Diagnosis

Firebrick works with clients to accelerate the journey from strategy to revenue, delivering higher income and bigger market impact, faster. Our work focuses on the six key links that connect your plans to market performance. Each of these vital components has the potential to intensify or constrain the power of your programs.

Firebrick assesses the strength of go-to-market programs and apparatus to uncover unique advantages, hidden potential and unknown limitations. After conducting a comprehensive assessment based on broad market study, Firebrick provides a detailed diagnosis that analyzes and scores each critical step on the path to revenue. A clear action plan prioritizes opportunities based on revenue impact, strategic importance and difficulty.

Deliverables: Diagnostic Assessment, Executive Report and Action Plan

Strategy Intelligence

The "Global 2000" is not a target market. Likewise, "CIO" is not an adequate description of a target buyer. It's like telling your sales and marketing teams to go after "tall buildings" in New York City. High yield sales and marketing programs are built on richly detailed market definitions and target buyer profiles. Understanding purchase triggers and behavioral motivators are the keys to successful customer acquisition and positioning strategy for technology companies.

Firebrick takes your strategy to the next level. Our approach applies disciplined market, competitor and buyer analysis to identify and prioritize the opportunity by market and customer segments. We deliver vivid insights filled with useful detail, but short on fluff. We use quantitative and qualitative techniques to dig deeply into buyer behaviors, motivations and roadblocks to bring strategies to life.

Deliverables: Strategy Validation, Market Assessment, Competitive Analysis, Customer Segmentation, Customer Loyalty, Buyer Profiles.

Positioning Strategy

A strong positioning strategy is a central asset for successful technology companies. It helps to drive revenue growth, valuation and market leadership. But what could be powerful differentiators often end up as geek-speak and me-too feature lists that fail to motivate action. Buyers respond to engaging stories that bring products to life through metaphors, ownership of critical business concerns, and resonant analogies. Good stories also use ups and downs, obstacles and emotion to capture attention and propel audiences toward the main point.

Firebrick constructs fresh, results-oriented positioning strategies and sales stories. By applying the proven techniques of good storytelling, our clients get clear, highly differentiated positioning strategies that strengthen competitiveness and provide an engaging narrative that speaks to customers' business concerns. This approach establishes a lasting connection and drives buyers to action.

Deliverables: Positioning Audit, Positioning Strategy, Positioning Story Presentation, Message Guide and Voice & Presence Training.

Sales Success

Sales Success is about making positioning actionable, and transforming a sales organization to engage with new buyers and sell new products. Good positioning often breaks down as it moves into the field. Sales cycles become bogged down by unqualified opportunities, endless feature comparisons and protracted decision-making. Positioning stories must be made relevant to the street-level situations that salespeople will encounter in their unique territories and categories.

Firebrick bridges the divide between marketing and sales. We dial up sales productivity by turning marketing messages into buyer-centric sales conversations for use in direct, indirect or online interactive channels. Key messages are delivered in a situational, role-based, sales-relevant package tailored for your channel needs.

Deliverables: Sales Playbooks and Sales Transformation Events.

Revenue Optimization

Strategies and positioning stories often fail to achieve their revenue potential because marketing and sales fail to target the right accounts for that strategy and message. Marketing organizations measure success by the number of leads they generate, not whether they are the highest value leads for closing large deals. Sales organizations complain that marketing does not generate the "right kind" of pipeline for them to pursue.

Firebrick multiplies sales impact by creating an account investment model that prioritizes accounts and specifies high-yielding sales development programs. We use deep analytics to identify and prioritize your universe of potential customers. We deliver target accounts segmented into meaningful lists that can be leveraged for cross-selling, up-selling, industry-specific campaigns, seller enablement, and more.

Once target account lists are identified, we design strategic coverage models that optimize your marketing activities and seller coverage. We help marketing fill the pipeline by rolling out and tracking success of multi-touch marketing campaigns using target accounts. You can quickly expand upon success in a buyer segment.

Deliverables: Account Investment Model, Prioritized List of Top Accounts; Roadmap of Programs for Selling to Top Segments; Campaign Development, Launch and Monitoring

Launch and Momentum

A good positioning story can transform an organization, ignite sales success and tip the balance in a competitive category. But roll-out efforts must be aligned, coordinated and focused to maximize impact. Traditional, GA-centric release processes often underutilize important resources and partners. Launches often arrive with a fizzle rather than the explosive force they deserve.

Firebrick alters the way companies go to market in today's fragmented, over-saturated, skeptical environment. By building launch processes from the inside out to align internal organizations and resources, the results of your programs are amplified, traction is accelerated and market impact is multiplied.

Deliverables: Launch Audit, Launch Strategy and Readiness Plan, Global Launch Process and Planning.

IP Transfer

Companies are being hit with market-changing inflection points more and more frequently. Mobility, virtualization, social interaction, M&A, Commoditization and other catalysts occur with deep impact and leave markets forever altered. Built for an earlier set of circumstances, most organizations find themselves struggling to adapt.

Firebrick accelerates organizational adaptation, transferring proven best practices and techniques learned from taking more than 200 clients on the journey from strategy to revenue. Hard-earned knowledge, repeatable approaches and templates are transferred so clients can master new situations and turn new market forces from a threat into a competitive advantage.

Deliverables: IP transfer, Standardized Process Templates, Training and Coaching.