Proofpoint Marketing, LLC

Choice is increasing, trust is eroding, and financial pressures are rising - making choosing a new consulting partner a risky decision. Undifferentiated firms are struggling to generate new business, but simply being different isn’t enough, because differentiation without context is even more risky.‍

Successful firms are becoming the low-risk choice for their ideal clients, and in the process taking control of the pricing discussion, decreasing sales cycles, and accelerating growth.But doing so, requires a deep understanding of how business relationships are built, the role risk perception plays in the buying decision, and using that knowledge to properly position your firm in a contextually-relevant, differentiated way.

Most firms are simply too close to the work to be able to extract and synthesize the appropriate information to do this, and organizational misalignment - disagreements between partners and key leaders - delays the necessary progress.

Over the years working with dozens of firms, I have developed positioning and growth frameworks meant to help firms effectively position their firms, build organizational alignment around this positioning, and activate across all business functions to make the positioning come to life in the minds of their ideal customers.

Founder, CEO

Marketing Adjacent

Imagine you are sitting at a table with two folks who have a lot of a opinions and perspective on some of the new stuff coming down the pipe with marketing, sales, and other adjacent business and technology topics. Now imagine, these two folks are Mike Grinberg and Garrio Harrison. Mike and Garrio will cover the most interesting and impactful marketing adjacent current events, campaigns, and business dealings that are happening every week, and they will also add a good amount of their own perspective on the trends they are seeing themselves in their work.

Get ready for spicy topics, and takes, plenty of bloopers, and disagreements, as Mike and Garrio wrestle with many of the topics everyone is thinking about, but maybe not deeply enough.

Co Host

Mixing Business with Pleasure

A podcast about loving your work and working with your love. We interview business owners and entrepreneurs who are also in a relationship.

Co-Host and Co-Founder

Aspirity Energy

In many parts of the country, retail energy was in a state like the wild west. Everyone has a choice where they buy their energy from, and the process was confusing and often predatory.

Aspirity Energy was on a mission to not only simplify the energy buying process, but to make overall home management simpler.

I was in charge of building our positioning and messaging, and building our go-to-market strategy, which built a multi-million dollar company in under 18 months.

Vice President of Marketing

Digital River

Digital River is a payments and ecommerce company and also provided marketing services to it's clients.

I led Market Force's (the internal digital agency) paid media team, helped drive hundreds of millions of dollars in ecommerce revenue for our clients, and helped build the agency to more than $13 million in revenue.

Senior Manager - Aquisition Marketing

Nina Hale Inc., Search Engine Marketing

I was one of the early employees at the agency (employee #6) and helped the agency grow to over $6 million in revenue and a headcount of 50+

I helped build the paid media practice, and was managing a team of 8 performance marketers when I left after 5 years.

Director of Paid Media

-PPC and SEO Strategy implementation
-Managing six figure annual paid media budgets
-Developed and managing Intern program
-Account Executive/Lead on a variety of B2B and B2C clients
-Managing vendor relations with current reporting platform
-Managing and mentoring group of interns junior staff

Senior Search Manager

-Managing six figure annual search marketing budgets
-Creating and Implementing SEM strategy for a variety of clients (B2B and B2C)
-SEO Strategy and Implementation
-Client management

Search Marketing Manager

Senior Search Specialist

Freelance

Freelance Graphic Designer

Luggage Pros

All Aspects of Internet Marketing - SEO, SEM, Affiliate, Social Media, Datafeed, etc.

I also design all Web/Email ads and graphics, and am currently redesigning the website.

Web Marketing Specialist

MVP Marketing + Design

Assisted in all aspects of creative design.

Graphic Design Intern

Assisted in preparing monthly department forecasts, impacting budgeting and client ROI analysis.
Worked in integrated, cross-functional teams, to develop creative online direct marketing solutions.
Helped manage pay-per-click advertising campaigns, by doing keyword research and analysis.
Aided in analyzing email campaign performance through A - B testing anaalysis
Designed targeted landing pages and banner ads, for online campaigns.
Designed direct e-mail page layouts and templates, for direct marketing campaigns.

Strategic Marketing Intern

Helping consulting firms grow past $30M | Relationship-Led Growth (RLG) | Proofpoint Marketing

I am a creative problem solver at heart, who happened to fall into marketing. 

My original plan was to be a graphic designer and creative director. However, after several internships, including one that exposed me to digital marketing back in 2005, I was hooked and never looked back.

At this point I have "been there, done that" with pretty much every marketing discipline and tactic under the sun. However, my strengths lie in tying marketing strategy to business strategy, customer research, and content strategy and distribution.

I am a combat sports enthusiast and have competed as an amateur. That experience has taught me to roll with the punches and operate well under pressure. So in the midst of a family crisis, I started a marketing agency.

In August 2015, my daughter was born at only 24 weeks gestation. Through a combination of scientific advancements and miracles, she survived and thrived. Her journey was long, and after our journey with her, I definitely felt like I had been in a grueling 12-round fight.

After switching jobs, seeing a startup lose funding and dealing with a variety of pediatric health issues, my wife and I started our agency Proofpoint Marketing, in June of 2017, with the intention of doing great work while providing ourselves, and anyone that would later work for us, a family-first work environment.

Since then, we have helped a number of consulting and advisory firm clients break through growth plateaus by helping them create organizational alignment and build a relationship-led growth system.

If you want to talk B2B marketing, combat sports, or football (the real kind - the kind that's actually played with feet and a round ball), let's connect!

Taking one of our Secret Sauce Society mastermind groups through a strategic pricing workshop.

