Issue link: http://www.insightdigital.biz/i/180153
UPFRONT face time P H OTO G R A P H B Y B i l l K ap i n s k i / I M A G E S T U D I O S , F O R I N SI G H T Steve Van Remortel Steve Van Remortel is owner of SM Advisors in Green Bay and is author of "Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream." He is a featured speaker at the third annual Manufacturing First Expo & Conference in Green Bay on Oct. 31. Recently, he talked with Insight Associate Editor Nikki Kallio about how manufacturers can be more successful. w w w. i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m on picking your flavor I was b orn and raised in De Pere and lived all over the country for many years and came back. My undergraduate degree is in marketing and organizational communications; it was during that time I realized that strategy was one of my core passions in life. When I was in Detroit, I went back for my master's degree in strategy, continuing to try to build my passion for it. "SM" stands for "strategic management," and our focus was exclusively on helping companies develop their strategy around why a customer is going to do business with you versus somebody else. The strategy and talent combination kind of came together like peanut butter and chocolate. Once I realized the power of simultaneously optimizing your strategy and your talent at the same time, that's when we had a breakthrough – I would be with clients, and I'd say, "You gotta stop selling vanilla ice cream! You gotta sell Rocky Road ice cream!" So at that point I dot-commed Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream. I trademarked it and over the next three or four years, created this process that helps an organization optimize their strategy and their talent at the same time. What we did when [continued] » O c t o b e r 2 013 • Insight | 17