A winning strategy -- no matter what your pursuit -- does not happen by chance: it requires focus, planning and leadership.
Welcome to Straight From The Horse's Mouth!
Explore go-to-market insights and leadership qualities that can help to grow your business.
My lifelong partnership and journey with horses is the inspiration for “Straight from the Horse’s Mouth”.
Over the years, I have trained and competed with many different horses, each with unique personality and talents.
The journey taught me many things but most importantly how to operate as a team.
The same leadership qualities that helped me achieve success in my work are also applicable in care for and competing with horses.
The mission of "Straight from the Horse's Mouth" is to share insights about go-to-market strategies and leadership qualities with others to help them grow their businesses.
My Story Unveiled
Successful Go-to-Market Strategy Requires Focus & Planning
Common Business Challenges
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Establishing a competitive positioning that is truly differentiated
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Developing a strong go-to-market strategy & execution plan
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Creating a message & value proposition that attracts customers
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Avoiding a reactive & fragmented approach to marketing
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Tackling low awareness & lack of sales leads
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Focusing on core competencies -- avoiding pitfall of too many products & services
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Ensuring an operating model that aligns key business stakeholders
Tips for
Success
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Clearly documented mission & purpose for the business
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Honest assessment of the business
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Document desired results that can be tracked and measured
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Don't lose sight of your core strengths
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Outline pain points & concerns -- document a plan to address
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Ensure Go-To-Market plan focuses on generating awareness for the short & long-term
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Measure results throughout the sales cycle
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Be willing to course-correct as needed
Featured Go-to-Market
Success Stories
Discover how businesses have thrived with a strong business strategy, go-to-market plan, and a marketing strategy that includes client engagement programs to generate demand.
Software & IT Services Company
Challenge:
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Fragmented and opportunistic approach to Go-To-Market with strategic partner.
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Lack of alignment across teams.
Solution:
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Created 4-part Go-To-Market framework to enable creation of plan and alignment across teams.
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Framework focused on documenting addressable markets, priority offerings, target accounts and sales enablement plan.
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Led recurring “core team” meetings to manage activities aligned with framework, track results, and course correct as needed.
Result:
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Increased Sales’ leverage of joint partner offerings to meet client needs.
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Improved operational efficiency for joint selling by focusing on priority industries and geos.
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Attainment of key partner metrics including joint selling and delivery excellence.
IT Services Company
Challenge:
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Aggressive sales and revenue targets for public sector business unit.
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Limited budget to provide business development support for 12 sales teams selling to the government.
Solution:
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Built small team of experienced marketing professionals – emphasis on content development.
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Implementation of online catalog featuring products packaged specifically for the government and offered through government contracting vehicles.
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In-house production of sales materials and content for customer-facing communications.
Result:
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Generated sales of $90 million annually through online catalog.
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Value-focused content to support events and multi-channel marketing that resulted in attainment of sales targets.
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Profitable contract and strong positioning for renewal.
Finance & Leasing Company
Challenge:
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Sales and marketing strategies not aligned.
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Ad hoc approach to marketing with no formal process for budgeting, marketing planning and tracking of results.
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Generic messaging that did not emphasize a tangible business value proposition.
Solution:
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Developed a marketing strategy based on global and regional sales goals.
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Created a messaging strategy with value proposition that focused on differentiation.
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Implemented a marketing framework to guide integrated marketing planning.
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Created a thought leadership program to engage clients and prospects.
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Redesigned sales materials and website to reinforce messaging and success stories.
Result:
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Outperformed sales goals 3 consecutive years.
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Accelerated multi-million-dollar deals with target clients.
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Reduced overall marketing costs by rationalizing budget and focusing on activities that generated results.
More Go-to-Market
Success Stories
Discover how businesses have thrived with a strong business strategy, go-to-market plan, and a marketing strategy that includes client engagement programs to generate demand.
Software & IT Services Company
Challenge:
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Sales teams determined that clients in the healthcare provider industry were not realizing full benefit of IT solutions.
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Specifically – clients were not including supply chain planning function in enterprise resource planning (ERP) procurements and implementation.
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Sales needed a point of differentiation for ERP solutions.
Solution:
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Led and facilitated a 3-hour workshop with subject-matter-experts from Sales and Product Development.
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Brainstorming format to capture customer pain points and benefits of IT solution that includes ERP and Supply Chain Planning.
Result:
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Differentiated value proposition and messaging specific to healthcare provider industry.
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Immediate production of sales support materials based on new messaging.
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Immediate plan for hosting targeted thought-leadership events to engage clients and generate leads.
Consumer Products Company
(Franchise Model)
Challenge:
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Business not achieving revenue targets.
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Fragmented approach to branding – each product offering had its own brand.
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No over-arching brand.
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Lack of clear customer value proposition.
Solution:
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Developed branding and messaging framework for entire product line.
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Created integrated marketing plan that included redesign of sales materials, merchandising strategy and events plan.
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Launched eCommerce website.
Result:
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50% year-over-year increase in sales.
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25% sales increase from eCommerce.
Veterinary Pharmaceutical Company
(Wholesale Model)
Challenge:
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US expansion of this European-based company was not meeting revenue expectations.
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No formal go-to-market plan – fragmented approach to marketing.
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Lack of portfolio management process.
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Lack of common brand and no clear differentiated messaging.
Solution:
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Created branding and positioning strategy for the US that aligned with parent company brand.
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Developed a targeted integrated marketing plan that included messaging strategy, enhanced web presence, redesign of sales materials, PR and media relations.
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Deployed a formal portfolio management process to eliminate non-performing products and support expansion in core growth areas.
Result:
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Double-digit revenue growth year-over-year.
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Established competitive differentiation by focusing on the 2 highest performing portfolio categories.
My Expertise
My business passion is leveraging my experience to help organizations grow, scale, and succeed in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape.
My personal passion is training and competing with horses.
Professional Experience
More than 25 years of business experience, holding a variety of business development, alliance management and marketing roles with some of the world’s largest corporations.
Developed and deployed a Go-To-Market approach which has resulted in new sales opportunities and client strategies that generated incremental revenue and maximized customer satisfaction.
Proven results and expertise in sales, marketing, partner management, program execution, and cross-functional collaboration.
Since graduating from college I have raised, trained and competed with 10 different horses in a variety of riding disciplines including English, western and cattle events.
Primarily working without a professional trainer, I keep my horses at home. Together my equine partners and I have earned numerous world and regional titles and awards.
Pictured here is my current equine partner Peptoes Prescription, aka "Jagger".
Equine Experience
Unlock Profitable Growth
GTM Ready-Set-Go
Grow your revenue and enhance customer satisfaction with our simple 4-part go-to-market (GTM) planning approach.
Our tools enable businesses to develop and implement a comprehensive business plan that is scalable to meet the needs of your business in real time.
Affordable packages available.
T. Hanson Consulting
Simplifying Go-to-Market Strategy for Businesses
