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Consumer research is usually slow and expensive. This client's team needed something faster without losing rigor.
Evan Eckman partnered with them to pilot a new methodology, built for CPG, as one of the first companies to test it.
Here's what came out of it 👇
Most companies prepare a Quality of Earnings assessment before an exit. Almost none apply that same discipline to the revenue line.
Buyers notice when growth is running on one or two people, and what the best exits do differently.
Dive in: bit.ly/4vS33vW
We've walked into innovative products that customers weren't buying, not because the product was weak, but because the story around it was.
Bob Sherlock breaks down how he was able to assist one equipment manufacturer, and the seven figure result they together achieved.
Every deal team checks the financials before an exit. Almost none check whether the revenue engine can run without the current owner in the room.
That's the question buyers are actually asking.
Carol Eversen breaks down what that means for your exit valuation.
Ask a leadership team what marketing is and most will describe what it does: campaigns, lead gen, website, social media.
⚠️ That's a problem.
Michael Lang highlights why CEOs can't fully delegate this function, and what leading it actually looks like.
bit.ly/4bL53ir
For a PE-backed company, brand clarity and marketing infrastructure are all about value creation.
Anka Twum-Baah breaks it down in this short video. Take a look 👀
250 years of proving that the best growth stories start with people willing to move before the conditions are perfect. 🇺🇸
Happy 4th of July from Chief Outsiders!
"We're the best-kept secret in our industry."
That's Meg VanderLaan's entry point.
Fractional CMO at Chief Outsiders, helping mid-sized companies find their story and take it to market. Get to know her here 👇
80%+ of AI initiatives fail.
Not a tech problem. A strategy problem.
Chief Outsiders' on-demand CMOs and CSOs change that equation 👇
Started as an engineer. Worked every sales job. Made it to CEO.
Brian Schlosser brings all of it to the table as a fractional CSO at Chief Outsiders. 👇
🤔 How do mid-market companies actually grow?
Chief Outsiders partnered with UT business school researchers to find out. The answer became a book. The book became a business school textbook.
Pete Hayes and Dawn Werry on what the research revealed 👇
The Growth Gears book is 10 years old. The methodology behind it is older.
Pete Hayes and Art Saxby built it around a simple truth: operationally excellent companies often struggle to grow because they're looking inward, not outward.
The best-run companies and the fastest-growing companies are often not the same.
Pete Hayes explains why, and what it takes to be both.
Lowell Price, fractional CSO, 25 years in healthcare services, medtech, and life sciences.
His take: true sales and marketing alignment, in structure, incentives, process, and execution, builds a commercial engine that outperforms.
Take a look 👀
Meet Jim Wallace, fractional CSO at Chief Outsiders.
His take: Sales gaps are solved by diagnosing what's actually limiting performance, not by adding resources.
Take a look 👀
Most mid-market CEOs aren't spending most of their time with the person closest to revenue.
@Vistage's CEO Sam Reese makes the case that they should be.
The #1 differentiator between teams that grow and teams that struggle?
Marketing and sales alignment.
Adriana Lynch breaks it down in under 30 seconds 👇
Vickie Sherman, Fractional CMO with deep financial services and commercial real estate experience.
Her take: the biggest growth problems come from companies not recognizing that what worked before no longer applies.
80% of AI initiatives fail because they start with the tech, not the business problem.
Chief Outsiders flips that. Human-led, AI-supported, outcome-driven.
AI can optimize your funnel. It can't replace the judgment in the middle of it.
@Vistage CEO Sam Reese on why the CEOs most disappointed by AI are the ones who expected it to remove human discernment from the equation entirely.