Frank Hood
When Larry Scott and Frank Hood first met while working for HP in the early 1980s, they had no inkling that someday they’d become business partners.
Frank spent 20 years with Hewlett-Packard, eventually being promoted to global manager with a spinoff called Co-Create, where he sold work stations and software. Even during his HP years, he ran several small businesses on the side, so when he was laid off in 2000, he knew he wanted to work for himself. A veteran, he set up Revenue Enhancement Strategies as a National Veteran Owned Business Association member (NAVOBA). (He’s been published several times in their monthly magazine.)
Larry, meanwhile, had continued on at HP, putting in 31 years before he too left in February 2008 to pursue a sales manager role with a much smaller company. As the N.E. Regional Manager, within his first year he grew the region over 150%. When the recession hit hard in the summer of 2009, he was let go. He and Frank were still good friends, attending the same church and living nearby, so Frank began to help Larry look for a job. Through extensive conversation, they realized they shared a similar business philosophy of approaching sales as a process, and Larry decided to join Frank’s team.
Larry Scott
Their skills and backgrounds balanced each other perfectly. Frank is a process engineer; Larry is an electrical engineer. Frank is a consummate salesman; Larry specializes in marketing. Both have been through extensive training with some of the best sales programs out there (Sandler Sales, Miller Heiman, Dale Carnegie, Target Account Selling, and Executive Selling) and have learned to recognize and capitalize on market trends. In a short period of time after partnering, they were able to bring an already solid company to an entirely new level.
As the marketing head, Larry began looking for a way to adapt tried and true processes to fit their individual clients. He and Frank already understood the concept of a “referral engine”. They were also skilled at helping a client to develop a core message. What they were lacking was a set of defined marketing processes similar to their sales processes that were measurable, repeatable, and sustainable, and that could enhance their clients’ results even after the coaching relationship was over. When Larry stumbled across Duct Tape Marketing (and it stuck!), he knew he’d found exactly what he was looking for. In September 2010 Larry flew to Kansas City to become an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Consultant. Larry and Frank are excited to bring their new marketing perspectives to the table to help their clients. The DTM principles dovetail perfectly with what RES had already been doing.
One aspect of their business is joint ventureship. They’re an authorized partner of VIVO Concepts & Expo products (www.viviexpo.com/ap/1/res), through which they provide lead management by self-scoring and self-nurturing of leads (especially those captured at trade shows). Using this system, they’re able to help clients move from the traditional 2 – 5% conversation rate to a remarkable 30 – 40% closing rate. They’ve also set up a joint venture with Performance Association International (www.paiusa.com) to help small businesses measure performance, marketing expenses, and overall profitability of their services/products all the way down to the individual contributors. Using this information and the RES Processes enables companies to efficiently grow new business as well as go deep and wide within their current accounts.
