I wanted to share a very positive experience we recently had in engaging an Outsourced Chief Marketing Officer to help us through some positioning and messaging challenges. I know that some of you struggle with marketing strategy, prioritization and execution–and even the very definition of marketing, so perhaps this information will be useful to you in that regard.

By way of background, Telogical has been doing well as a business in terms of growth and overall market traction, but my partners and I thought we could do better if we could connect in a more immediate and relevant way with our target audience.

Through a connection our president and cofounder had from a previous company, we engaged an Outsourced Chief Marketing Officer in the Washington, DC area named Bob London. We went the outsourced route because we while we needed an outside perspective and deep marketing expertise, we did not have the resources or need to hire a full-time marketing executive.

Here are some of the highlights:

• In short, Bob’s approach, which he calls diagnosing our Customers’ Elevator Rant (the issues your customers talk about on the elevator when you’re not around), was an amazing lesson in how important it is to take a step back and listen to customers–to find out the issues they may not be expressing.
• Bob’s process started with interviewing a number of our long-standing customers and synthesizing the information into a report that basically said we should be taking a more consultative approach and position ourselves in terms of our solutions rather than our data.
• The strategy Bob helped us develop based on his interviews with our customers resulted in a platform from which we have now completely repositioned Telogical.
• His insights and recommendations enabled us to relaunch our website with an entirely new solution-oriented message that is resonating with our marketplace.
• But even before that, we found in talking with our clients that the new consultative approach really helped unlock new opportunities for our business.

I give a significant amount of the credit for our newly energized marketing and business development approach and our overall business trajectory to Bob’s efforts. I’m letting you know this in case you are in a similar situation where you need senior-level marketing expertise and horsepower but don’t have the resources for a full-time executive.

Again, I know marketing can be a tricky subject, part science part art. Bob helps put a fine point on it, and he is incredibly trustworthy. We found incredibly committed; he went far above and beyond what a typical “vendor” might do. He really cared about the outcome, not just doing the analysis and collecting his fee.