Today we’d like to introduce you to Dave Sutton. Dave’s team shared the TopRight story with us below.
We’d love to here about how the TopRight story begins.
TopRight is a Transformational Marketing firm founded in 2006 by consultants from top management consulting firms (e.g. McKinsey, Booz & Company, CSC Index), former Chief Marketing Officers, CxO’s, and senior practitioners in sales, marketing and technology. We came together to serve a common purpose: we believe that Marketing needs to change.
Customers seek authentic. Customers expect relevant. Customers want experiences on their own terms. Companies must give their customers a reason to care, a reason to engage, a reason to buy and a reason to stay. TopRight attracts and serves clients who share our same mindset.
Our Founder, Dave Sutton, is a recognized thought leader and published author, most notably of, Transformational Marketing: Moving to the TopRight and Enterprise Marketing Management: The New Science of Marketing (June 2003, John Wiley & Sons), ground-breaking books considered to offer definitive statements on how Marketing drives sustained, profitable, organic business growth.
Our brand name is derived from the impact that we aspire to achieve for our clients, Global 2000 companies and smaller, fast-growing companies. TopRight transforms marketing to move companies up and forward in their competitive frame – to the “top right quadrant” where revenue and profit growth exceeds industry standards. Our clients corner the markets where they choose to compete with our unique “3S” approach:
+ Story – Create a simple, yet compelling Story based on market and customer insights
+ Strategy – Formulate a clear go-to-market Strategy to tell the Story to the right audience
+ Systems – Put the necessary Systems in place to activate and scale the Strategy with ruthless consistency
Today, TopRight serves clients around the world from its headquarters in Atlanta and from satellite offices in Austin, Chicago, New York, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, DC
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Over the past ten years TopRight has encountered several challenges along the way:
+ 2006-7 – Original founding partners grew the firm rapidly and struggled to hire high quality talent at a fast-enough pace. TopRight relied heavily on contractors in the early days to meet client expectations. It was challenging to build bench strength during this startup period as demand was outstripping supply. This led to challenges with high employee turnover and increasing contract labor costs.
+ 2008-9 – Like many businesses, TopRight struggled through the great recession. Our challenges were magnified as our largest client at the time was a sub-prime lender accounting for more than 25% of our revenues at that time. Within two weeks of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, our client was filing for their own bankruptcy and our projects with them came to an abrupt halt. The TopRight team demonstrated its resilience by rapidly shifting focus from the financial services sector to the health and life sciences sector and was able to rebuild revenue and sustain the business.
+ 2009-10 – The two original Founders clashed over the strategic direction of the firm and Dave Sutton stepped up to buy out the other original founder. While the legal and financial aspects of this transition were straightforward, this was a huge distraction for leadership and impacted the morale of the team. Dave Sutton took the lead and began to rebuild the firm.
+2010-12 – This phase of the company’s retrenchment and rebuilding was painful as the firm needed to prune unprofitable geographies and practice areas and bring more focus to the business. However, with renewed focus, new doors opened with significant wins in new sectors, most notably, the non-profit sector. The American Red Cross and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) became cornerstone clients.
+ 2013-14 – Bill Fasig, former Apple marketing executive joined TopRight as Chief Operating Officer, brought “simplicity, clarity and alignment” to the TopRight Transformational Marketing story and helped us expand our client base in the Technology sector.
2013- Today -TopRight is again in rapid growth mode and expanding into new markets such as Austin, Boston, Chicago, New York, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, DC – seeking high quality marketing and sales people to move clients to the “TopRight”, transform their marketing and help clients corner the markets where they choose to compete.
Please tell us about TopRight.
TopRight transforms the way that companies market.
Why?
We believe that most marketing is expensive and ineffective. We believe that marketing needs to change. Customers seek authentic. Customers expect relevant. Customers want experiences on their own terms. Companies must give their customers a reason to care, a reason to buy and a reason to stay. We want to attract clients that share our same mindset.
What are we known for?
We transform marketing to move companies up and forward in their competitive frame to achieve the “TopRight” position in their industry:
– We glean customer and market insights to create a compelling yet simple story
– We formulate a clear go-to-market strategy to tell the story
– We align the necessary Systems (the people, processes and marketing technologies) to seamlessly activate the strategy with ruthless consistency
How are we different?
We develop Playbooks that bring simplicity, clarity and alignment to the brand Story, Strategy and Systems:
– We turn business strategy into market reality – The result: increased sales and profits.
– We’re not just “thinkers” – we’re “do-ers” – We go far beyond formulating strategy. We help you go-to-market; measure the impact; and fine-tune strategies and tactics to get results.
– We punch above our weight class – We have an amazing track record – we routinely compete against, and beat, large consulting firms and agencies.
– We are only successful if our clients are successful – We’re not afraid to “get our hands dirty” and immerse ourselves in our client’s work – because, in reality, we are only successful if our clients achieve measurable, high impact results
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
When I was a kid I wanted to be a doctor. So when it came time to go to college, selecting a major was simple for me: pre-med. I’m pretty good with math and science so the academics came easy to me – anatomy, differential equations, organic chemistry. However, towards the end of my second year we had to fulfill a volunteer requirement at the University Hospital. Working as a medical orderly, I learned that the sight of blood makes me physically ill (plus I didn’t particularly enjoy hanging around with a lot of sick people). Needless to say, a traditional medical profession was not in my future. I met with my college counselor and she helped me restructure my program and transfer my credits to the engineering school. At the time, this path offered me the greatest chance of graduating on time with my class. That’s also when I discovered that I truly loved solving complex and data-intensive problems. A few years later, I went on to get my MBA and I decided to focus on Marketing because I saw the potential to bring more rigor and scientific discipline to what for years had been largely an artistic expression. And so, that’s how I ended up combining the science of an engineer with the art of marketing to create remarkable business results.
So, I’m a would-be doctor, using science to heal and transform the broken art of marketing.
Why? I believe that most of marketing today is broken – overly tactical and generally ineffective. So, I’ve committed myself to bringing transformational change to marketing to create lasting, measurable impact for businesses.
What? I started TopRight, a firm that helps businesses transform their marketing, generate remarkable business results and move to the top right quadrant of the markets where they compete
How? I create compelling Brand Stories, formulate winning Strategies to reach the target audience and put marketing Systems in place to execute and measure business impact with ruthless consistency.
Contact Info:
- Address: TopRight, LLC
950 East Paces Ferry Road
Atlanta Plaza, Suite 2195
Atlanta, GA 30326 - Website: https://www.toprightpartners.com
- Phone: +1 678-384-6700
- Email: dave@toprightpartners.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/topright
- Twitter: @toprightpartner
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/topright-partners-atlanta
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPJJuim-eKyeU0wDX0TX0mA and https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingscientists/
Image Credit:
Micah Owens
TopRight
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