Sitting near the bottom of the Enterprise Hosting category and facing much larger competitors with greater data center assets such as IBM, Rackspace, HP and others, NTTA was looking for a new approach to market their services to satisfy a new corporate mandate to grow revenue by 20% annually. After researching the market and interviewing customers it was discovered that a major challenge is having enough of a flexible, adaptive and proactive IT technology infrastructure and support capability to accommodate both expected and unexpected growth of the business.  Since no other major competitor was directly speaking to this need in the market and segmenting sales accordingly, I led the development of a new positioning strategy, “from start > growth” to redefine the company’s value proposition, to segment towards the earlier stage companies in the market where it could more effectively compete, and to more clearly define the relationship objective it sought to provide the market. I further developed a new product framework (a periodic table of IT hosting services) to organize and align their multitude of IT services to this new strategy and to arm inside and outside sales with a customizable model to easily provide individual solution roadmaps to prospects to phase in outsourced management of their IT infrastructures.  I Accomplished this repositioning, along with redesign and development of the entire product marketing infrastructure within 4 months.

Seeing increased competition from nontraditional players in network outsourcing in Federal government markets where it was a long entrenched leader, MCI was looking for a way to further differentiate its offerings in a largely commoditized and increasingly competitive market. After determining cost-cutting and revenue-expanding services MCI could add to their core offerings, I identified a strong opportunity for on-demand networking services and remote automated network support models that offered both unique capabilities and further cost reductions for the market.  To galvanize the value of these ideas, I developed graphical use case scenarios to use by MCI sales teams to solicit direct feedback from the market. I further defined how these services would be delivered and managed under MCI’s service level model and I developed specific business cases to drive internal justification of these new offering opportunities with MCI’s Board of Directors just before the Verizon acquisition.

With only a single location, limited presence in the market, and a majority of new customers originating from state unemployment retraining assistance programs, Network Learning Institute needed a way to reach and compel the local IT/network training market in a new way.  With a richer curriculum of technical content and offering more hands-on, in-lab learning than the competition; I developed a new marketing strategy around the concept that “Real pros know training doesn’t cost IT pays.” This strategy helped clarify Network Learning Institute’s deeper technical training value and to appeal to more technically savvy segments that saw larger, more generic competitors primarily as entry-level training options.  To implement this strategy in the market I designed and implemented a new web presence, product collateral, inside sales scripts, direct email and radio advertisements, and created a direct sales training offering aimed at corporate clients.

As a replacement CEO of Router Solutions I led the transition of the company’s business model from a low-end tool offering aimed at network engineers to an enterprise software platform for automating complex, human-intensive network management operations. In addition to leading initial sales efforts and developing the marketing foundation (in an extremely crowded and overlapping network management technology marketplace) I was able to develop key R&D partnerships and initial sales engagements with EDS, SBC, AT&T, Verizon, and AOL which led to the company receiving $650,000 in early-stage capital from Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology and a local early-stage venture fund in the DC market.

With a hardened and unique 12 step methodology for attaining remarkable life balance, hundreds of customer testimonials ranging from CEOs of Fortune 100 companies to housewives, and a cadre of independent certified coaches; the company was operating at a quarter-to-quarter loss and had no plan to return to cash positive profitability.  Saddled with debt and facing the real likelihood of bankruptcy, I stepped in as the interim CEO to correct short-term cash flow, to develop a business plan and broader marketing strategy to maximize the value of the company’s assets, and to create a more scalable and passive economic incentive for independent coaches to share in and help drive the profitability of the business.

Offering a variety of private label web-based customer service and service management systems to early adopter cable service providers like Comcast and Time Warner Cable, TNI Solutions was ready to expand and scale their sales model to the broader market.  To support a new sales organization coming onboard, I developed a new web presence to position the company in the market and to organize its numerous offerings into a logical framework to show the value of individual components and how collectively they enable subscriber lifecycle management functions for providers at lower cost than if developed internally.

As a freelance marketing consultant, I redesigned and redeveloped the company’s product collateral to support its expansion into commercial markets.

With no outside funding and a narrowly focused value proposition, this provider of automated network documentation utilities needed a simple way to attract the small niche market it was targeting and to build a network of up sell prospects it could approach later with more advanced offerings.  After branding the company and the Net|Depict product, I developed the simple positioning of “Say it with Visio” to capture succinctly the essence of the product’s core value proposition.  That, along with the design and development of their website to provide network engineers with a simple way to evaluate the product (limited feature download) and cross promotion with other network documentation sites, led to a steady stream of dozens of new registrants per week.

With a newly secured license for a proprietary hyrdoseeding technology dating back before World War II, EnviroTek was looking to determine the right commercialization strategy for introducing this revolutionary green product into numerous segments of the agricultural world. In addition to building a business model that prioritized which markets to introduce it to based on cost, market size, and expected profitability, I developed an overall branding platform to position the company as an economically viable green agriculture provider for the purposes of raising outside capital, establishing a presence in targeted markets, and linking together the different product variations under a similar framework.  On the strength of my business model, the company was able to raise $1M in financing to develop its initial production facilities.

As the founder of this online reverse auction site for automotive repair and maintenance services, I managed everything from branding the concept, developing the business plan to raise $900,000 in early stage capital, closing partnership and provider deals, and designing and executing low-cost, viral marketing and PR campaigns to build awareness and a user base for the site.

In addition to the examples above, I have developed market positioning and branding strategies for the following companies, which are at various stages of development and growth: