CAPABILITIES WE BUILD / STRATEGIC MARKETING EXCELLENCE™

Your marketers know their markets.
Build the system that enables them to win them.

Strategic Marketing Excellence™ is a capability-building program for B2B organizations that need their commercial teams to drive growth with discipline and consistency: identifying opportunities, building value propositions that win, and executing go-to-market strategy across every business unit, region, and leadership cycle.

THE PROBLEM

When marketers don't know their right-to-win,
leaders don't know where to invest. Growth Stalls.

Organizations lose capability faster than they realize. Roles change, people move on, and suddenly no one owns the strategic marketing process the way someone once did. Value propositions need work. New team members need a foundation. The business needs stronger growth and leadership knows the marketing process is where it starts. The people are there. What is missing is the underlying system that makes the capability sustainable and keeps it working regardless of who is in the role.

If you are the person whose job it is to fix that, you already know what success looks like. What you are navigating is everything that stands between the current state and getting there: the inconsistency across business units, the lack of shared language, the cultural inertia that slows every change effort down, and the political reality of moving fast enough to show progress without moving so fast you lose the organization.

Management is watching. You are building something that has to work not just on paper but inside a complex organization with competing priorities and people who have seen initiatives come and go. The last thing you need is a program that generates activity without changing behavior.

That is exactly the gap this program is designed to close. We are not here to deliver a training event. We are here to be your external thought partner, to help you develop what is needed, get it implemented, and overcome the inertia that would otherwise slow it down. We de-risk the effort for you and for the organization.

THE PROGRAM BUILT TO DELIVER THE GROWTH LEADERS DEMAND.

"Kelly delivered a structured, customer-focused approach that gave us clarity and confidence in evaluating new growth opportunities. She translated market insights into a pragmatic business case that both de-risked our decision-making and strengthened our strategies. I would highly recommend Kelly to any organization that wants to rigorously evaluate new opportunities and ensure strategic decisions are grounded in actionable market and customer insight."

Nick Brazis, CFO & Executive Vice President, Pentair

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Marketers who can drive growth, adapt to change, and bring the organization with them.

Strategic marketing is a growth function. Marketers are responsible for driving new business development, identifying opportunities to win with existing offers and new customers, recognizing when offers are reaching maturity in a given market, and gathering the customer and market insight that informs both commercial decisions and the R&D pipeline. The program builds the skills and the system to do all of that consistently.

TODAY’S GAPS

• Inconsistent practices across regions and business units

• Inconsistent language and terminology causes confusion

• Decisions driven by gut feel and anecdotes

• Value propositions developed late, without customer validation

• Launching without a clear go-to-market plan

• ROI undefined until it is too late to course-correct

• Weak handoffs between marketing, sales, and R&D lose opportunities

• Growth owned by individuals, not embedded in the organization

• Lack of role clarity creates lack of accountability

What your organization gains over time: stronger pipelines grounded in real market demand, sharper value propositions with clear right-to-win, faster time-to-market with less rework, improved marketing ROI, tools built for efficient daily practice, and a repeatable system that scales across regions and business units without starting over every time.

Real New Business Development Results.

After just two years working with Kelly, the company has been transformed. Where we once were a company without vision, defined goals and clear objectives. Today we are a team that is operating with cohesiveness and a singular purpose. Where we were once a company of individuals that appeared daily to their self-appointed tasks, we are now a forward-thinking culture where goals are identified and progress is measured as an organization. We’ve more than tripled our business. This transformation is a result of Kelly Lawrence's skill as a forward thinking leader, intelligent marketer and skilled facilitator."

Kevin Moore, Founder & President, Essentialware

IS THIS THE RIGHT FIT?

Built for the leader whose mandate is to raise the bar
across the organization.

The clients who get the most from this program are leading a centralized function — a Marketing COE, a Commercial Excellence team, or a strategic marketing capability initiative. Their responsibility is to build the process, the tools, and the shared language that business units will execute against. The individual business unit leaders hold their teams accountable. The program champion builds the system they use.

This is the right conversation to have if your organization is experiencing any of the following:

• Growth is not meeting expectations; the root cause may not be clear

• Go-to-market results depend on who is in the role, not on a repeatable process

• Handoffs between marketing, sales, and R&D are losing opportunities

• Value propositions are inconsistent, communicated weakly, or fail to resonate with buyers

WHAT PRACTITIONERS LEARN

Five capability areas.
One integrated system for growth.

Marketing must be able to clearly explain why a solution matters and why customers need it. Practitioners need to understand customers, competitors, the company's strengths, potential collaborators, and the context driving change in the market. They need to recognize where an offer sits in its lifecycle and what that means for the next move. And they need the skill of adaptability: the ability to read a changing market, build the case for why a pivot is needed, and bring the organization with them to win.

The program addresses capability across five interconnected areas, structured across maturity levels and customized to your industry and growth priorities.

Value proposition, positioning & pricing

Marketers learn to define what makes an offer genuinely different, validate that differentiation with customer evidence, and price to capture value rather than compete on cost. This requires understanding desired customer beliefs and what drives action, identifying gaps versus the ideal state, and mapping how the solution impacts the value chain positively and negatively. Value propositions must be specific to each value chain role and each decision-making role within the customer organization — because a proposition that speaks to everyone captures value from no one.

Value proposition developmentValue statements & calculatorsRight-to-win analysisValue-based pricingPositioning frameworkCompetitive differentiation

Customer & market insight

Marketers own the discovery-to-insight process. Practitioners learn to move from anecdote to evidence, using the 5 Cs framework and structured problem statement tools to understand what customers are trying to achieve, what is preventing them, and why closing the gap matters strategically. This insight feeds commercial decisions and informs the R&D pipeline.

