For Immediate Release
April 13, 2012

Washington, DC – The Institute of Managment Consultants USA (IMC USA), announced that Andy Birol, Founder of Pittsburgh based Birol Growth Consulting (www.andybirol.com), will deliver the keynote address on October 6th 2012 in Orlando, Florida at IMC’s International Conference, “Grow.”  In his keynote, titled “Crossing the Consulting Valley of Death: Lessons and Learnings from a Lone Wolf,” he will share his personal lessons in recapturing success following business setback, breakdown, and trauma amidst financial meltdown, client bailout and family heartache. Through examples and anecdotes of setback, breakthroughs and belly laughs, Birol will describe how he navigated his 15 year-old business past these challenges and how he rediscovered his Best and Highest Use®.

Dr. Gayle Carson, CMC, CSP, Conference Co-Chair says, “I have known Andy for over 10 years and his knowledge, innovation, business acumen and genuine concern and care for his client is stellar.  He is the perfect example of how a one person boutique firm ca become a giant in the consulting industry.” 

Click Here to read more.

If it is so wrong to stare at a car crash, then why are they so fascinating? And in these tough times, watching another crooked leader taking the “perp-walk of shame” brings a grin to even the most cordial of us. Leave it to the ever-precise Germans to define this feeling as “shadenfreude” or “the taking of pleasure in the misfortunes of others.” The more pompous or self righteous the civil servant, business titan, or do-gooder is, the more the French got it right, saying revenge is a dessert best enjoyed cold.

If shadenfreude is fun from a distance, why is it so painful to watch someone you care about become so impervious to their impact? It’s because we care. In my work, I have seen the following examples of owners breathing their own exhaust.

• After failing to eliminate his salesforce by going direct to customers, the leader invites the reps to “come back home as all is forgiven” by his marrying the youngest sales rep.
• Returning from France and bragging at work how much money he spent on wine, an owner cuts payroll and publicly borrows money from an employee.
• After kiting a client’s postal check and firing his partner’s son, the tables are turned when he alerts the sheriff who impounds the owner’s boat just as he’s skipping town on it.
• After showing off his new Ferrari, an owner takes me to his board room where he has taped (not framed) Penthouse centerfolds to the mahogany walls.

While the stories are horrifying, I can vouch for the good intentions and years of sacrifice that preceded each owner’s fall from grace. But at some point a chip switched in the owner’s head and the disconnection from reality snowballed down a slippery slope of complete self-delusion.

How can you tell if an owner’s ego and braggadoccicio have overwhelmed their confidence and conviction? What kinds of brakes and controls can you hope they embrace? It is high time when an owner

• Dismisses ideas as being irrelevant to their business when the ideas would create accountability
• Responds to questions regarding how their business is doing, by insisting there is no way to better it. Period.
• Believes that luck or being in the right place at the right time played no role in their success.

Business ownership has so little accountability and oversight that without devil’s advocates and contrarian data to strike a balance, dysfunction is likely. When owners start believing their destiny is assured, it’s more likely that things are never as good or as bad as they think they are.

Here are some simple questions to ask and assure their feet are on the ground and they are not breathing their own exhaust.

1. What is their true price of being wrong?
2. What is their true benefit of being right?
3. Where does their comfort zone really end?
4. Where does their dogma really begin?

In such crazy times, there seems to be a fine line between stoicism and irrationality. Help the owners you know to stay on the right side and remember my favorite quote, “We become what we tolerate!”

Background: Microseeps is a lab testing business located in Harmar, Pennsylvania that provides a wide variety of services supporting insight into soil and groundwater problems. Since the 90’s, the company has solved a large number of customers’ needs by developing innovative, groundwater, analytical tools and cost-effective ways to sample soil gas for vapor intrusion.

The Challenge: Although Microseeps was experienced in serving large, energy firms responsible parties, consultants and labs throughout the United States, the company lacked a shale-gas offering or specific sales effort dedicated to directly serving small customers in the Marcellus Shale footprint running through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. The firm typically serves consultants and customers who call Microseeps technical and customer support for solutions. After analysing sales and laboratory results, however, management saw a new market opportunity emerging — the local independent testing lab.  But without a sales force, or dedicated products or services, how could Microseeps evolve to serve this dispersed target market?

