Catalyst Global (.net) Celebrates 30 Years

On a cold, dark morning in Chicago, January 1996, an idea was born - “What if?”

What if I did what I love:  advise companies on their marketing and sales approaches, develop and coach their people and, travel the world.

So, on April 1^st, 1996, in Lincoln Park (Chicago) the idea came to fruition.  30 years on, thirteen passports filled, 114 countries visited, and with an expanding team of passionate partners, the business has grown beyond anything I had imagined.

The idea was simple enough.  I’d work primarily with German and Swiss machine manufacturers, who achieved revenues of 100 million to 3 billion or more Euros. While MAN ROLAND was the foundation of the business, we have added a world class roster of clients including, Liebherr, Multivac, Müller Martini, BOBST, Buhler, Konecranes, Atlas Copco, Cavotec, Bystronic, Syntegon, Canon, VOITH, AMCOR, Hitachi Energy and others. Our largest customer is Liebherr with revenues of 14.7 billion Euros. We now work in every division of Liebherr including, Liebherr Aerospace.

I began International Graphic Arts Training & Marketing as a traditional sales and marketing development business. Then, in 2010 after the global economic crisis, two of our key clients, Müller Martini and BOBST in Switzerland asked for help in developing their Global Services Marketing programs.  

15 years later, as well as helping companies sell their large complex machines, we also make it a significant part of our business developing their services marketing, products and programs. We teach and coach their global service teams how to promote their services to genuinely help the end customer with productivity and efficiency.   With these seeds firmly planted by the Trusted Advisors within the service teams, we cultivate their skills in order to harvest these seeds by selling services.  It’s a win-win for the customer and the machinery supplier.

If someone had told me in 1997, that we would be so involved with Services and Services Marketing, I would not have believed them. Taking our creative sales and marketing skills into the service world has been a great success.

COVID was a transformative period for everyone.  For me, being grounded in Australia for 22 months, spending more time in the hammock (and surf ski) than I expected, gave me the opportunity to review everything we were doing and how we could turn a negative situation into a positive. Post COVID, we expanded the team. We now have a group of eleven talented individuals, with real life, practical backgrounds, speaking seven languages between all of us.

I am the proudest of our retention rate, with over 90% of our clients with us for many years and deep into their second, third or fourth cycle programs. This is extraordinary in this business.

With a number of our original clients from the printing industry, we have also learned that shrinking pains are much, much more painful than growing pains.  We see a lot of big engineering companies still looking at the world with an over-engineering focus, driven from their R&D and engineering departments, rather than looking at R&D and engineering from the market.

In our current, challenging times, we are doing more Global Service Transformation Projects, guiding large machine manufacturers to develop Life Cycle Care Programs to get more revenue from their installed base and to extend the life of the customer’s equipment, as another win-win. This means helping our clients develop not only service products, but also the methods to deliver them, with optimum pricing and on-target promotional activities. Over the last five years we have also added management and leadership development programs to our portfolio.

The greatest thing I have learned is that there are so many industries that are innovating, expanding, evolving, and constantly changing.

There are companies which have great culture and that culture is driven by how the company is managed and led. We see some of the best companies focus on building a community culture rather than a division culture. By far the best performing companies that we work with have focused on getting more revenue from their installed base.  During any slow-down period of new equipment business, such as we are experiencing right now, companies are realizing that the best way to compensate lower new equipment sales is to turn to services marketing.

Looking back at the many exceptional sales and services personnel, managers, directors and board members that we have met and worked with, there is also one skill that stands out.  By far the most common denominator is curiosity.  People who have curiosity their foundational skill, have the passion to further their knowledge.  They’re inquisitive about their customers, their colleagues, their company, their products and processes, and their industry.

I can categorically state that everyone in our Catalyst Global community has curiosity as their foundation.

From Humble Beginnings

Liana and I have been on this adventure together from the start. When I look back, there is not one thing I would change. The development and evolution of the business required continual evaluation, adjustment in focus and shifts into new and emerging industries, at various times along the journey.  

What’s next? After four million air miles, there will be more adventure, more fun. We have a team of younger partners that will keep growing the business for the next 30 years plus. But this week, it’s a flight from London to San Diego to speak at the Field Service West Conference to present Life Cycle Management and Services Marketing.

Tony Kenney