5 Cs analysisProblem statement developmentCustomer unmet needsAssumption identification & validationSegment sizing & prioritizationValue chain analysis

Business case & opportunity management

Practitioners learn to build business cases that earn leadership investment: grounded in market evidence, clearly structured, and honest about risk. They learn to define ROI and capital needs up front, know when to advance and when to stop, and present findings in a way that earns confidence rather than skepticism from leadership.

Business case developmentOpportunity selection criteriaROI & capital needs definitionProject de-riskingWhen and how to stop a projectCommunicating with leadership

Go-to-market strategy & execution

Practitioners learn to plan how to win before investing. This covers route-to-market strategy, sales play design, channel and customer segmentation, and how to engage customers to build loyalty and referrals while developing new business in parallel. Practitioners also learn to defend against competitive response and build the metrics that drive accountability across the commercial team.

Route-to-market designSales play design & readinessChannel & customer segmentationNew offer launchCompetitive response planningGrowth metrics & accountability

Competitive intelligence, lifecycle & market strategy

Marketers own competitive intelligence at the segment, product line, and individual offer level. Practitioners learn to monitor the competitive landscape, understand the value chain and who is making decisions, recognize offer lifecycle signals and their implications, and build strategy that accounts for where the market is heading. This includes knowing when to build, partner, or acquire to close a capability gap.

Competitive intelligenceValue chain & decision dynamicsOffer lifecycle managementMarket strategy (5 key areas)New market assessmentBuild, partner, or acquire

The program includes management-specific modules designed to equip leaders with the tools to set expectations, remove barriers, and reinforce new behaviors. Training without leadership reinforcement rarely holds.

REAL GROWTH CAPABILITY EMBEDDED ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION.

"Kelly is adept at using strategic marketing tools and value chain analysis, turning insight into actionable plans for the whole organization. She has developed a portfolio of practical, strategic skills that would benefit companies large or small across a variety of industries."

Douglas Hamilton, Retired Global Sales & Marketing Executive, Lubrizol

HOW DOES THE PROGRAM WORK?

Design and build. Then deliver, coach, and sustain.

We meet your organization where it is. Some clients need the full capability system designed before delivery begins. Others are ready to start training. The goal is the same in every case: a capability your organization owns, can sustain without us, and can scale to new regions, functions, and business units over time.

Phase 1: Design & build

We map each capability area to standardized processes, best practices, and enabling tools. We build the full training curriculum: instructor guides, participant workbooks, case exercises, and AI toolkits with prompt libraries and workflow designs. We design the blended delivery model covering in-person workshops, virtual modules, and on-demand digital content. Playbooks, templates, and frameworks are built for enterprise adoption and owned by your organization upon delivery.

Leadership & executive coaching

Leadership champions receive all-access advisory support throughout the engagement. This is real-time support to work through the challenges that arise when new practices are being embedded in a complex organization. Navigating the matrix, reinforcing new behaviors, ensuring the program delivers the business impact leadership is expecting. Leaders can reach out as challenges arise, not just on scheduled calls.

Engagements are structured as a project retainer, giving your organization maximum flexibility and a capped budget. Scope adapts as priorities evolve. Coaching blocks, regional expansion, additional topics, and additional cohorts can be added as the program matures.

A PRACTICAL APPROACH THAT MEETS YOU WHERE YOU ARE
AND MOVES YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO BE.

WHY LAWRENCE INNOVATION

We built B2B marketing capability from inside the organizations you are trying to change.

The question I hear most often from senior leaders is a simple one: Can you teach our teams to do what you do? That question is the origin of this program.

Generic training programs are built for consumer markets, taught by people who have never held a commercial role or worked in a B2B manufacturing environment, and forgotten within months of delivery. I sat through those programs in my corporate career. I watched teams leave a training session energized and revert to old habits within weeks because there was no system, no reinforcement, and no one coaching them through the hard part of actually applying it.

Every practitioner involved in this program has spent decades executing strategic marketing excellence in B2B environments, building businesses, managing portfolios, and delivering results in roles where the outcomes were their responsibility. Prior to founding Lawrence Innovation, Kelly had the privilege of working with a team that built a mid-eight-figure business at Berkshire Hathaway’s Lubrizol during the inflection point of an industry transformation.

We have built and delivered strategic marketing excellence programs inside the matrixed organizations you are navigating. We’ve helped our client companies representing over $130 billion in revenue accelerate and de-risk growth. We understand how capability gets embedded in large organizations because we have done it.

The goal of every engagement is the same: build the system, transfer the capability, and graduate your organization into self-sufficiency. Clients leave with a process, a toolkit, and trained practitioners. That is what sustainable commercial growth capability looks like.

Built by practitioners for practitioners.

"Kelly Lawrence has the perfect combination of assets to make this happen. First, she uses a market-driven approach, leveraging 'voice of customer' techniques to uncover market opportunities. Next, she has an elite talent for communication. By helping the organization — from product management to leadership — to understand the size, risks, and rewards of new initiatives, she drives alignment so that the enterprise can act decisively. Finally, she has the project management chops to execute, managing costs and risks along the way."

Scott Burleson, VP The AIM Institute, 2X Product Management Author & Jobs-to-Be-Done Expert

START THE CONVERSATION

The first step is a conversation.
No preparation required.

Tell us where your organization is and where you want to go.
We’ll tell you whether this program is the right fit.
We will be direct with you either way.