The BGC Solution

Andy Birol helped Microseeps conduct field, market and internal company research and analysis. Then, Tom Hill, Owner agreed to launch and fund a direct-marketing effort with online and off-line tactics to directly engage with state-approved laboratories across the quad-state Marcellus shale footprint.

“This was a big step for our company to aggressively market to a specific target prospect. We are excited to introduce this unique offer that fully leverages our companies Best and Highest Use,” said Hill, adding, “Andy guided us to discover how we could enter this market, and implement the right steps to further grow our Marcellus business.”

Specifically, Microseeps is developing an integrated. direct-mail, email, telephone and website strategy that offers an easy and profitable solution for any lab to grow its Marcellus business, whether or not it has existing business or experience serving land owners, corporations, drillers or municipalities impacted by the drilling of gas.  Beyond these tactics, Microseeps is taking further steps to support its business in this space.

Results to date.

Microseeps has already grown its Marcellus related business segment with existing customers by more than 25 percent. And the new tactics promise to easily double this growing number in this emerging market. More important, early results demonstrate that a focused effort has made a sales impact and has given management the confidence to create more proactive initiatives.

“With a great year behind us and our new Marcellus and other initiatives under way, I have high confidence that the coming years will continue to be some of Marcellus’s best,” says Hill.

“Andy Birol has been of great help not just in terms of developing our Marcellus initiative, but in helping us to refocus Microseeps on creating profitable growth for years to come. I look forward to a positive ROI on his and our efforts for years to come.”

As a stakeholder in a tech company, you have your money, future or ego in its future. Whether you own, buy from, or sell to such a firm, its hype should be contagious but could be a double-edged sword. Are you in on the ground floor of the “next big thing” or will your stake be wiped out by the next disruptive technology? Industry pundits who define success in terms of “digital immigrants”, “hyper-personalization” and “virtualization” aren’t very helpful! So how can you tell whether your tech firm is chicken-salad or chicken-scratch?

Here are three steps to decide if and how your technology company could succeed.

1.  Is your firm’s product or service really a feature, a benefit or an advantage (FBA)?

•  Features are the functions, specs or characteristics defining how a product or service performs. Apple’s touch-screen technology is a good example.

•  Benefits are how the features help the user/buyer. The Garmin portable GPS has evolved from a beneficial product

•  Advantages are what value the benefits provide the user/buyer

2.  How can FBA’s help you define your tech firm’s focus?

•  A feature-driven company should offer a function or tool that enables something greater to work better.

•  A benefit-driven firm should sell a capability which enables its user/buyer to pursue an outcome

•  An advantage-driven firm should market an ultimate condition or outcome to a user/buyer

3.  Which markets, investors or ultimate buyers are best for your tech company?

•  A feature-driven tech firm has the most appeal to vendors/suppliers of a greater or broader solution

•  A benefit-driven company should target its product/service at end-user/buyers who will leverage it into the most profitable outcomes or value for its customers

•  An advantage-driven company is most valuable to the final user/consumers who enjoy the most immediate value or highest outcome from this complete product/service.

Whether your technology firm is “pre-revenue” or “self-funding” you are proud of it and its future.

Business people are fascinated by the benefits, profits and potential of technology. Just visit any tech event and witness the financiers, service providers and the media networking with techies to discover “the next business thing.”

But despite all this “technology-transfer”, why isn’t there more technology in business? After 15 years of consulting with more than 430 firms and presenting to or interviewing another 10,000 business leaders, I’m dismayed by how little technology actually makes it into most mainstream, medium and small businesses:

• Most inventories are still managed without RFID or other systems tied into the POS. Despite this decade-old technology being “so easy,” I still see many companies doing it by hand.

