Tag Archive: revenue

  1. A Deeper Dive Into Core Catalysts Growth Services

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    At Core Catalysts, as part of our broad commitment to value creation, one of our key focus areas is helping client companies accelerate profitable revenue growth and control expenses. These efforts fall under the banner of what we call our suite of “Growth Services” offerings.

    In accelerating growth, we consider strategic growth options such as entering new markets, expanding geographically, and adding new products and services, as well as assessments of current customers and internal capabilities.

    We also help strengthen company execution by enhancing commercial effectiveness, improving operations, building channel performance, optimizing pricing, and strengthening sales and marketing efforts.

    In addition, we offer merger and acquisition (M&A) transaction support, including commercial and go-to-market due diligence, one-hundred-day plans, post-merger integration support, and exit planning.

    We are successful in delivering material, rapid, and cost-effective results for our clients because of our unique blend of consulting and line-management experience: our people truly set us apart.

    • We bring seasoned teams with deep subject matter expertise and hands-on industry backgrounds at an executive level, as well as top consulting firm experience.
    • We use proven methodologies that are fact based and data driven to deliver practical and pragmatic revenue growth and expense control plans that will make meaningful differences to both top-line and bottom-line performance.
    • We have a reputation for rolling up our sleeves and delivering tangible results, understanding a company’s core competencies, what they need to do well, and how this should be done in order to achieve the desired results.

    Most of our senior leaders come from large strategy consulting firms, but they have also led businesses.

    These combined experiences yield a natural focus on strategic issues in complex markets, with a highly pragmatic approach and a focus on implementation.

    We work with management teams to analyze their revenue and expense structures, identify opportunities for improvement, and then work side by side with them to implement action plans that drive incremental revenues and enhance the margins associated with those revenues.

    If you would like to find out more about our Growth Services offerings and how we might help your company grow more, and be “fit” for that growth, please reach out to us today!

    Mark Jacobs, Client Service and Delivery

  2. Revenue Creation Health Check

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    Creating a Roadmap to Sustainable Growth:

    Revenue is the undisputed lifeblood of a company, yet its creation often goes unexamined. While it’s common for companies to perform comprehensive financial audits and operational, risk, and IT assessments, it’s rare for companies to assess their revenue creation activities in the same way. In reality, most companies manage their revenue generating efforts from a siloed, tactical perspective, which frequently results in underperformance. The Revenue Creation Health Check (RCHC) is designed to combat this, by providing a holistic evaluation of an organization’s revenue generating activities that can be used to identify opportunities for significant improvement.

    What is a Revenue Creation Health Check?

    A revenue creation health check is a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of an organization’s revenue-generating strategies, tactics, processes and systems across sales, marketing, and customer service. The goal is to leverage both holistic internal and external insights to identify areas for improvement, enhance revenue production, and drive sustainable growth. The four key components of an effective RCHC include:

    1. Evaluation of Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

    Evaluating revenue creation KPIs can be eye-opening in many different ways. They tell an undeniable story about the organization’s bottom-line performance. Plus, what is and isn’t being tracked can provide strong evidence of the organization’s operational maturity and what it holds most important. While the KPIs an organization chooses to track may vary with the specifics of their business and industry, standard best practice KPIs typically include:

    • Cost of acquiring a new customer.
    • Demand generation productivity.
    • Web traffic and engagement.
    • Conversion rates across all channels.
    • Pipeline velocity across all channels.
    • Customer lifetime value.
    • Total revenue and per channel

    2. Strategy and Tactics Validation

    KPIs provide evidence as to the effectiveness of an organization’s revenue generating activities, but in and of themselves, do not validate the efficacy of its strategies and tactics nor the quality of execution. To accomplish this requires a series of interviews and observations across sales, marketing, and customer service. The goal is to validate if the organization’s strategies and tactics are being executed as designed, are effective and to determine what if any gaps need to be addressed to improve performance. Key questions to be answered include:

    • Are the organization’s goals, strategies, and tactics well understood, down to the front-line employees?
    • Is the company’s positioning and messaging aligned across all customer facing teams?
    • How do customers view the company’s value proposition and customer experience?
    • Are demand generation and sales activities well-coordinated and aligned?
    • Is there an effective process in place to measure performance and adjust appropriately?

    3. Revenue Operations and Execution

    Revenue operations and execution are where the rubber meets the road. It’s well understood that an organization’s strategy is only as good as its ability to execute it. Still, it’s not uncommon for operational processes and systems to hinder performance. The goal here is to ensure that the processes and systems necessary for sales, marketing, and customer service to operate efficiently and effectively are in place and are integrated across all three groups. Key questions to be answered include:

    • Does the organization’s CRM provide a 360° view of customer information, interactions and behaviors and promote timely and effective decision making?
    • Are sales, marketing and customer service required to use multiple systems and manual processes to serve customers?
    • Is the process to quote, close, and fulfill business efficient and transparent?
    • Do customers complain about a lack of data and information integration across various touchpoints?
    • How does the organization engage customers post-sale to encourage repeat business and referrals?
    • Are sales, marketing, and customer service performance metrics and compensation aligned and achievable?

