to achieve top line growth. Take a look at how companies
have benefited from the Mosaic Partners’ experience.
Microsoft Corporation
SAP Americas
Ransome Caterpillar
CSC Global
New Horizons Worldwide
Cozen O’Connor
Villanova University
United One
Swiss Farms
KCG Companies
Vitalyst
Hexaware Technologies
Kreischer Miller
SDI
KidsHealth (Nemours)
Atlantic Community Bankers Bank (ACBB)
IQVIA
Wellness Coaches
Swiss Farms has a unique business concept: it is a drive-through convenience store. Offered as a quick and easy alternative to crowded grocery stores and traditional convenience stores, customers can drive up to the store, order coffee, meals-on-the-go, and traditional convenience items such as bread and milk directly from a store associate, and have the order delivered directly to their cars. While Swiss Farms has no competitors with this same business model, it found that it was losing market share because it wasn’t clearly articulating its value to a well-defined target market. The company engaged Mosaic Partners to gain a better understanding of how its value was perceived in the marketplace.
HOW WE HELPED
We began the project by conducting numerous “on the spot” interviews with customers to understand why they chose to shop with Swiss Farms versus competitors such as Wawa or their local grocery store. We discovered that a large segment of the customer base perceived a real, tangible value from Swiss Farms products. They felt these products were fresher, better-tasting, and of higher quality than other stores. Plus, they enjoyed the unique shopping experience—hassle-free shopping and personal service. The combination of high quality products, friendly service, and drive-through convenience translated into a highly loyal customer segment.
This segment was mainly comprised of busy mothers who often have their children in the car with them and have long to-do’s lists, while being short on time. Getting their children in and out of car seats to shop in multiple stores is time consuming and a hassle. They wanted the ability to pick things up quickly. The Swiss Farms drive-through concept was an ideal solution for their needs. Plus, they felt good about providing their families with “farm fresh” quality products and ready-made meals.
Our research led to the creation of message frames that helped to provide a consistent and compelling marketing approach across all of the company’s platforms. The frames, “Making easy even better” and “Expressing your life” capitalized on Swiss Farms’ key differentiators and drove right to the heart of their most attractive and loyal customer segment.
RESULTS
From the company website, to its advertising, to its in-store customer experience, Swiss Farms now has a consistent message that clearly articulates its value and differentiators. It’s easy to identify who would benefit most from the Swiss Farms concept and why customers should shop there. Most importantly, sales increased from $0 to over $500,000 from on targeted program—an affinity rebate card over one full year.
The Firm had been successful to date in its core markets and practice areas, but wanted to increase its revenue opportunities by entering new markets. It felt that a rebrand of the firm was in order, and decided to begin the project by gaining a better understanding of the current perception of its brand impacted customer selection, customer acquisition, retention, and revenue growth. So, the Firm turned to Mosaic Partners for assistance.
HOW WE HELPED
While conducting client interviews as part of the initial scope of the project, we began to uncover some compelling potential opportunities. We learned that clients didn’t know about other practice areas or services offered by the Firm outside of those that were already being utilized. Plus, we heard over and over that the Firm didn’t really understand its clients’ businesses—their challenges, industry environments, and goals and objectives.
While some might have been worried by this information, we saw it as an opportunity. Rather than investing significant time, money, and resources to rebrand the Firm and enter new markets, we realized that the Firm was ‘leaving money on the table’ with its existing clients. We worked with the Firm to evolve the initial scope of the project into something much deeper.
We first identified the Firm’s top clients; those that were considered true assets to the Firm. Then we examined what services and practice areas they were currently consuming, as well as those areas they weren’t utilizing. We conducted research to better understand these core customers’ business goals and objectives and how the firm’s broad array of services and practice areas might help them meet their goals. Finally, we equipped partners with the tools and messaging to have in-depth conversations with their clients and build stronger relationships with them by focusing the conversations on the clients’ needs, rather than the Firm’s needs.
RESULTS
Fostering these deeper relationships created a greater level of trust between top clients and the Firm—and between the Firms internal practice leaders. The clients better understood all of the Firm’s capabilities, so that when they had a need, they were more inclined to contact the Firm before one of its competitors. The firm was able to secure several large and strategic pieces of work from existing clients as a direct result of this work.
Since the firm was founded in 1975, Kreischer Miller has enjoyed steady growth and loyal clients, in large part due to its unique position of remaining fiercely independent. However, a wave of consolidation in the industry during the recession led to an influx of large regional and national accounting firms in the market, which in turn caused pricing pressure and commoditization of accounting services. Kreischer Miller knew it needed to better articulate its value and differentiation to fend off competitors’ aggressive sales tactics and the inevitable curiosity in the marketplace about the new entrants. The firm turned to Mosaic Partners to help it better define and consistently communicate its value.
HOW WE HELPED
We started the project by interviewing a number of Kreischer Miller’s partners about how they viewed the firm and its place in the market. We soon discovered that while their employees’ messaging was, for the most part, consistent, it tended to focus more on the firm’s characteristics (number of employees, industry verticals, years in business, etc.) than on the ways it could help clients succeed.
When we interviewed Kreischer Miller’s clients, we learned that they viewed things differently. They weren’t concerned with the firm’s size or number of locations; they valued the nature of the relationship Kreischer Miller created with them. Going far beyond traditional audit and tax services, Kreischer Miller’s true value to its clients was its role as their business advisor, helping them successfully navigate the seemingly constant changes they were facing in their businesses.
We also discovered that clients valued the firm’s specialization in the unique needs of private companies. This was a true differentiator from the clients’ point of view, and an eye opener for Kreischer Miller. The firm had been grappling with whether to strategically pursue project work with public companies. Hearing the feedback from clients gave the firm the confidence to focus their messaging solely on the needs of privately-held companies.
