W. R. ‘Max’ Carey, Jr., founder and Chairman of CRD® (Corporate Resource Development), is recognized as one of America’s leading sales and marketing consulting experts.
Max graduated from Columbia University where he was an Ivy League and NCAA record-setting defensive back. He became a Naval aviator, earned Top Gun certification and flew over 100 combat missions over North Vietnam. After his military service, he joined Ryan Insurance Group, now AON, as an entry-level salesman and in five years rose to National Marketing Manager.
In 1981, Max founded Corporate Resource Development. The results produced by Max and his team quickly lead CRD® to a position on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing privately held companies in America. Based in Atlanta, the company is known for serving some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious businesses and fast-growth entrepreneurial firms in effectively dealing with pressures caused by increased competition and less product and service differentiation.
Max’s expertise in brand identity and competitive strategies has served as a guide for CRD® to provide practical, real world, and highly measurable solutions to business challenges. Stories of the company’s many successes have been featured in national publications, including INC Magazine, Success, Life, Fortune and various trade journals.
CRD® has used its professionalism in strategic and tactical marketing and sales to assist companies like Dean Witter Reynolds, EZ-Go Textron, Novus, United Parcel Service, AIG, Kemper, The Step Company and many others. Max is also in great demand to deliver the CRD® message to associations, organizations and major corporations as a keynote speaker.
Economic Darwinism: A Corpoate Approach to ‘Survival of the Fittest’ No monkey stories here! Today, it is our marketplace that is evolving. Max reminds his audience that they don’t have to be the biggest or the strongest to thrive. They just have to be the most adaptable. He divides the session into four aggressive, interactive phases.
1. Max explains, in non-abstract terms, why we are in a marketplace where all products and services are being commoditized. This information is essential, because once you can understand it, you can fight it. 2. The second phase explores acceptable alternatives to respond to those pressures. Max pulls strategies from a variety of cases and brings them together to show his audiences action plans to get them back in the game. 3. Phase three involves the execution of the strategies that have been discussed. Max teaches his audience HOW to go to market and how to take specific steps that will facilitate change. 4. In the fourth (optional) phase, Max helps each person construct their own personal 90-day action plan that can be implemented as soon as they return to their offices.
This presentation takes a sort of Guerilla approach to strengthening businesses. The questions…What are we fighting?…What are the factors?…How are we going to execute a fight and, more importantly, WIN?…are all answered in ways that leave the members of the audience fired up about becoming adaptable in today’s ever-changing marketplace.
The Brand Trilogy: Creating, Selling and Living the Brand In this engaging presentation, Max Carey demonstrates how The Brand TrilogySM can enable businesses to sustain a competitive advantage while realizing greater market share and margins.
"Creating the Brand" is the methodology of building a strategy that differentiates your products and services in an increasingly commodity-driven marketplace. Max will illustrate how to define your brand in terms of the outcomes it provides your clients or prospects, rather than defining it in terms of the product itself, or the process followed, both which are susceptible to duplication.
"Selling the Brand" is the strategy execution to elevate the prospect contact level and to transition from a transactional to a consultative sales approach. Once the product or service is defined in terms of an outcome, it appeals to the mindset of a higher level within the company. "Selling the Brand," not the product/service, requires dramatic re-orientation and training of most sales forces.
"Living the Brand" involves fulfilling the brand promises developed in the strategy execution. Every aspect of your organization needs to be designed in such a way that it reinforces the outcomes positioning and allows your salespeople to sell to higher levels. Through the use of a performance model, which is a series of actions or behaviors that reinforce the brand identity, your company will develop a design that enables you to "Live your Brand." This is the consistent process of innovating and adapting to not only keep up with the marketplace, but to dramatically and proactively anticipate the demands of the changing marketplace
The Five Managable Marketing Truths: Our New Rules of Engagement Many companies today are caught in the devastating intersection of a changing economy and commodity based products and services. Traditional sales & marketing strategies and tactics may fall painfully short of the economic challenges ahead. Max points to The Five Manageable Marketing Truths:
1. Individuals and companies are aggressively co-managing short-term and long-term plans. 2. As a result, buyers and sellers must transition from transactional (event driven) selling, to consultative (relationship driven) selling styles. 3. To support this consultative selling style, commitments of greater magnitude must be exchanged between you and your client/vendor. The two partners will then function in a synergistic complementary relationship. 4. Partners will continually have to leverage greater expertise into their first tier accounts to gain ‘proprietary value or the perception of proprietary value’ in the eyes of their client. This expertise may well come from strategic alliances. 5. Smart evolving companies will only own assets in their core competencies, and all non-essential functions will be outsourced. This shift creates an opportunity to become more invasive to your client, which will in turn cause them to become more dependent upon you.
Max provides case study examples that illustrate how implementing these "truths" can help companies create a more stable corporate marketing future regardless of outside economic disturbances.
“My deepest gratitude for the superb performance you delivered at my sales meeting last week. You achieved a level of connection with the group that is difficult with even the most thorough preparation.” - Victor Macchio, Vice-President & General Manager, Group Travel Management Services, American Express
"Congratulations on delivering more than 200 presentations at our CEO Roundtable meetings with an average score above 4.5 out of 5." - Dan Barnett, Chief Operating Officer , The Executive Committee (TEC), San Diego, California
“A belated note to tell you how much I enjoyed your presentation…I am not blowing smoke when I say you got to me like few professionals ever have. I believe I will be different, I will be better in my business because of you. Thank you so much.” - John R. Radacsy III, Financial Counselor, Cigna
“Max's energy gets everybody going. His motivational message is clear and gets people charged up to take their performance to the next level and beyond. It is a can't miss experience.” - Chris Sullivan, Founder and CEO, Outback Steakhouse
"Max understands that success is a choice. His consultation has helped us create ways to become true business partners with our customers. The result is an increase in revenues and profits...in other words...success." - J. Ryan Parks , Marketing Director , Central States Manufacturing
