Kurt Salmon Associates

Line of Business

Global management consulting firm

Bottom Line

The firm rose from the 40th to the 35th largest management consulting firm in the world

Target Audiences

  • The 2000 largest companies globally in retailing, soft goods (e.g., apparel, footwear, home textiles) and consumer products manufacturing and marketing
  • The 1000 largest companies globally in hard goods consumer products manufacturing and marketing

 

  

Market Challenges

  • KSA suffered from a perceived lack of thought-leadership among key executives in targeted industries
  • Top executives in targeted industries did not associate the KSA name with leading successful companies
  • The company needed to generate new and repeat business, especially from targeted industries in which it was relatively unknown
  • KSA wanted to generate widespread adoption of new multi-industry management concept called Quick Response

Strategic Approach

  • Identified implementation issues faced by prospects and that could be solved by consulting services KSA already offered
  • Leveraged understanding of Quick Response and Efficient Consumer Response initiatives and ability to guide clients through required changes to grow business

Marketing Services

  • Created a multi-year, staged mix of conferences, research studies, and pilots
  • Established liaisons with associations and tech firms, and with national technology standards-setting organizations in targeted countries
  • Wrote survey research studies and marketing literature, and scripted telemarketing program promoting the new major management concepts of Quick Response and ECR
  • Generated press coverage for events and survey research studies
  • Identified implementation issues faced by prospects and that could be solved by consulting services KSA already offered

Outcomes

  • Sales of new Quick Response-related consulting projects totaled in the tens of millions
  • Quick Response became the top management buzzword in those industries for a decade. It has since been succeeded by "supply chain management" and "customer collaboration"
  • Quick Response concepts became adopted by other industries, creating new sources of business and entering new markets