment and product roadmap that expanded the API structure of their existing product that allowed interfacing the machine data with the QC software. Data analytics allowed the company’s software to become a recommendation engine for machine operators to know when to change machine parameters and tools to minimize out of tolerance completed parts. The resulting software changes allowed the company to expand their market into larger machine shops and become a referral partner of two of the three QC software companies. The end result was a 35% increase in sales in the first year following the API release and a 42% increase in sales the second year.

    here

Other Services

Contact us

Your message sent directly to Managing Partner Ken Marshall