RESULTS
Kreischer Miller has created brand messaging that is laser-focused on the needs of its core market and is consistent across the firm—from its website to its sales materials to its conversations with customers. By re-orienting the conversation from an inward-facing message to one that is focused on the elements that customers truly care about, the firm has positioned itself even more strongly against its competitors and continues to enjoy long and deep client relationships.
Headquartered in Wilkes-Barre, PA, United One Resources began an unprecedented period of growth beginning in 2008 through a combination of new services and strategic acquisitions. While the increased size and scope of the business translated into larger revenues, the rapid growth at times made it challenging to ensure its internal resources could keep pace. The company’s chairman turned to Mosaic Partners to provide an outsourced marketing leadership model.
HOW WE HELPED
Over the last 10 years, we’ve worked with United One as their outsourced Chief Marketing Officer, providing guidance to the chairman in thinking through the company’s go-to-market and growth strategies. We’ve also provided tactical execution of these strategies through numerous projects, including branding and messaging, customer and sales account planning, strategic planning and sales training.
RESULTS
Since our work with United Resources began, the company has increased its revenue by 200%. We helped transition the company from selling undifferentiated products to individualized customer solutions. Our comprehensive marketing strategy and implementation model has helped them take the business to the next level by capitalizing on new market opportunities and keeping the company on track with its strategy. At the same time, we’ve provided relief from the human resource implications of rapid growth in a key area of the business.
As a provider of enterprise software and related services, SAP has long relied on a partner network of resellers to drive its growth. Managing this network effectively is critical to SAP’s strategy, because it consumes considerable assets and generates significant revenue for the company. However, the network is massive in size and scope, and SAP realized that it was not as healthy as it could or should be. The company turned to Mosaic Partners for assistance in creating a better model to manage partner relationships.
HOW WE HELPED
SAP talks strategically about managing its customers, partners, and suppliers as an ecosystem, so we worked with the company to think about the health of the partner component of that ecosystem beyond just the revenue that was being generated by the largest partners. While those large relationships were indeed important, we realized after conducting in-depth research that there were a large number of resellers who weren’t doing much business today, but were in a position to do more.
RESULTS
We developed a metric system to help SAP focus on different levels of partners within the ecosystem. The base level was partners that pioneered new ideas, and then evolved as they grew revenue, scaled the revenue, and influenced change within an industry. This concept was critical to creating solid long-term, growth-oriented relationships with reseller partners. Because so much of SAP’s attention had previously been focused on the partners at the ‘industry influencer’ level, they were missing tremendous opportunities with smaller partners who had the potential to grow into much larger relationships over time.
Children’s Literacy Initiative (CLI) was launching a new online offering to supplement its current face-to-face Model Classroom offering. The offering presented an opportunity to engage new clients (teachers) and enhance the experience for existing teachers in the program. However, the new offering also exposed a messaging challenge. CLI was struggling to clearly position itself in a crowded competitive landscape and to deeply engage its stakeholders—school administrators, teachers, and donors. With a national conference rapidly approaching, CLI turned to Mosaic Partners to help position the offering, define the messaging, and determine the best way to deliver the message.
HOW WE HELPED
At the heart of every brand lies the question, “Why do we exist?” Creating an emotional connection with current and potential customers is vital to a company’s long-term success. This is especially critical for non-profit organizations, which rely on creating a strong emotional bond with their stakeholders and donors. So we focused the project on developing a story for CLI that would help them engage and connect with their stakeholders.
We immediately began interviewing all of CLI’s various stakeholders—teachers, donors, school administrators, volunteers, and coaches—to understand how CLI and its offering fit into their lives. We knew the features and functions of the new offering weren’t enough to excite and inspire CLI’s stakeholders; we had to focus on the value each group received from CLI. Based on the learning from the stakeholder interviews, we created messaging and promotional execution for the new offering that was compelling, relevant, and engaging. Most importantly, it was designed to hit straight at the hearts of the stakeholders and help them understand how CLI creates unique and lasting value for them and for our school children.
RESULTS
The project was completed in time for CLI’s presentation at the national conference and the launch of the new offering was a success. The online presence has gained wide acceptance and has become an integral part of the efficient and effective service delivery model.
Ransome CAT was a well-known player in the large equipment market but found itself struggling to gain traction in the smaller equipment market. The company thought that if it could gain a better understanding of the buyers in the small equipment market and understand their needs, it could increase its profile and market share. So, Ransome CAT turned to Mosaic Partners for assistance.
HOW WE HELPED
We began our work by conducting in-depth interviews with key customers in the small equipment market. These conversations went beyond simply trying to understand what equipment the companies were currently purchasing and why they were or were not choosing Ransome CAT for their needs. While this information was important, we purposely took the conversations to a deeper level to uncover the larger picture—how, where, and why they were buying.
As a result of these interviews, we discovered an opportunity for Ransome CAT to engage with their customers differently. The company had previously assumed that price was the main barrier to sales in this market. However, through our interviews we discovered that clients felt Ransome CAT only called them when they wanted to sell something. While they thought Ransome understood their equipment needs, they weren’t in tune with their customers’ broader business needs.
We then worked with the Ransome CAT sales and client relationship teams to transform the conversations they were having with their customers. They moved beyond simply selling equipment to equipping their customers to meet their larger goals and objectives.
RESULTS
Ransome CAT now has a much deeper understanding of what it needs to do to win new business and create client relationships for the long-term. Their salespeople now ‘show up’ and engage with customers much differently than before. Rather than focusing on product features and functions, they emphasize how working together can meet the client’s needs.
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