• Few companies have good CRM systems. While this software works, few customers integrate their systems with their own sales culture and process or ensure sales force commitment, crippling many users from benefitting from such new technology.

• True cost-accounting information is scarce. Ask business owners what their product or service really costs to make, sell and service and few honestly know. If they had more knowledge, they could more confidently limits test new offers and features.

• Knowledge businesses still communicate with tools from the 1900′s. Despite the many better ways to present and engage their audiences, the gap between what companies say they sell and what customers hear and buy remains enormous. Too few businesses are developing mobile apps or distance learning.

Here’s why there isn’t more technology in business:

• The culture of technology clashes with mainstream business. The technology culture values perfection of their means while mainstream business struggles to convert these means into profitable ends.

• Tech people are schooled to woo investors and grants not to sell to customers. Inventors and startups believe they must write plans to get financing before they approaching and selling customers. Customers need to be understood and served but investors want to be bought out and move on. Who is more important to business longevity?

• Associations and business-plan contests reward planning skills not results. Our schools, associations and governments reward techies more for their thinking than for their sales and profits.

• Social media often encourages engagement without closure. Blogging and tweeting without closing business is like having a fiancé for five years without a marriage.

Why should you in the technology community react or even care? Because mainstream businesses need you, your value and they have money to pay you.

Consider these 3 ways to help you put more of your technology in business:

• Make your “thing” work manually before you try to make it work with technology.

• Understand how your customers use your thing to make money, and whether it’s by selling more, spending less, saving time, reducing risk or improving their lifestyles.

• Sell some version of your product or expertise from the start while you seek investors.

Technology companies have big shoes to fill in sustaining the Western Pennsylvania economy beyond steel. Doing so takes driving their products and services deeply into mainstream business.

Through this column, I will provide you with ways and ideas to do so. Together, we can put more of your technology into business.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you cut out all extra service and personal touches from your business?  Would customers still come if you were excellent but detached? My recent shoulder surgery was an in-your-face experience of how this works.

After enduring shoulder pain for a year, an MRI confirmed that my rotator cuff was ripped apart. I found Pittsburgh’s best surgeon, and after a 15-minute consult, he booked me. 90 days later, I arrived for the surgery, and was quickly processed, IV’d, gurneyed and staged for the operation.  No visit from the surgeon, little small talk from the nurses, and no remorse for their 2-hour delay in pre-op.

When I objected, they sedated me to ensure my compliance and placed me in the queue. The surgeon never visited before or after the procedure, and three hours after the operation, I was sent home to heal.  A week later I had my ten-minute follow-up with the surgeon.  Running out of time with more questions to ask, I tempted him with the only lure I had. I suggested that he operate on my other shoulder.  At this, he gave me another ten minutes, satisfied all my concerns, and recommended scheduling the next one before the summer.

How did this make me feel? Am I a happy customer? What business lessons did I take away from this experience?

I am happy with my surgeon and the results to date. Yes, I felt deprived until I accepted that when it comes to surgery, I’d better get my loving at home. My surgeon and the procedure have my highest recommendation. If anyone needs a shoulder surgeon, call me at 412-973-2080, and I’ll put you in contact with the best one I know.

So what lessons can we learn on running our businesses in a cost-constrained marketplace where raising prices or offering more value is impossible? How do you provide your value when your market won’t pay you for it?

•    If you offer a small part of the total package your customer is buying (surgery vs. a fully recovered shoulder), you must be efficient at delivering the only part you can.
•    If you have to run a high-volume operation, focus all your resources on maintaining quality and efficiency at the highest volume possible and cut out any and all distractions.
•    Spend your non-delivery time on generating more customers.
•    Have faith that factors you can’t control — like physical therapy and patient commitment to rehabilitation — will make your work (surgery) speak for itself.

Many years ago, when I was a corporate manager, I sat in on an esprit de corps meeting during which a furious debate ensued over the impact of some corporate policy on how some employees might feel.  After listening to this debate, my favorite executive stood up and said with exasperation, “For God’s sake, they can get their loving at home, we run a business here.”

