Click here to listen to full podcast
Lois Ritarossi is a seasoned Sales and Marketing Strategist, renowned for her ability to guide clients to successful product and service launches through integrated sales and marketing strategies. With over 30 years of global industry experience in marketing, management, sales, and operations, Lois has worked with both large and small companies, public and private, driving B2B results across diverse verticals.
Currently serving as the President of High Rock Strategies, an independent management consulting firm specializing in sales and marketing strategies for firms in the print, mail, and publishing sectors, Lois has been instrumental in fostering business growth. Her expertise lies in enabling sales teams to win new business by implementing consultative selling skills and emphasizing the value proposition of their services. Lois is highly regarded as a speaker and facilitator, earning acclaim for her engaging style, impeccable delivery, and in-depth content expertise.
Prior to her role at High Rock Strategies, Lois held key positions, including Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, at a global consulting firm focused on business development services for print providers. She also served as a principal at Fluent Technologies, managing all facets of company growth for the database management company serving the financial services industry. Throughout her career, Lois has consistently demonstrated proficiency in strategic planning, inkjet transformation, multi-channel campaigns, sales management, and various aspects of marketing strategy and implementation. As a Consultant, Speaker, Trainer, and Entrepreneur, Lois Ritarossi CMC continues to leave an indelible mark on the industry.
High Rock Strategies, a leading consulting firm, specializes in providing expert guidance to B2B companies for strategic planning, development, and deployment of sales, marketing, and operational strategies aimed at fostering growth. With a focus on internal strategic alignment, the company ensures clarity of organizational goals and objectives across departments, driving new revenue growth from both new and existing clients. High Rock Strategies also excels in building brand awareness, enhancing social media engagement, and optimizing workflow efficiency through improved automation, compliance measurements, successful technology implementations, and reduced manufacturing expenses.
Chris: Welcome back to the Think Factory podcast and we’re recording live from the Printing United Expo in Atlanta. What’s nice about having your own podcast, I guess, is the ability to sit with friends and talk about what they do and all the interesting things that is part of their business. So I’m really privileged to be here today with Lois Ritarossi, who is the president of High Rock Strategies. Good morning.
Lois: Chris, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks! Thanks for the invitation.
Chris: Of course. So, what’s great about Printing United is not only all the manufacturers and all the customers, but folks like you that are really subject matter experts in all kinds of things related to print and beyond. So, we’d love to have you just share High Rock Strategies and what you do for your clients.
Lois: Great. Thank you. So I have been on the consulting side for 18 years, and I love what I do because I get the opportunity to work with owners of companies, large service providers, printing and mailing some large brands and implants, banking and insurance, and the utility sector, helping them with sales and marketing, helping them with operational optimization, and helping them with inkjet adoption. And the most interesting thing I’ve seen is they did a lot of things to survive and get through the pandemic. Some of them had some great opportunities for revenue for a variety of reasons, especially the commercial printers. And what got them to here in 2023 is not what is going to get them to 2025 and beyond. So I’ve done some research and I’m working with several clients on strategic planning and it’s specifically around sales team motivation and sales enablement. And what does that look like if you have a team of tenured salespeople that have been selling direct for most of their lives and all of a sudden those buyers are not in their offices anymore and younger people are coming in and don’t really know much about print. But of course, they’re challenged with, you know, being in marketing roles and having to do things a different way. So when I look owners in the face, I’m like, well, well, we just want our sales team to be more effective. And I’m like, That’s great. That’s a great goal. Don’t we all? Don’t we? All right. That’s the universal goal here. And but what’s it going to take? And then I normally do an assessment and they say, well, we have challenges in all these areas. And it’s very funny because, I mean, I have done this kind of assessment with companies in Europe and South America and Mexico and Canada. Obviously, many here in the U.S. and I often find levels of dysfunction that make it difficult for the salespeople to be fully committed. And so when I talk about sales team motivation to owners and to people who are in sales management or leaders who didn’t come up the ranks through sales, and now they’re like, Well, my sales team is not doing this. My sales team is not doing that. And, you know, it’s hard for them to comprehend. I’m like, what sales motivation is individual, what’s going to motivate Christmas for them? What’s going to motivate Lois? And, you know, there’s lots of great books out there and there’s certainly some things that we can replicate. But until you build that culture of trust, where you have the right to be a coach to a salesperson, whether you’re the owner of the company or your sales leader, so often I find they haven’t created enough culture. They haven’t created an ability to interact with people as to understand what’s important to them. Is it money? Is it their family? Is it their lifestyle? Is it their acknowledgment within their community? And those things change from when you’re twenties and thirties to your forties and fifties and beyond.
Comments are closed