How it runs
Four stages. Most of it mine, not yours.
One. The intake.
Figures you already have. Spend by channel, including the parts outside the marketing budget. Headcount, split between winning customers and keeping them. New customers by segment, margin, tenure.
Nothing gets estimated. Nothing needs a new system. One conversation with your finance lead, and the digging is mine.
Two. The position.
The cost to win and the value won get rebuilt from the ground up.
Then you see the bridge from the figures you've been using to the ones that come out. Every step, because you'll need to defend this to somebody.
Three. The plan.
A staged goal, the actions, and who owns each one.
Split between what marketing can do alone and what needs the board. Sequenced so marketing's own moves come first.
Four. The read-out.
We go through it together. Then it's yours, method and assumptions included, so anyone can check the work.
Then it's a measure, not a report.
Re-run it each quarter on the same basis and you're tracking something instead of rebuilding it from scratch every time somebody asks.
Most businesses do the execution themselves. Some want me close to it. Either is fine.
Three things marketing can't fix.
Price. Product. Route to market.
What they're doing to your position is shown, because you can't see it otherwise. But they arrive as board questions, not as things marketing can act on. They're also the first board questions marketing has ever walked into holding a number.
It's also why the plan doesn't claim to close the whole gap. Marketing on its own can't.