My Life, My Work and Your Business – Bringing It All together
Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
– Steve Jobs
What I Do
Far too often in productdevelopment, organizations get ahead of themselves. They brainstorm grandiose ideas, thinking of concepts that would excite them as industry insiders. This is the wrong approach. Overlooking their customers altogether, they forget to think about the specific market that they are serving. In this way, they set themselves up to miss their mark, falling short of their full potential by failing to deliver on their customers’ needs. As you can imagine, this leads successful businesses to fall short of their goals and start-ups to fail before
they have ever become operational. For small businesses, there is such little
room for failure that big failures almost certainly mean their demise
Small businesses then consider raw numbers, examining the strategies that they have already adopted and trying to pivot from there. They look over old marketing tactics that may have worked fantastically in the past but that do little to push businesses ahead of their competition today. When it comes to branding and new marketing tactics, they are completely in the dark, which means that the businesses that contract them are in the dark as well.
As a business consultant, I take an innovative approach to my work. Instead of examining raw numbers alone, I think of ways that small businesses can tap into new markets and connect with new customers. My consulting always focuses on customers, emphasizing the power of the customer to drive businesses into the future. Through a combination of traditional business prowess and creative thinking, I spearhead innovations that can transform good businesses into great ones and afford start-ups the stability they need to survive their first years. Serving
Southeastern Europe, I am on a mission to create sustainable revenue while also
cutting marketing costs for my clients.
Who I Am
Growing up in Vienna, Austria, I grew up with my mother, who was a single parent. Until I was ten, I spent most of my time at my grandmother’s house, which was in a small village where everyone knew everyone else. I enjoyed a lot of independence from a young age, coming and going as I pleased and making friends everywhere that I went. This impacted my attitude toward the world tremendously, encouraging me to think outside the box and to assume that freedom and independence were values that I ought to pursue in all areas of my life.
Attending Vienna University of Business and Economics, I earned my MBA. I then worked at IBM, getting a firsthand look at one of the most innovation-centered companies in the world. I was learning about the business world every day, building my base of knowledge and keeping myself open to every opportunity for growth. Moving into IT, I started out as an application controller, overseeing budgets for app development, and after I graduated, I took a job at Oracle as a consultant. Throughout my career, I have worked in a variety of roles: in sales, in client services, in relationship building. In every role, I have expanded my skill set, sharpening my sense for what businesses need to thrive. I have done business intelligence, presales, prototyping, testing, and audience research, tying most of my projects back to sales in one way or another.
By the time I moved into partner management, I had accrued a treasure trove of business strategies and ideas, all of which I put to good use working with such major consultants as Accenture, Ernest & Young, and Cap Gemini. I have also overseen demand generation for small businesses, building my reputation on my commitment to my clients’ success.
Eventually, my go-go-go lifestyle caught up to me. After years of sixty-hour weeks, I had become burned out. I had risen to the management job of my dreams, but as it turned out, I wanted something different. The corporate world and I did not fit together, and I knew that I needed to look elsewhere. Although much of my work experience was related to sales, I wanted to do something different, opting to try my hand at consulting.
My Philosophy
As a consultant, I have always emphasized customer experience, which simply makes sense to me. As a business, your customers are your lifeline. Without them, you cannot survive in the market. I am passionate about treating customers with the utmost respect, and I will often speak at length on this topic, especially if I see others ignoring it.
Always standing in the customers’ shoes, I offer a perspective that matters for businesses – one that is not based on theory or conjecture but results. I know the type of treatment that I expect as a customer, and I push businesses to offer customers that type of treatment and nothing less. When I hear about businesses struggling to find their place in an ever-changing market, I feel for them, but I also start by asking a simple question: how are you treating your customers? This question may seem reductive, but it gets at the heart of what your business is to people.
If anyone doubts that customer service matters, I challenge them to show me a business that offers outstanding customer service alongside a quality product and fails in the market. There is no such business because when you have something great to offer and you back it up with a devotion to customer experience, nothing can stand between you and your ultimate success.
Unless you can honestly say that you are cherishing your customers and making their lives better, you cannot reasonably expect success in this economy. You need to empathize with your customers, recognizing their wants and their needs and then finding a way to fulfill them. If you are ready to do that, then I can help you. I am all-in on your success: researching your market, figuring out your strategy, and devising a path toward the ROI that you want to see.