Who gets me up in the morning?

You do.

I know. It sounds corny. But it's true.

I would guess that you are a business owner, CEO, or manager who is stuck - and looking for answers. And I can tell you, straight up, that I live to solve your revenue problems.

I love the rush that happens when one of my clients shifts from frustrated to focused, from focused to fantastic. I can't think of anything more rewarding or exciting, frankly, and the longer I do it the more I love it - and the better I've gotten at doing it.

The frustration always comes from too many marketing and selling efforts just not paying off the way they should (or the way they must, in order for the company to grow). So many consultants, so many recommendations - "Do this, and your sales will go up." "Jump on the latest bandwagon, you won't regret it."

So you do - you jump on. And then, you do end up regretting it.

You can't afford to do this forever. Finally you look for some other answer, and you end up here.

The focus comes from the way I will help you. What I will do is focus first on your customers - who they are, how they buy, and what they want to buy from you. Then I help you focus all of your energy where it will do you the most good.

I interview your customers and come back with insights and recommendations that will start making it easy for people to find you, like what you're selling, and buy from you. The revenues will start flowing and the people inside your company will start thinking and behaving in a new, customer-pleasing way.

It's not rocket science; so much of what I do is common sense. But, it's customer-oriented common sense; it's driven by your own unique buyers and what you can offer those buyers, specifically and successfully. And it is a method that has been tested and proven.

The revenue coaching work I do is also not something just anyone can do for you. I'm particularly good at this, I've got tons of experience, and I've learned so many lessons that I can help you solve any business problem we uncover as we do the research, jointly create the strategy, and implement the plan.

So YOU are what gets me up in the morning. Thank you for that.

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For those of you who were expecting a more "formal," third-person, factual bio, here it is:

Kristin Zhivago is a business growth consultant who started out selling and marketing software and hardware products. She founded Zhivago Management Partners, Inc., in Silicon Valley, in 1979. The company moved to Jamestown, RI in 1996. Clients range from thriving young start-ups to those in the Fortune 500, including Dow Jones, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Bazaarvoice, and Eloqua.

Zhivago worked exclusively for high-tech companies until the Web emerged as a platform for commerce in 1994. She then started applying her revenue growth methods to companies in a variety of industries, including travel, health, publishing, consulting, marine, food, and consumer goods. She spent a number of years as a "rent-a-VP," performing marketing, sales, and product management department turnarounds for CEOs. She then settled on her current role as Revenue Coach. She continues to immerse herself in, and apply, new technologies as they are introduced, always focusing on practical applications that "work" with her client's customers.

Zhivago speaks and teaches frequently, worldwide, on the subject of increasing revenue by supporting the customer's buying process. Her articles and monthly columns have appeared in numerous trade and business journals since 1984. She launched her second book, Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy, in 2011. She is the author of the blog RevenueJournal.com.

Kristin Zhivago is an expert at matching a company's selling efforts to their customer's buying process. She has perfected a works-every-time research and revenue growth methodology that uncovers the barriers to the sale—identifying what is working and what needs fixing. She then uses her findings to guide managers in creating customer-centric companies, websites, products, and services.

Services include:

• Increasing sales. Once the barriers to the sale are identified, and the customer's buying process is mapped, the appropriate changes and additions are made to the company's marketing and selling efforts. Marketing messages are adjusted and utilized in the correct places (including social media, online and offline, sales pitches/presentations, etc.). Marketing and sales people are coached. Sales and marketing efforts all bear more fruit.

• Company positioning. The in-depth customer interviews that Zhivago conducts always result in a clear understanding of the promises that customers expect the company to keep. She then works with top managers to further identify the promises that the company can keep, given its unique products, processes, people, and policies. These promises become the company's brand—and provide a straightforward path to increased revenue.

• Product positioning. Zhivago works with top managers to position the product so it is in alignment with what customers want to buy. If needed, she writes the seminal pieces, to set the tone for the website, emails, and all other marketing/selling materials. She "works herself out of a job," by helping the company either find new writers or train the existing writers to generate appropriate materials. Workshops and coaching ensure that ongoing efforts are in sync with the customer's buying process.

• Optimizing teams. Zhivago helps identify the right tasks, makes sure the right people are assigned to those tasks and are organized in the right structure, and supervised properly. If new personnel are needed, she writes job descriptions, recruits candidates, screens resumes, interviews and assesses the candidates, calls references, helps with negotiation, and trains the person after hiring, as needed. 

• Coaching and training. Zhivago coaches CEOs and entrepreneurs, and trains and manages salespeople, marketing people, copywriters, product managers, customer service people, and business partners, worldwide, for companies of all sizes. She has done this work for the smallest and largest companies, including Fortune 500 companies such as IBM and Dow Jones, and fast-growing companies such as Bazaarvoice and Eloqua. One of her main jobs is to serve as a personal revenue coach to company CEOs.

• Website strategy, navigation, and content. IBM is one of the companies that has hired Zhivago numerous times to redesign various sections of the IBM Business Partner websites and other portals. Redesign activity includes user testing.

• Strategic and marketing/selling copy. Zhivago has written more than 10,000 pages of marketing and selling content, for online and offline use, including deep technical pieces (a LAN-to-WAN Guide, and a guide to designing integrated circuits, for example), white papers, online ads, web pages, landing pages, and emails.

• Vendor identification and management. In addition to finding, training, and helping to manage employees, Zhivago can find the right outside vendors and systems - for websites, campaigns, customer outreach and support, and more.

Kristin has solved so many business problems that she's gotten to the point where the solutions are obvious to her—once her customer research has revealed the company's strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. She is not an "every problem looks like a nail because I have only one hammer" kind of consultant. Her toolkit is filled with all sorts of solutions that make sense - and work. She doesn't allow her tools to become dated, either. She is always finding and testing new technologies and methodologies.