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Personally edited by FUSION principal and training marketing authority, Edward T. Shineman, Training Business E-Visory's 3,000 subscribers include more than 400 training company owners and CEOs.

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FUSION client comments ...

Knows how to grow successful training businesses.
Ed’s been our go-to marketing guy from Day One through 17 consecutive years of growth, and has contributed immeasurably to our success. He’s helped us promote events, generate sales leads, configure license agreements, position our practice areas and lots more. Ed has started up and run successful training businesses himself, so even his most imaginative marketing and promotion recommendations are rooted in a deep understanding of what it takes to win customers and turn a profit. It you’re seeking a marketing partner to help you grow your training business to the next level, Ed’s the man.

John Hoskins
Founder and CEO
Advantage Performance Group

Guidance and advice have proved invaluable.
I’ve engaged Ed’s services at three different high technology leaders. He’s helped my organizations with high-volume pricing, strategic alliances, inside sales metrics, competitive benchmarking, and more. Recently he pinch hit as our interim worldwide marketing manager during the launch of a crucial new software platform. Ed’s work has always exceeded my expectations and his guidance and advice have been invaluable. He really knows what makes education services businesses tick.

Dan Klein
VP Worldwide Education Services
Business Objects

Told us what we needed to hear.
Some consultants tell you what you want to hear; others tell you what you need to hear. Ed Shineman is definitely in the second group. Ed pushed us to reach out of our comfort zone, think creatively, but with discipline and quantitative rigor. The result was the most productive and cost effective lead generation campaign in the company's history. Our sales force has been raving about the quality and quantity of the sales leads they have received over the last year. Thanks Ed!

Nick Gaehde
President & CEO
Lexia Learning Systems, Inc.

Insightful, candid, partnered well with our team.
We needed immediate help in making a critical decision on whether or not to make a substantial training industry investment. Ed provided key insights concerning the firm’s business model and marketing approach - as well as a plan for offsetting potential key player vulnerabilities. He’s quick, candid, and partnered well with our team. We will continue to tap Ed’s expertise as we pursue additional training and direct-marketing related businesses.

Evan Hershberg
Senior Associate
ONCAP

Immediately understood what we were about.
When we engaged FUSION to develop our Website, we were initially a bit apprehensive – because previous marketing firms had simply not been able to grasp what we were about. However, Ed’s initial insights were right on the money – almost like he had been calling on customers for us for years. Our new site does a great job of summing up our value proposition, and has helped to expand our market by focusing on the application of coaching to a number of key business priorities. Ed also incorporated a number of offers on our site so we are now getting a steady stream of qualified inquiries. Finally, the site design Ed and his partner Julie came up with is really attractive and easy to navigate. Thanks to Ed, we’re now proud to share our Website with anyone.

Brent McChesney
Sales Manager
InsideOut Development, LLC

Helped us double in size.
We contracted with Ed to provide a comprehensive plan for growing our business and the advice he provided was highly actionable and relevant, with no beating around the bush. He brings lots of real-world training industry insights to the equation. We’ve more than doubled in size since we engaged Ed and still have yet to finish implementing some of his recommendations.

Peggy Carlaw
Founder and Vice President
Impact Learning Systems

Overwhelmed our launch seminars with 800 enrollees.
Ed’s promotion efforts overwhelmed our 20 launch breakfast seminar sites with more than 800 enrollees, requiring us to run overflow sessions. This is the kind of problem we’re always happy to have! We’ve also trusted Ed to develop our Website and with perhaps a dozen other important assignments. He really knows all of the hot buttons to appeal to the HRD community.

Tim Mooney
Practice Leader
The Advantage Way

Tapped our membership base for nearly 500 sales inquiries.
I was recently VP for a services industry trade association and one of our alliance partners called me up and said “we’ve just hired a firm called FUSION to help us market better to your membership.” I said “smart move” because I already knew Ed Shineman from the great work he did for me when I was a marketing exec at Sun Microsystems. Next thing you know, Ed developed an imaginative service metrics thought leadership series and launched a well-orchestrated campaign among our membership that resulted in nearly 500 sales leads in just six months. Ed is a total professional, and a pleasure to work with.