Perhaps there’s a lesson for many of our businesses. Despite every efforts we make to cushion and enhance the experience we offer, sometimes it’s only about focusing on your best and highest use and letting your customers meet their other needs on their own.

Not until the summer of 2011, did the Marcellus opportunity begin to make sense to me. Knowing nothing about gas drilling, energy policy or how big energy companies function, I grew increasingly frustrated by all the attention that Marcellus was attracting.

Then I recalled my Economics 101 professor’s simple message; the impact of one dollar spent in the economy is multiplied 3-10 times as it passes from each buyer to another seller. And with a trillion dollars of spending on natural gas in Western PA, the multiplier effect is mind-boggling! Every business that can do business downstream of gas drillers and their suppliers can’t help but grow as Marcellus spending mushrooms. As I conduct more workshops, media interviews and client engagements, I have observed the following progress.

• PriceWaterhouseCoopers is reporting: PWC just released a terrific white paper projecting huge growth for manufacturers serving the gas industry. Its conclusion:
o Chemical, metal and industrial product companies will see orders spike.
o Up to one million workers will be hired.
o Affordable natural gas will cut manufacturers’ production costs as well.
o Natural-gas refueling stations and evolving regulations could inhibit or slow this sector’s growth but cannot prevent it.
o The lower the cost of production of natural gas, the sooner the industry will take off.
o To access the full report, click here.

•    My clients are focusing on the low-hanging fruit for their best opportunities or are already overwhelmed with demand for their products. My construction and environmental clients are seeing particularly large opportunities and real sales growth. Contact me with no obligation (412) 973 2080, and let’s chat about how your firm can participate in Marcellus.

• Interest is building: I will present workshops in Pittsburgh, Wayne, Shenango and Washington counties over the next 60 days. Click here to see which one you can attend to start preparing your business soon.

• Associations are responding: The Small and Medium Business Council’s (SMC) Dynamic Business Magazine is launching my new column “Profiting Thru Marcellus” in its January issue available soon through its site,  www.smc.org

After 14 years of consulting and relocating my business to Western Pennsylvania, many of you have asked, “What keeps you going, Andy?” In advance of my introducing an “Advanced Consulting Mastermind Group” with Michael Couch and the Pittsburgh Consulting Community on January 31st, here’s a preview of my keys to keeping your consulting business healthy and wealthy.

1. Sustain and nurture your professional passion. Constantly learn about your clients’ challenges and help them succeed on their terms.
a.    Live to learn, but advise with detached passion. Stay devoted to your clients’ success and your market’s evolving needs and challenges. Develop a contagious curiosity for what could be and the unwillingness to accept the status quo. Your clients need this the most from you.
b.    Focus one third of your time on each of the following:
i.    Selling new clients and projects
ii.    Delivering the best work you can
iii.    Developing your own business

2. Focus on Your Best and Highest Use
a.    Refine what you’re good at, like doing and what the market has paid you most for doing.
b.    Repackage, repurpose and reinvent how you provide your Best and Highest Use. Constantly check what’s selling, how content is being is being adapted and what new problems and opportunities are confronting your buyers.

3. Embrace the ups and downs.  No client, methodology, problem or market will sustain you forever
a.    Change is constant in the consulting business. What was once scarce becomes abundant. Clients change and problems ebb and flow. Recognize the differences between business fads and timeless principles.
b.    Accept what you can improve as an outside change agent and what is the client’s responsibility. Your client’s engagement is non-negotiable if you are going to help them.

4. Learn from the best, but do it your way
a.    Surround yourself with the best practitioners as teachers and as peers. Consulting is a business where clients repeatedly paying and referring you is your best measure of success. Beware of those who spend more time teaching than consulting. Longevity in this unforgiving business is the best measure of success.
b.    Do it your way. A most wonderful aspect of consulting is your ability to customize your practice to best support your gifts and preferences. You choose your clients, the problems, how you best work and what goals you set.

