Revenue Architects - Consulting Agency

I thought it would be interesting to journal our way through an engagement with one of our clients. There will be a series of posts sharing the "Case Study" title that will hopefully tell a story about building a revenue architecture that really works.

Revenue Architects was retained by a marketing agency with a focus on digital content that drives SEO. The company is unique in its value offerings. With their permission, we are tracking our approach and progress along the way.  The elements of the assignment, approach and outcomes will come together a bit later in a more comprehensive case study.

Who is our client?

The client is an emerging company (under $5M) with terrific strength in digital content marketing. They are in a strong position for accelerated growth with today’s focus on search visibility, page views and listing positions.

What are we doing for them?

We are working through our Revenue Architecture engagement process (depicted below).  In the course of our work, we are performing a diagnostic of five dimensions of an effective revenue engine:

• Market Strategy
• Lead-to-close Process
  • Structure and Organization
  • Content and Process
  • People and Skills
  • Technology and Data
• Incentives and Metrics
• Customer Delivery

We began by building a scorecard for current performance across over 200 factors and elements (within the five-dimensions) that we know make up a successful revenue engine. Coming out of this review, we will create a “heat map” that depicts more clearly where we see gaps and opportunities for revenue acceleration and performance.  This is a collaborative process. We plan to launch the Revenue Grader soon to help businesses conduct this self-assessment. This will be a tool located at the URL revenuegrader.com and will help sales and marketing leaders self assess the revenue engine.

As we go through the review, we are looking at key levers that impact revenue, including:

• Crafting the right go-to-market strategy
• Clarifying product and service offerings
• Retention and expansion of existing clients
• Generating awareness that drives leads
• Pricing for maximum competitive value
• Capturing inbound opportunities
• Nurturing pipeline opportunities
• Selling persuasively to increase win rates
• Motivating sales and retaining sales leaders

The following are the steps in our engagement:

What are some of our early findings?

Like most organizations, this company is a work in progress. They have created a terrific and differentiated service process, including some unique technology that helps score content and orient competitive content scoring strategies. They have an ambition - supported by market opportunity - to double sales within 18 months.

 Some of our early hypotheses and opportunities we have identified include:

• We can enhance our client account management process to ensure greater long term revenue from our existing client base.
• If we segment the target marketplace and organize the sales teams around those audiences, we can improve our client response hit rates and conversions.
• We can better align sales goals, targets and metrics to drive motivated behavior.
• We can build a culture for thoughtful, planned and incremental enhancements.
• A partner approach and channel strategy can enhance revenue opportunities.
• We can walk-the-talk with more focus on effective content marketing to drive the nurture process.
• A sales operating model, with forecasting rules and pipeline processes should be standardized and adopted consistently across the company.
• Tactical improvements – emails, call lists, etc. will improve conversion rates from stage to stage.
• We need a revenue dashboard to help us align our management activities to our target outcomes.

Next week we will work on a refined version of a "Delivery Playbook" and a "Business Development Playbook" These two assets will help the company define their selling messages and standardize how they operate on a day-to-day bases - it will also help them "onboard" new members of the team.

More updates later!

Speaking with NAPFA at the Bentley University Campus

John Stone and Kristen Luke (via Skype from San Diego!) spent the morning with a group of financial advisors as part of their monthly program.

We discussed the landscape of new marketing including the key elements and concepts that drive the adoption on digital marketing strategies. We also took a tour of the "tools of the trade" and discussed ways that advisors are using social media today. Finally we discussed the call to action - how to get started with social media and new marketing.  Our new program: Digital Marketing for Financial Advisors is launching this Spring and offers advisors an opportunity for hands on workshops to build their web presence - social media, content development and website strategy.