Case study
ASLAN cut its cost to win a new client 63% in a year. Its CEO got marketing off his desk.
ASLAN Training & Development is a 30-year global sales training firm based in Roswell, Georgia. Selling Power has named it a Top Sales Training Company 14 years running. I served as ASLAN's fractional CMO from August 2024 to September 2026, and I've advised them since.
Year one results
Year one: 2025 versus 2024.
The starting point
Marketing was the number one thing on the CEO's whiteboard.
The training works. Clients come back and refer others. By mid-2024, the leadership team wanted a more predictable way to win new clients alongside its relationship-driven sales.
The marketing leadership seat had been hard to fill. In Tom Stanfill's words:
“We'd been struggling to find an executive to lead our marketing efforts.”
Tom Stanfill, CEO and Co-Founder
Part-time vendors covered copywriting and SEO, paid ads and HubSpot administration. Each worked in its own lane. No one owned the plan above them.
“Every vendor had their own philosophy on what we should be doing, which nicely aligned with the services they offered. We needed somebody we could trust to step back, define the strategy, and not let the strategy be driven by the vendors.”
Tom Stanfill
Why a fractional CMO
A CMO's experience at about 10 hours a week.
“Moving to a fractional CMO allowed us to afford somebody who had the expertise to work within our budget and give us what we needed at the executive level. We weren't ready to hire somebody full-time.”
Tom Stanfill
The first 90 days covered three things: an assessment, a plan that tied marketing inputs to revenue outputs, and quick wins. The reporting in HubSpot came first, so every decision after that had real numbers behind it. Leadership reviewed one scorecard every week that tied marketing to pipeline, revenue and close rate.
What I changed
Over two years I ran the whole function: strategy, reporting, content, the website, email nurture and the team. Three calls did the most.
Installed one in-house operator
I installed an in-house marketing technician. Today she executes the quarterly priorities and keeps the day-to-day marketing running.
Picked one buyer
Content moved to the one buyer who signs the contract. One strong post a week replaced several lighter ones. The newsletter came back on a weekly schedule.
Gave buyers one next step
Every page pointed to one ask: a consult. Case studies opened up with no form, a short video showed what the consult looked like, and 3 nurture sequences became 1.
What changed
More of the right clients, for less.
Tom watches one number above the rest: first meetings with the right people. By his count, marketing-sourced first meetings doubled in year one.
“That's the key thing we're measuring. Are we getting meetings with the right people? That tells you the quality of leads.”
Tom Stanfill
Half of all consults became a qualified first meeting. And 45% of qualified opportunities became clients, the best close rate I've seen in 10 years of running marketing in this category.
In Tom's words
"I'm spending time running ASLAN. Alonso is running marketing. Before, building a marketing engine was the number one thing on my whiteboard. Now I'm focused on scaling ASLAN, not fixing marketing. That's a huge lift for me."
"Alonso feels more of a team member than a contractor. That makes him a partner. That's what surprised me. You only really see that from employees."
Tom Stanfill, CEO and Co-Founder, ASLAN Training & Development
Will this work for your firm?
The shape of the sale is what carries over.
My background is expert-led services: over a decade running marketing inside sales training and revenue consulting firms, ASLAN included.
What carries over is the shape of the sale: big contracts, long cycles, a person closing every deal, and referrals doing most of the work.
If your sale looks different, I'll tell you on the call.
Your firm
Running an owner-led B2B services firm that grew on referrals?
Find out in 15 minutes if this fits. You leave with a short list of what I'd fix first, whether we work together or not.
See if this fits