Trisha Bright
Founder and Principal
The Brenard Group

Helped us grow course attendance by more than 20%.
Ed’s innovative solution pricing constructs helped Learning Tree grow public course attendance by more than 20%. He really knows how to fill seats. Ed also helped us evaluate several potential new ventures and fine tune our IT certification approach. He’s extremely gifted at coming up with simple ways to solve multi-faceted business problems.

Max Shevitz
Formerly Executive Vice President
Learning Tree International

Distinguished us from the competition.
I knew Ed from the cutting-edge marketing work he had done at Xerox Learning Systems, so when I was named VP marketing for Geller & Company, a New York City financial outsourcing firm, he was the first person I called. We had a Website and were running pay-per-click advertising – but were getting next to nothing in the way of response. Ed and his design partner Julie partnered closely with us in developing an elegant -looking new Website that spoke to how we were unique and helped us stand out from the competition. Then he search-engine-optimized the site and build in a number of relevant offers to grow traffic and improve click through. Finally, he totally overhauled our Google and Yahoo pay-per-click campaigns. The end result was more than 20x as many new business inquiries as we had been receiving before.

Laurie Caplane
Former VP Marketing
Geller & Company

Knows how to transfer his knowledge.
We asked Ed to help us upgrade our education services sales and marketing practices, with a particular emphasis on improving results from our inside sales function. His recommendations addressed sales goals, territory assignments, metrics, reward systems and staffing levels. He also led a workshop for our people on consultative selling skills. Ed is a creative problem solver who delivers recommendations that are highly practical and easy to apply. He’s not just knowledgeable; he knows how to transfer that knowledge.

John Fronius
Director, Support Knowledge Systems
Mentor Graphics

Thinks outside of the box.
Ed was a great help to me when I was GM of Sun’s U.S. education services business – and later when I performed a similar role in EMEA. Among many projects, he helped us structure our customer promotion efforts, advised us on how best to deploy our inside sales team, and helped us better engage Sun’s channel partners in the education selling effort. I’ll always remember an out-of-the-box approach Ed came up with that helped us rationalize course prices across all of our EMEA geographies. Even our independent-minded country managers bought into his approach without a quibble, and our customers benefited as well.

Dave Nelson
Former U.S. and EMEA GM
Sun Education Services

Totally assimilated our intellectual property.
Ed developed a turnkey multi-touch mail campaign to help Huthwaite cultivate high potential prospects and give our salespeople a foot in the door. He totally assimilated some pretty challenging intellectual property and also added a lot of value on our sales conference calls. The job aids he developed were so popular that we offered them on our Website. His work is both creative and provocative and really resonates with customers.

Scott Edinger
Fmr. Sr. VP Sales
Huthwaite, Inc.

Maverick approach got results.
When Telcordia asked Ed to rescue an under-performing technology-based training catalog, he recommended abandoning it in favor of a maverick long copy letter approach that had some people scratching their heads. However, because he had always come through for us we went along with his recommendation and wound up with many times as many customer orders as before. He really knows what it takes to get results.

Barry Sullivan
Former Director eLearning Products Business Unit
Telcordia Technologies, Inc.

Helped us realise a fantastic ROI.
We partnered with Ed on the development of a high level leadership survey of senior level executives across Europe. His input and ability to take the findings and formulate them into a robust marketing tool enabled us to realise a fantastic ROI on our efforts. By working with Ed we were able to come to market much quicker with our new products and as a result saved a significant amount of time and money. I would personally have no hesitation in recommending Ed's services to any organisation seeking to develop value-focused marketing messages that stand out from the crowd.

Jeff Hearn
General Manager
IIR Management Development UK

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