Unique Combination of Skills + Experience —
Gets You Results.
Messer Strategies is a professional company focused on providing electronic engineering firms with specialized business services. Our services are molded to fit your firm’s specific business objectives — for example, to increase the profitability of your projects, expand your business into new markets, or successfully introduce new services.
With a foundation based on decades of experience in the telecommunications and engineering services markets, Messer Strategies offers a distinctive blend of expertise in marketing, technology and finance. The examples below demonstrate the results achieved when these skills and experience are applied to client projects.
Portfolio of Our Work
Our Work by Market
Our Work by Client
» For a high-speed technology design company:
- Drafted technical papers on client’s engineering services to establish credibility with prospects and contribute to business growth. Excerpts were used in sales sheets and on client’s website, initiating a twenty percent increase in service sales in the following quarter.
- Prepared business plan with extensive financial projections to support client’s search for funding from outside investors. Investors described the business plan as, “Excellent. The plan is very thorough and strategically sound.”
- Partnered with client’s engineering team to improve requirements for customer design projects. Created requirements definition template to ensure objectivity and measurability of each requirement, yielding tighter requirements, lower project costs (reduced churn), and improved customer satisfaction due to well-defined deliverables and properly set expectations.
» For an embedded microcontroller design firm:
- Produced market opportunity report to help client resolve issues caused by targeting too many markets. Report identified market with biggest growth potential, enabling client to narrow target area to addressable size. Client increased sales and profit by leveraging project experience in smaller market area, improved results by focusing on familiar project types, and started marketing programs previously not feasible with too many markets.
- Developed financial dashboard to enable client to view snapshots of their overall business and zoom in on details of specific projects or services. The tool increased client’s profit margin by ten percent, allowing management to track each project’s profitability, make timely adjustments, and view each project’s contribution to overall company performance.
- Designed and wrote bi-weekly email newsletter to send to customers and prospects. Client reported that the newsletters helped produce consistent sales by keeping their name in front of customers and increasing their credibility through articles published in the newsletter.
» For an engineering services company:
- Analyzed client’s competitors and produced report showing the strengths and weaknesses of each company, as well as the opportunities exposed by the competitor’s weak areas. The analysis helped the client clearly see where they best fit into the marketplace, by pinpointing areas where they were strong but competitors were weak.
- Worked with management team to significantly narrow business focus to increase sales and marketing effectiveness. Helped client adjust strategy to set them apart from competitors by highlighting their unique design expertise, well-established engineering process and consistent project management. The following year the client experienced the highest yearly revenue in the company’s history.
- Analyzed business opportunity in five industries and identified a segment in which government regulations required companies to upgrade their technology by a specified date. Client executives used the information to focus their sales and engineering resources on capturing business in that market.
- Redesigned and updated client’s website. Client’s customers said the new website upgraded the client’s company image and presented them as a very professional organization.
» For a software architecture consulting firm:
- Helped client write a business plan to support their application to the Small Business Administration for 8(a) certification as a socially disadvantaged business owner. Certification allowed client to start a new revenue stream by bidding on government contracts restricted to 8(a) certified firms.
- Edited software architecture technical articles for publication. All articles were successfully published in major trade journals, which increased the client’s exposure and credibility.
» For a data warehousing and business intelligence company:
- Evaluated business strategy plans for $4M company and provided feedback to management team. Information was used to strengthen underdeveloped areas and align disconnected initiatives with company goals so the firm could continue to grow.
» For a software technology company:
- Facilitated management team in assessing their product strategy to identify the optimal transition plan to their next generation architecture. Consulted with client on the different options and provided input as an objective third party. After researching the items discussed, client was able to confirm their strategy and move forward with upgrade plans.
Highlights of working for one of the largest telecommunications manufacturers in the world
Product Line Management Leadership:
- Led group responsible for wireless data portfolio ($28M annual sales)
- Developed business case and financial projections for new products and services
- Generated and prioritized product requirements
- Solicited design cost estimates from engineering team
- Confirmed final product design and collaborated with engineers during development
- Ensured thorough product testing
- Reviewed customer training classes and product documentation
- Facilitated training of field engineering and product support teams
- Trained sales and marketing and presented product to customers
- Managed product introduction and addressed issues
- Created product evolution plan
- Maintained product forecast for factory loading and formulated end-of-life plans
- Managed various products through full life cycle, from product inception to end-of-life. Worked with sales on end-of-life programs to facilitate customer upgrades to newer products, which minimized legacy products in the field and reduced product support costs.
- Created information packets for sales teams to encourage customers to wait to purchase a data product that was very late to market (rather than buying a competitor’s product). Team successfully sold products to 80% of existing customers and blocked competitive sales.
- Formed strategic partnership with third party company for data gateway product — an essential component for wireless Internet access. Partnership enabled company to offer customers a single source for wireless data networks, preventing an entry point for competitors.
Product Line Management:
- Managed consumer services, data products, and capacity programs. Identified as Key Product Line Management Resource by Executive Team.
- Directed program responsible for monitoring system capacity against market requirements and developing new features as needed to meet customer network demands. Team received special recognition from customer with the largest wireless system in the world for having the most proactive and sophisticated capacity-planning program.
- Led cross-functional product management, engineering and marketing team to develop a group of five new consumer features. Team successfully delivered $3.5 million custom design order.
Product Marketing:
- Directed marketing launch for new wireless data product. Successful launch ensured continuous $18M per year revenue stream from customer base.
- Authored wireless data sales guide to maximize revenue by providing tips and tools to help the sales group present the product to customers. Sales teams reported that the guide and associated training class significantly increased sales of wireless data products.
- Simplified global software ordering and distribution process by standardizing popular features based on customer buying patterns. New process reduced delivery costs by 30%.
- Wrote sales guide describing over 100 wireless software features to support new ordering and distribution process. Software sales increased, resulting in a new line of business.
- Provided marketing support to sales teams for customer meetings. Participated in successful closings of over $200 million in sales of new systems and network upgrades.
Marketing Communications:
- Wrote copy and supervised graphic design, photography, printing, and online production for numerous marketing publications (product bulletins, articles, technical papers, brochures, sales sheets, presentations) which were used globally to increase sales of wireless products and services.
- Wrote and produced four-color customer newsletter in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Publication increased visibility of company’s wireless products and global presence.