Think Globally, Act Locally
Driving Results with Knowledge Based Creativity
Executive Summary. Publisher and manufacturer of specialty educational books to gain and improve literacy in a fun format needed to develop higher sales and profitability. Business Support Plan focused on strategic marketing and high-impact low-cost sales efforts to increase sales and smoothen out cashflow cycles. Sales increased 50% during first year of implementation.
Background. Publisher and manufacturer of specialty educational books, a 5-year-old company, was having a tough time increasing sales. The company was running at break even with a staff of 2 full-time employees and independent sales reps. Company needed to expand its product offerings, i.e. the titles of internally-developed specialty books, and to expand the age-group of readers their library of materials cover, but did not have cash reserves for such investment. The CEO that was also the majority owner needed to demonstrate sales growth to increase the success of the upcoming round of financing.
Issues and Challenges. Company needed to increase immediate and recurring sales and to create brand loyalty to rise above the clutter. Purchasers of books tended to be public schools with set annual budgetary spending and cycle. Marketplace was crowded with many similar vendors going after a fixed budget. Limited brand recognition resulting in their sales being small fill-ins at the tail-end of the budget year instead of large school-wide purchase commitments. Sales was seasonal which had a direct effect on creating hard-to-manage volatile cash flow cycles. Marketing and sales efforts which consisted of the CEO’s phone campaigns and the efforts of a couple of out-of-state work-at-home sales representatives had met with a slower growth curve than desired.
Business Support Plan
1. Deploy a high-impact low cost marketing calendar to increase the penetration in the current target market.
2. Expand beyond this seasonal market to normalize revenue volatility.
3. Build a low-cost infrastructure to support systematic sales and marketing.
4. Increase brand awareness and recognition.
5. Develop strategic alliances and fusion marketing partners to capitalize on the development costs for book titles.
Benefits to Business Owner. Sales increased 50% during first year of implementation.
Two-prong approach: Developed a marketing plan to implement on marketing and sales to systematically target the current market and began discussions to establish fusion marketing partners (a large global children’s publishing, education and media company and one of nation’s largest consumer brands regarding cross-marketing opportunities) with the aim of tapping into less seasonal sales.
We installed a new low-cost semi-automated cold-calling system and hired and trained new in-house top-producing sales people to man the system to call customers with large programs and budgets. These calls were also targeted at existing customers earlier in the annual budgetary process for larger orders. This ultimately freed the CEO up to devote time in high-level brand-building activities to generate market recognition, including targeting and educating high-level decision makers and cultivating relationships with nation’s top educational consultants regarding the ability to increase literacy and competencies in nation's schools' by incorporating the company's specialty educational books into the curriculum.