GAJ Services



GAJ Services Introduces Business Rigor™ Pragmatic Series Enables Pathway to Accelerated Company Growth June 09, 2003 – GAJ Services Inc., a marketing, strategy and communications firm, today introduced the Business Rigor series of offerings. Business Rigor is designed to help companies accelerate revenue growth through pragmatic market assessment, business planning and execution support. The Challenges in the Market It is no revelation that today’s economy is moving slowly. A leading provider of economic indicators reports that a rising percentage of CEOs say that current economic conditions have worsened. Emerging companies in the mid-market sector are striving to maintain and grow market share despite tough times. Effective planning is one way to ensure this happens. The problem is that planning requires an investment that goes against the grain of execution-oriented companies, particularly those with strong sales cultures. Market assessment and business planning, even though they lead to straight-line growth, are perceived as superfluous. The challenge is finding the most effective way for the management team to develop a strategic growth plan and implement a process to transition it into action, while continuing to run the business. This requires an effective business planning process, which can be facilitated by leveraging best practices. But it must be accomplished without overextending the budget by using high-priced outside resources. “Maintaining market share is only part of the challenge for most emerging organizations today. In its entirety, the challenge is combining day-to-day operations with the enormous task of uncovering the most effective way to grow the business,” said Elizabeth Stites, president, GAJ Services Inc. “A strong market growth strategy is the key to success. Market assessment and business planning help a management team identify and understand the tough decisions they need to make. In addition to being insightful, the business planning process must be practical and easily transitioned into activity. Otherwise, the organization will quickly lose interest and fail to implement its recommendations.” The Business Rigor Advantage The Business Rigor series of offerings provides organizations with a pragmatic approach to developing a strategic growth roadmap and a measurable operations plan, with ongoing support to overcome execution roadblocks. The offering provides emerging companies with a proven methodology, tools and the coaching needed to plan for future business growth while continuing daily operations. Business Rigor helps management teams understand what investment decisions they need to make to ensure the future of the business. It is an ideal answer to overcoming the daily challenges mid-market companies face while attempting to accelerate revenue and profit growth. Unlike other offerings, the Business Rigor methodology takes textbook theory and translates it into bite-size tasks. This practical approach – market assessment, business planning and execution transition – is easily digested by even the most sales-centric cultures. Business Rigor integrates “best practice” tools, or templates, into the methodology to spur planning progress. These templates include items such as an investment criteria assessment, client survey questionnaires and a business plan outline. In addition, a GAJ Services team member coaches a project leader from within the organization. The GAJ coach keeps the Business Rigor process on track and educates the project leader about best practices while lending a fresh view from the outside. The benefit of this is that knowledge, transferred to the project leader, remains in-house. The Business Rigor coach is active only as long as the need for mentoring is required. Sales Performance International (SPI) is one organization that is well acquainted with the benefits of Business Rigor. Since 1988, SPI and its business partners have supported the sales efforts of more than 500,000 sales and management professionals in more than 50 countries. SPI owns Solution Selling®, a family of offerings designed to enable clients to improve the performance of their sales teams. “At SPI, defining our challenge was easy. After an intense period of riding the market’s downturns, we found ourselves questioning what we needed to do to take the company to the next level,” said Keith Eades, CEO, Sales Performance International. “If we were going to be successful, we needed to deploy a planning process designed to move effectively and quickly – one that would enable us to focus and start executing immediately.” Eades continued, “GAJ Services’ Business Rigor program was an invaluable investment for our company. My team now has realistic expectations for where we can take the company and a clear plan on how we need to get it there. Additionally, we have milestones and metrics defined to assess our progress at regular intervals. Having GAJ Services coach us through Business Rigor will no doubt make a significant difference in our future.” The Business Rigor Offering Designed to guide an organization through a comprehensive and practical market assessment, business planning, and execution facilitation program, Business Rigor provides four integrated, but stand-alone, offerings:
Business Rigor Roadmap Building enables an organization to build a 36-month strategic growth roadmap within 100 days, including financials, major milestones and metrics. Highlights include:
	Enables internal resources to own the market assessment and business planning process Combines GAJ Services’ proven methodology for market assessment and business planning with the coaching to keep the process on track and the tools to accelerate it Identifies growth strategies for channels, offerings, promotion, partnerships and resources
Business Rigor Operations Planning helps Functional Owners ‘own’ the strategic roadmap by defining their tasks, major milestones and metrics needed for the company to hit its financial goals over the next 12 months. Highlights include:
	Enables Functional Owners to internalize the strategic roadmap by providing the methodology, planning templates and coaching needed to explore execution options Provides a comprehensive understanding of what an organization’s management team must do to grow the company and measure progress
Business Rigor Execution Support offers coaching and ongoing support to enable the organization to effectively transition its plan into action. Highlights include:
	Coaches an “Execution Driver” as needed to help them quickly digest their new role and move the plan into action Rallies executives into execution mode Provides a format for quarterly operations and sales reviews to make sure the company is on track and meeting milestones and metrics
Business Rigor Market Entry offers a menu of support services to help the organization re-position itself in the marketplace. This includes a focused, fast-paced company launch program. This offering is also ideal for executive, sales and marketing teams that simply need to create greater consistency in communicating the company’s value. Highlights include:
	Develops a well-crafted story that enables a company to consistently communicate its value Provides strong interaction with media, analysts and industry thought leaders Builds a clear understanding of roles in the external communications process through executive coaching
Business Rigor provides organizations with a pragmatic approach to planning for business growth while continuing daily operations. Business Rigor combines a proven methodology with the tools and the coaching needed to enable an emerging organization to define its future. Business Rigor’s strength is that it helps management teams understand the investment decisions they need to make to ensure business growth. Yet, the biggest benefit is that the organization is left with the discipline to evaluate market changes and investment opportunities in the future. ABOUT GAJ SERVICES GAJ Services Inc. is a marketing, strategy and communications firm with expertise in accelerating revenue growth and market valuation while strengthening internal competencies. The firm guides emerging organizations through the critical period when the need for sophisticated marketing surfaces. GAJ Services’ proprietary Business Rigor™ series of offerings employs a pragmatic process for market assessment, business planning and execution facilitation. Business Rigor combines the methodology, tools and the coaching needed to enable an executive team to identify and understand the investment decisions they need to make to define the company’s future growth. GAJ Services, comprised of a team of professionals with diverse skills and experiences, knows that success is built on critical strategic thinking, innovative planning and brute force execution. And it gets results. For more information, visit www.gajservices.com or call 1-866-GO TO GAJ (1-866-468-6425). #####