#professionalservices #pricing #pricingstrategy

Mike Grinberg

Nobody Gets Fired for Hiring IBM... I help boutique firms compete with and win against the IBMs of their industry. | Positioning | De-Risking

Let's do a quick exercise...

Pretend I am the chairman of the board for your firm. In our annual planning meeting, I tell you that we need to raise prices by 4x. 

What's your initial reaction? 

Grab a pen and paper, and write it down.

This is the exact exercise I do with founders at the beginning of my pricing workshop. Here are some of the most common responses:
"No"
"I can't"
"I'll lose all my clients"
"I'll need to change my entire offering and have 4x the value"

The assumption they all operate under is that price is a dependent variable and it's mostly out of their control. They operate from a place of fear and impostor syndrome. This week's article is all about getting you to realize that it doesn't have to be that way.

#ConsultingGrowthInsights #professionalservices #pricing #consultingsuccess

P.S. A special thank you to Peter Giordano III for helping me think through some of these concepts in a recent session of Consulting Growth Insights Live

li_at

JSESSIONID

I am continuously seeing marketing leaders and self-described positioning experts use the terms "positioning", "messaging", and "narrative" almost interchangeably, and it's creating a ton of confusion for the founders of boutique firms that I work with.

I know it's creating confusion, because I hear these founders describe to me what they think they need help with to "fix their positioning", and it's almost always some combination of messaging and narrative.

And the also often say things like "we need to do a better job of explaining what we do to the market".

Positioning isn't about explaining better.

So let me try to put this to bed, with a few simple definitions:

1. Positioning is what mental space you own in the minds of your ideal clients. It's how they see you, in the market, in relation to other firms. The only way to own mental space, and to be see in a particular way, is to take action. Not just one action, but consistent action. So really, positioning is the sum of al the strategic business decisions and investments you make over time. Positioning is also your decision making framework for making these investments. Looking at doing a reorg - will this new structure help you be seen the way y ou want to be seen? Considering building out a new service offering - will it help you own that mental real estate in the minds of your ICP?

2. Narrative is the story you tell the market about your positioning. It's the core insight and the underlying philosophy behind what your positioning matters. It is the story that you tell both internally and externally to justify the business decisions and investments that you've made and will continue to make. What is the shift that's happening? What are the stakes? Who's the enemy? What's standing in the way? What's the solution?

3. Messaging is the tactical implementation of the narrative across your various go-to-market assets (e.g. website, sales decks, LinkedIn profiles, client deliverables, etc.)

You can't message or narrative your way out of a positioning problem.

This isn't to diminish the value of building a narrative and having strong messaging. I've seen first hand what a great copywriter can do from a lead gen perspective. 

But if you are consistently shifting your narrative, and tweaking your messaging and still not seeing the results you want, then your problem likely isn't either of those things, but more foundational. Your problem is likely your positioning.

Ask yourself:
1. What mental teritory are you you trying to own?
2. What is the core idea that allows my firm to own this?
3. How do want our ideal clients to see our firm based on this?
4. What are the things we are currently doing/investing in to be seen this way?
5. What are the things we are currently doing/investing in that are detracting from this desired perception?

#positioning #consultingsuccess #consultinggrowthinsights #messaging #strategicnarrative

You need to prioritize business development over client delivery.

I can see it now... my existing clients reading this and saying, “WTF?!?” and reaching for the pitchforks. 

Breathe. 

I’m still taking care of you. 

This isn’t a license to neglect delivery; it’s a reminder that growth only happens when you make space for the work that creates tomorrow’s revenue. When there’s a client deadline or firedrill, you’ll pull an allnighter if you have to. When it’s a choice between an hour of business development at 8pm and a new Netflix season of Stranger Things, most founders pick the couch. I’m not saying do BD instead of delivery; I’m saying schedule BD in the part of your day you actually control, or it won’t happen.

Managing capacity and setting client expectations early is part of the work that needs to be done. When you enforce the boundary, you’re not being unavailable; you’re ensuring the firm your clients hired will still be strong six months from now.

Read on, to see how you can build your BD muscle and prioritize the right things. 

#ConsultingGrowthInsights #BD #businessdevelopment #consultingsuccess

Positioning is about tradeoffs.

It's as much about what you choose NOT to do, as it is about what you chose TO do.

First, get clarity and align on how you want to be seen.

Then ask yourself:
1. What are the things I will always do, to be seen that way?
2. What are the things I will never do, to be seen that way?

The choices you make when you say no to something can be the more powerful indicators of your positioning, because when you say no, you oftentimes say no to $$.

Few things will signal to the market that your positioning isn't just veneer, as saying no to revenue.

#positioning #consultingsuccess #consultinggrowthinsights

Phoenix consultants, agency owners, law firm founders, accounting firm owner, architecture firm principals and professional service providers of all kinds. 

This event is for you.

Meet your peers. Make connections. Build relationships. Grow your referral network.

https://lnkd.in/gA_G4R5Q

#phx #networking #professionalservices

Tired of transactional networking? 🤝

Join the The Secret Sauce Society for our November Conscious Networking Event, where Phoenix's professional services leaders connect with integrity, excellence, and service. 

You aren't just showing up to exchange business cards, you are coming to foster real conversations and build lasting relationships that uplift everyone.

The Secret Sauce Society is dedicated to helping professional services leaders build values-aligned, profitable firms that bring joy and prosperity. Our Conscious Networking Event embodies this mission by bringing together like-minded individuals to share experiences, learn from each other, and make quality introductions.

Ready to transform your network and grow with purpose?

Come find out what the secret sauce is really about.

👉 Register for the Conscious Networking Event today!

#PHX #networking #professionalservices #consciousnetworking #businessgrowth

Carlos L. Velasco, Al Marquiss and 18 other attendees

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