    4. Revenue Creation Improvement Roadmap

    RCHCs often uncover a wealth of new insights, and thus it can be daunting to convert them into an actionable plan for improvement. It’s important to first consider how what you’ve learned has been impacting your customers and success. Then, you can quantify the benefits of the recommended improvements. Armed with these conclusions, the estimated ROI associated with each improvement and the expected effort to implement them will provide you with all the information necessary to prioritize your efforts.

    The biggest challenge is always in the execution. You’re headed for disappointment if you expect your sales, marketing, and customer service leaders to execute your Revenue Creation Improvement Roadmap without oversight and project rigor. Cross-functional initiatives always require disciplined program management and oversight to be successful, and to maintain sustainable results.

    An effective Revenue Creation Improvement Roadmap should include:

    • An Executive Summary of the health check’s findings and recommendations.
    • A list of recommended improvements prioritized based on anticipated level of positive impact, estimated ROI, and the expected level of effort to implement.
    • A project plan, complete with scope, timelines, resourcing, milestones, and risk management.
    • Status reporting that measures progress and creates accountability across all key stakeholders.

    Summary

    Shifting from a siloed to a holistic perspective on revenue creation yields substantial benefits. The RCHC can be the catalyst for enabling tighter alignment and integration across your revenue generating functions, while uncovering tangible opportunities for improved revenue production.

    We help clients maximize revenue via improved sales, marketing and operational performance, alignment, and integration.

    If you’re ready to explore growth opportunities for your business, let’s connect and brainstorm together.

  3. Overspending: How to Minimize Costs

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    Even during the best of times, reducing costs and increasing revenue are the best ways to keep your business healthy.

    Right now, identifying and reducing areas of excess spending is a critical priority. Here are a few areas that we frequently see overspending:

    Internet and Telecommunications

    Even before the increases in video-conferencing, communication and accessibility were critical to just about every business.

    However, in our experience, many businesses are overspending on Internet and Telecommunications. We frequently see contracts that have not been reviewed for many years contain hidden fees and commit organizations to far more services than they truly need. This can result in hundreds, or even thousands of dollars per month in unnecessary spending.

    Data Storage and Management

    Most modern businesses need some way to securely store and manage data, whether it is customer information or industry developments. We have worked with many clients to migrate to and get the most from “Cloud” services such as Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure.

    Recently, we’ve seen that many of our newer clients are overspending and/or overpaying for these services. They have often signed up for more services or features than they actually use or need, they have not reviewed usage and utilization in a long time, and they have not made sure they are on the right pricing plan. This means that they are paying for things they never use, or paying too much for basic services.

    Software

    There are thousands of companies with millions of software products targeted at business owners. These software products can help your business perform new functions, operate more efficiently, and increase profitability.

    But each new software package you add to your suite of business tools is going to cost you a monthly subscription fee. If you are not careful, you will end up with far too many products that aren’t helping your business, costing you thousands of dollars per month.

    Marketing and Advertising

    Marketing and advertising can be expensive, but they are also important investments that shouldn’t be cut without analysis and forethought.

    Your goal should be spending money on marketing and advertising in the most efficient way, resulting in the least possible amount of waste. To do this, you need a solid high-level marketing strategy in place, a reliable marketing and advertising partner, and the ability to focus your spending and attention on the tactics most likely to pay off.

    Office Expenses

    Even before the pandemic, too many businesses were paying large amounts of money for a traditional office space that they weren’t making the most use of, and more money on top for additional products and services to keep the office functional.

    The increase in working-from-home has many companies asking themselves, “Do we really need all this office space? Can people work from home instead? Can we downsize to a smaller or less expensive office?” If the answer to any of these questions is yes, the potential savings could be significant.

    Why Do Businesses Overspend?

    If you want to correct your overspending in these categories, you need to narrow down the reason for your overspending. These are the most common culprits:

    Lack of initial planning

    Some businesses either don’t take the time to plan a budget or don’t have an idea of what each category should be costing them, so they’re likely to agree to any cost quoted by a vendor.

    Bad vendor selection

    Most vendors are scrupulous, offering fair prices and good services, but others are questionable. Choosing an unreliable, overly expensive, or outright manipulative vendor can hurt you.

    Failing to negotiate

    Almost everything in business is negotiable, even contracts for what seem like standard service packages. Spend more time negotiating with your vendors and other business partners to get a better deal.

    No analytics or auditing

    Many businesses continue to overspend because they have no system to analyze expenditures that allows them to identify or address instances of overspending.

    How we can help

    We have a proven methodology to help clients identify overspending and deliver efficiency savings and could help you in your planning, vendor selection, vendor negotiations, and ongoing expense analytics. If this might be of interest to you, please give us a call!

    Mark Jacobs, Client Service & Delivery