5. Above all, do no harm
a.    Your clients are in your hands. Consulting is unregulated, unlicensed and requires no education or certification. You are your only judge of what’s ethical. Always take the high road.
b.    Your business is sacred. Your business is as important as your clients’ businesses and needs equal attention. Invest in it and nurture it so it will be stay healthy and remain state-of-the-art.

Consulting through the years makes for a wonderful life and profession helping clients reach their goals and yours along the way. Cherish, protect and nurture your business, and it will reward you in every way. If learning more about consulting and my insight is of interest to you, check out the Pittsburgh Consulting Community at http://www.mcassociatesinc.com/community/index.php after December 21st and join Founder Michael Couch and me on January 31st when we will introduce two exciting consulting roundtable opportunities for you!

It is standard practice to qualify a prospect on the basis of time, need, authority and money, but why not by corporate culture as well? We all find it easier to work with some companies just as we prefer working with some employees more than others. In fact, as a result of outsourcing, with more and more work going to suppliers instead of employees, perhaps the supplier-customer relationship should (and will) start to mimic the employee-employer relationship.

If this is so, then as suppliers, we should start to assess our prospect’s corporate culture just as we did when deciding to accept a company’s job offer. While I’m not recommending pre-relationship psychological testing, we may need to run a relationship check just as we would a credit check. Since people still buy from people (as opposed to companies) some level of compatibility is essential. After all, customer-supplier relationships fail most often because expectations were not set, agreed upon and then met. Some relationships may be already doomed from the start!

So let’s take a few moments and decide whether we are picking good long-term partners or “one-time sales stands.”

• Does the decision-maker communicate like you do?
• Does he/she share some basic values with you?
• Does his/her company make decisions like yours does?
• How are disputes resolved, if they are resolved?
• Is it a conservative or progressive environment in terms of risk-taking, communications, problem solving, partnering?

While sales goals have to be hit, they are rarely accomplished through the first order. Therefore, developing an ideal customer profile before closing that first deal will help ensure that more will follow. Taking a few minutes when moving qualified prospects through the developed or proposal funnel stage before closing them will only enhance the chances of successful long-term partnerships. This profile can easily be added as part of your qualifying customer or pre-proposal questionnaire. Feel free to contact me if you would like some further thoughts on how to do this.

For years, I have wrestled with what role social media role really plays in creating profitable growth and wrote a rowdy piece for AMEX on it here. But building relationships or “engagement marketing” is critical to creating profitable growth. And recently, when Constant Contact asked me to speak at their engagement conference on profitable growth, I presented the following 5 findings:

Five Key Findings

1.  Customer Engagement

+ Your Firm’s Value

==============================

Profitable Growth in the New Economy

It is nice to chat online with communities and prospects, but it is crucial to speak in terms of your firm’s value and expertise. Whimsical topics may generate awareness and interest, but they must create live conversations where buyers can build interest and take action that leads to closed business and your profitable growth? Just like in marriage, unless engagement leads to committed customers it’s a waste of time and effort.

2.  To ensure your engagement efforts generate profitable growth:

• Do your math. Determine your how many engaged prospects you must generate and how many of these you must convert into buyers to make your money.
• Focus your engaged prospects on your Best and Highest Use (BHU^TM.) When you know your firm’s BHU and inject this into your conversations, your best prospects will respond to you in these terms.
• Convert customer engagement into profitable growth. Budget your engagement activities all the way through to your profitability.

3.  Confirm that your engaged customers stay profitable.

•         Measure exactly how much money your engaged customers are spending.

•         Track your cost of engagement and never let it exceed customer profits.

4.  Watch and ensure that your profitably engaged customers are paying you:

•         Measurably and predictably

•         Because of your social media/marketing

•         Based on your firm’s value

5.   Discover the specific ways how profitably engaged customers are paying you:

•         They buy samples, trials, assessments and diagnoses

•         Then they buy more

•         And they refer your company to their peers who do the above

Customer engagement is a new word for building relationships, which is as critical as it is imperative. But social media and networking, without a connection to profitability, is a new word for monkey business. Make it your business to do it right!