The CEO of a small software company that Mike had just trained asked him for help recruiting a VP Sales as their current VP was retiring. He explained to Mike that he had personally selected the 6 sales people who were working there then, and only 3 of them had so far booked revenue near their quota for the year, and it was already October; so, he did not trust his ability to make the “best” choice for a VP Sales.

They agreed on a consulting project, and Mike was asked to interview his final 4 candidates prior to him making the final decision. Mike did this by Zoom, and provided a list of each candidate’s Positives and Negatives, along with his personal recommendation. That person was hired, and he was successful in making the needed organizational changes, and achieving the revenue target for the next year.

Market Research Case Study

A client came to Wolf Consulting Network, Inc. claiming to have breakthrough new technology – but acknowledged an uncertainty regarding the size of the Total Available Market (TAM) and Served Available Market (SAM) for the technology and what it would take to commercialize the technology.

Principals of WCNI visited the lab to see the technology “first-hand”.

Indeed – the technology appeared very interesting and unique given other products and technologies on the market at the time.

A course of primary market research was designed. WCNI’s team conducted depth interviews with expert users of products with similar – competitive – technologies. The program was designed to reach a statistically significant percentage of the market and to ask deep and relevant questions. The learnings from the interviews was such that WCNI became convinced that the technology could provide a sustainable competitive advantage to the client and to users of the technology.

An interim report provided an understanding of the potential market (TAM and SAM). The client commissioned a second round of depth/expert interviews to further the understanding of what would be required to productize the technology.

The final report provided a product roadmap and defined the TAM and SAM profile associated with each development. It also included a time-based, revenue projection for how these developments would enable the market.

This is where the marketing program ended, and the sales guidance began. One issue WCNI was able to identify during the second phase of the program was the degree of sophistication of the client’s sales resources versus those of the extant competition. WCNI then developed and delivered specific and competitive-aware training to the salesforce that armed them for combat as the product came to market.

The outcome is that – over the course of the following 5 years – the client’s market share grew by 300% at the expense of entrenched competitors. The client’s sales team routinely engaged WCNI through those five years to tune customer engagement plans using Green Sheet and Blue Sheet guidance.

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