joe's history as a consultant
"when i was young, it seemed that life was so logical..."
Independent since 2003, my career as a consultant began in 1993 as a part-time (it was never part-time) telephone interviewer for a market-to-market research project to "quantify the petroleum underground storage tank market and forecast demand for service station upgrades 1993 to 1998, necessary to comply with the Clean Water Act."
Our unique professional relationship extended 31 years, from Feb 1993 -> Nov 2003 then again from Feb 2013 -> May 6, 2023.
please note: I no longer provide services for, deliver services to, or partner with Havill Consultants in the delivery of services, in any capacity.
Havill Consultants
Our 1995 benchmark study of the commercial fleet refueling industry brought the who's who of oil industry clients. We began a 20-year relationship supporting national marketing efforts for the Shell Fleet Card, rolling out 1,000 seats of GoldMine, and maintaining an abstract of the Dun & Bradstreet business database.
By 1999, there was this thing called the interwebs. Shell wanted to use that, not GoldMine. I architected an intern-programmed web-based lead-delivery system, then a multi-tenant web-based CRM/PRM, hosted at our office, to supportfleet industry clients. The original code still runs today.
Traditional services remained but expanded to include the FleetLeads CRM system, and the FleetLeads database (a proprietary database of over 2 million fleet operators, enchanced with research). Havill ended their relationship with GoldMine in 2002, I began plateau marketing and a 6-month transtion out of Havill.
Havill would replace the FleetLeads system with LeanGreenFleet in 2009, and more recently, FleetWiki. I would return in an adjunct senior consultant capacity from 2013 thru 2019, full-time through May 2022 and on contract into May 2023.
plateau marketing
In 2003, the crm market was transitioning from resellers to a trained, certified partner model. I parted ways with Havill to focus on GoldMine and a subset of complimentary services.
I quickly became the go-to guy for large CRM prospects with unique needs. CRM vendors were selling products and I was selling solutions, equipped with a product that served well as a hub for complex integration, reporting, and dashboarding needs centered around sales, marketing, and customer service data and issues.
By 2015, you could google CRM and find over 300 choices. The behemoths could do anything for a price - mot necessarily "cheaper or better." But product differences that made them a better choice, and GoldMine became a product more equipped for smaller customers. I found myself quoting small product installs or odd one-off engagements.
When Nick asked me to help with his 2020 initiatives, I decided to transition out of the channel. When COVID hit 2 weeks later, I instead went "inactive" but reactively supporting and transitioning clients as needed. Urgency, timing - they became secondary. As I transition to software independence, it's time to finalize what i started in february 2020 and end my GoldMine partnership.