Subject area:                 Corporate Extension Strategy, Positioning Strategy

Region:                           United States

Industry:                        Recruiting

Company:                      Scale Marketing & Consulting

Challenge:                     Tom Kostopoulos was the founder and CEO of Scale Marketing and Consulting, a small firm based out of Boston, Massachusetts. In December of 2020, he quickly realized that his Solar Recruiter subsidiary was underperforming compared to his ChiroAdvertising SBU, which was responsible for 70% of the firm’s revenues. He was unsure about Solar Recruiter’s pricing structure, competition, market size, setup fees, commission structure for his salesforce, how much he should be investing in advertising, and how he should be positioning his ads. This is where our team came in to provide our advice and consultation, utilizing our knowledge from our coursework and several consulting frameworks.

Investment in Personal Capital: Elucidating Professional CORE

As a team, we all aim to use this project as a stepping stone for our futures in consulting and leadership. We see ourselves utilizing the knowledge and real-life application of this project to use in our professional development. To reach our goals and pave a professional path for ourselves, being consultants for Scale has shown us our capabilities and our shortcomings as future business men and women. From this point forward, we have not only used but also have a deep connection and understanding of these consulting frameworks and tools.

• Paola Benítez – BS in Finance and Entrepreneurship, utilized startup knowledge to cater to stakeholder needs.
• Morgan Niezgoda – BS in Finance and Accounting, utilized co-op knowledge of consulting techniques to identify growth opportunities.
• Anna Steenbakkers – BS in Finance and Marketing Analytics, utilized co-op knowledge of operations to evaluate client’s value chain.
• Cathy Wang – BS in Marketing and MIS, utilized knowledge from industry and current state of world to evaluate opportunities.
• Nick Kenyon – BS in Accounting and Entrepreneurship, utilized company knowledge and consulting strategies to develop professional environment
• Darry Chew – BS in Finance and International Business, utilized knowledge of financing and expansion strategy to maximize operational efficiency.

Connecting with the Company’s Reality and Generating Value

We established a relationship with the client through virtual interviews with various employees of the firm. This included the CEO and founder, the COO and the Director of New Business Development. We then dissected the company’s financial statements, as well as their customer and sales personas. This enabled the team to gain an in-depth understanding of Solar Recruiter’s business, as well as identify their pain points. We also utilized outside resources, including solar industry articles, journals and competitor websites. With this information, our team applied the PESTLE, VRIO and Five Forces frameworks to identify matches between external opportunities and internal strengths. This is how our team identified recommendations and an implementation strategy.

Capital Utilization: What’s next? 

The goal of this report is to highlight current operational inefficiencies within this SBU. From the identified inefficiencies, Solar Recruiter should consider onboarding an additional sales-facing virtual assistant to help streamline the sales process. Additionally, ramping up their advertising budget will allow Solar Recruiter to further establish and differentiate itself in the market. Standalone brand recognition in the space will increase the penetration rate of their own ads, but also increase their customer acquisition cost. However, the increased customer acquisition cost will be balanced out by an increase in the average lifetime value of each individual deal.