MarketCues Announces New Strategic Planning Program

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Jan. 19, 2015 - PRLog -- MarketCues Inc., a national strategy and brand management firm, has introduced a new comprehensive planning system, the SmartPlan360˚ Program™, for management teams in business, education, non-profits, and associations. The market assessment tool developed and administered by Tom Marin, the founder of MarketCues, utilizes organizational, vendor, and customer research to identify solutions to address a company’s most pressing business challenges. BLF Management has formed an agreement with MarketCues to spearhead the national sales and marketing of this program.

The SmartPlan360˚ Program provides a visual snapshot of an organization’s true strategic and organizational strengths and weaknesses. A deep analysis of its true market position, including its competitive challenges, are identified and leveraged.

A strategic roadmap of what to emphasize to more effectively focus the organization on its top growth drivers. The SmartPlan360˚ Program measures the perception versus reality gaps between the internal client organization and its external market. This focuses the organization on key strategic initiatives that strengthen its market position.

The SmartPlan360˚ Program is offered in three module options including Business, Education, and Nonprofit/Associations. A visual heat map is provided that shows the strengths and weaknesses of the organization in six key foundational areas patterned after Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.

Brad Feldman, CEO of BLF Management, has spent the majority of his career serving the nonprofit community and is an end-user of the SmartPlan360˚ Program product.  As a newly hired executive, he found the results to be invaluable as he set his organization’s agenda. “This is not a typical strategic planning tool,” says Feldman.  “Tom and his team at MarketCues, not only provided us with client research we couldn’t have otherwise gained on our own, but they led the organization through the assessment results and linked them to critical strategic areas to focus on in the upcoming year.”

Polk State Corporate College turned to MarketCues to help position the college as a leading educational and training center.  “It was essential to our strategic planning that we understand our true position in the market and what it could do to improve our market awareness,” states Robert Clancey, executive director, Polk State Corporate College.  “The SmartPlan360˚ Program provided us with real-world data we needed to make critical strategic decisions to both sustain and scale our organization. Our corporate training revenues doubled in the first year alone since we employed the SmartPlan360˚ Program.”

“Many organizations struggle with identifying and implementing key strategies that provide the highest opportunity for short- and long-term business growth,” says Tom Marin, president of MarketCues.  “We created the SmartPlan360˚ Program based on a need for a research based approach for companies to understand their positioning in the marketplace, which in turn can drive their strategic agenda by identifying areas of opportunity,” says Marin. The SmartPlan360˚ Program is geared to the small to mid-sized organization that may not have the resources to conduct the analysis on their own, or the budget to hire a traditional consulting firm.

To learn more about how the SmartPlan360˚ Program can provide breakthroughs for your organization, please visit www.blfmanagement.com.

About MarketCues and BLF Management

MarketCues is a national strategy and brand management firm that advises private, public, and not-for-profit clients on strategy and branding programs that improve their market effectiveness.  BLF Management is a management consulting firm that provides association management, coaching, consulting and also owns Part Time Works, an executive placement firm.  BLF Management and MarketCues have a strategic partnership allowing them to provide comprehensive strategy, management, and staffing solutions to nonprofit, business, and education clients throughout the US.