Thirty years working with business-to-business clients

Karen Gonçalves, principal, works primarily with business-to-business clients to conduct market research, develop strategic and marketing plans, and create a range of communications documents. She founded the practice after several years in international management consulting and venture capital. She has also taught a full range of marketing and strategy courses at both graduate and undergraduate levels throughout most of her career. Our goal is always to help clients make intelligent, informed decisions that help them increase profitable sales and expand their market presence.

Dr. Gonçalves' diverse experience and academic background allow her to blend the practicality of market research, the visionary thinking of strategic planning, and the conceptual rigor of academia. She offers an integrated understanding of the marketplace and its challenges, which clients find both unique and beneficial. Clients range from the largest global competitors to rapidly growing venture-backed firms, to not-for-profit private and public sector organizations. With each, our focus and process remain the same:

• First and foremost, we listen to our clients. Each situation is unique, so we learn from one project to the next, and approach each new opportunity with an open mind.
  
  
• After learning what the client hopes to accomplish from our work together, as well as their budget and time constraints, we develop a customized plan to meet the client's specific needs.
  
  
• Implementation is key: our work is skillful, insightful, and completed on time and within budget.
  
  
• Analysis and reporting are focused on developing as complete a picture as possible, so our clients gain critical insights into their markets, enabling them to compete effectively and aggressively. We also structure and share our results in a way that helps clients quickly see what steps they need to take, to implement the recommendations.

Karen P. Gonçalves

Karen Gonçalves' background includes traditional management and strategy consulting, sophisticated market research, venture capital and business school teaching experience. She is experienced with the Kano method, and is an experienced focus group facilitator. She has also conducted many telephone, mail, on-line and in person surveys, as well as secondary data gathering (desk studies). She is well versed with and experienced in both qualitative and quantitative analyses.

Throughout her career, Karen has started, built and successfully managed several businesses, ranging from this consulting practice, to a firm that imported and marketed parts and accessories for European cars, to an importer and marketer of custom-designed and standard ceramic products for home and commercial markets.

Before starting her own consulting firm, Karen was a senior staff consultant at Arthur D. Little, Inc., Cambridge, MA where she worked with clients in North America, Europe and Asia on strategic planning and market research assignments. Over half her clients competed in medical and vehicle markets. She also completed many assignments in a broad range of other industries, including not-for-profit organizations. Earlier, Karen was Assistant Director at Institute for New Enterprise Development, Belmont, MA where she critiqued close to 200 business plans, worked with entrepreneurs in the development of about 25 business plans, and was instrumental in assisting six ventures receive financing. She also authored case studies, and documents to help new entrepreneurs build their business plans, and edited about 500 pages of entrepreneurial workshop materials.

Dr. Gonçalves spent several years as Associate Professor of marketing at Nichols College, Dudley, MA, and was on the full-time faculty at Babson College, Wellesley, MA and Bentley University, Waltham, MA, where she taught both MBA and undergraduate courses. She has also taught at Northeastern University, Suffolk University and Stonehill College. When she first moved to California, she taught at Pepperdine University's Graziadio Graduate School of Business and Management.

Dr. Gonçalves wrote a textbook, Services Marketing: A Strategic Approach published by Prentice-Hall, and has published articles in academic journals and trade magazines. She holds an Ed.D. in Higher Education Administration with a minor in research design, and both MBA and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degrees from Northeastern University, Boston, MA.