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Seven Benefits a Fractional Executive Can Deliver Today
Fri, Jun 4, 2021 — Written by: Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Shannon Muniz, Fractional Chief Sales Officer, Sales Xceleration, Orlando, FL. The sprint is on! The American economy – stuck in the blocks for much of 2020 while waiting out the pandemic – has heard the starting gun and is accelerating around the track at a feverish pace. With vaccines, optimism, sales, and profits on the rise, the time to sit on the sidelines is over. I recently talked about the surging economy with Shannon Muniz, with the goal of understanding whether the time was ripe to double down, invest in your business, and grow your base (spoiler alert – it is!).
The Entrepreneur’s Growth Playbook: Part Three
Thu, May 27, 2021 — Marketing Strategy: Bringing Your EOS® to Life Written by: Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Samuel Kniseley Ballesteros of The Advantage Solution and a Professional EOS® Implementer For anyone who’s ever held a circular saw or tin snips, you know the importance of measurement. With the exception of artist Pablo Picasso and perhaps architect Frank Gehry, precise measurements are absolutely critical in gaining the right result. If you have a manufacturing business, you know what we’re talking about – think about what your supply chain would look like if you didn’t bother to measure things like delivery time, for example. Your customers would rebel, your reputation would suffer – and you may not have a business for very long.
Growth Hacking vs. Growth Gears: Avoiding the Vanity Metrics Mirage
Thu, Apr 29, 2021 — Congratulations! You’ve hired a so-called “marketing expert,” trusted them with your digital properties, and learned today that you gained 1 million hits to your website last month. But, upon reflection, your cash drawer is not overflowing, and you’re certainly not feeling flush with success. It’s a sad reality – though many marketing agencies are well-meaning, there are some that can coax you into the fast-money trap. They promise shortcuts, big hits, and a load of sexy-sounding data that may look good on the surface – something I call vanity metrics, but not real business results.
The Entrepreneur’s Growth Playbook
Thu, Apr 22, 2021 — Blog 1: Are You a Pioneer or a Settler? Six Steps to a Better Business Model Written by: Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Samuel Kniseley Ballesteros of The Advantage Solution and a Professional EOS Implementer Take a trip with us, if you will, back to Northern California in 1849. Word has spread across the land – there’s gold in them there hills, and we need to go find it. On just this pronouncement, and with not much more than hope and a promise, pioneers set forth to go find the gold – and with it, riches beyond their wildest imagination. You know the rest of the story – some of these folks went boom, most went bust, and the California Gold Rush became a literal flash in the pan.
Are Fractional CMOs Only Good for Strategy?
Wed, Apr 7, 2021 — The short answer is no. Fractional CMOs, especially the CMOs at Chief Outsiders, are battle-tested veterans who not only were the heads of marketing for 2+ firms, but we all moved up through the ranks earlier in our careers, mainly doing execution. We do strategy and execution when the client needs it. In general, we get things done!
Innovation, Part 2: Finding the Discipline Needed to Reinvent and Reinvest
Thu, Jan 28, 2021 — What does it take to be a change agent in a world that doesn’t stop changing? My last blog on change and innovation referenced Billy Joel, and you may recall his song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” essentially a history lesson of the 1940s through 1980s in three minutes. If we asked The Piano Man to write a tune forecasting the 2020s, it would likely last an hour – and still not cover everything.
Innovation, With a Purpose: Use 2020 as a Springboard for Change
Fri, Jan 22, 2021 — Alas, it was many moons ago that one of my favorite musical artists, Billy Joel, sang those insightful words: “Don’t go changing to try and please me.” No matter how eloquent or visionary he might be, the “Bard of Brooklyn” couldn’t have foreseen that a pandemic would all but mandate change as a means of business survival. Now we must all go changing, to try and please EVERYONE. Fueled by the ongoing digital revolution, lockdowns, economic turmoil, and a global financial shakeout, we can generally agree that the tried and true has given way to the untried, and new.
Risky Business: How Marketing Content Can Take Risk Out of Business Decisions
Tue, Dec 29, 2020 — In my younger years, I loved the thrill of a challenging winter rock and ice climb. I found one at Maiden Cliff, which rises 800 feet above a lake in Maine. In late winter, sun-melted snow joins with natural seepage, freezes overnight, and creates giant icicles attached to the rock. What the sun helps to create, it also taketh away. Ice that is climbable with reasonable safety in shade can, after direct sun gets on it, soften, break away from the rock, or simply melt.
Best Practice Process (Stage/Gate) for Successful and Profitable Innovations
Fri, Dec 18, 2020 — As we know with most business activities, a well-defined process is often critical to keep your project on track. But equally important is to have specific targets that must be reviewed and approved before continued investment of people and money can continue. Given the complexity of innovation and new product development, and the high levels of new product failure for most industries, these initiatives carry a greater need for a rigorous process.