She blazes consulting trail wherever market leads

REVENUE STREAM: A self-described "revenue coach," Kristin Zhivago interviews customers to find out what's not working for companies. Then her company, Zhivago Management Partners, goes to work fixing "what's broken." / PBN PHOTO/CATIA CUEN
REVENUE STREAM: A self-described "revenue coach," Kristin Zhivago interviews customers to find out what's not working for companies. Then her company, Zhivago Management Partners, goes to work fixing "what's broken." / PBN PHOTO/CATIA CUEN

Kristin Zhivago describes herself as a “revenue coach” and says personality counts when selecting her clients.
“In my coaching work, I always work for CEOs except at the very largest companies such as IBM and Johnson & Johnson, where I tend to work for more of a VP level,” she said.
“My sweet spot is a nice guy or gal, because I refuse to work for jerks, they never take good care of customers or employees so it’s not worth working with them,” said Zhivago, owner and operator of Zhivago Management Partners in Jamestown. “I work with nice people who have established companies who are trying to get to the next level.”
Zhivago says she interviews their customers to find out why they bought, how they describe what they bought, and how they describe the company to other people. “It’s everything they say about you when you’re not in the room.” She then takes what she learned and analyzes it, summarizes and quantifies it for the management team.
“Then we go to work. We go to work fixing what’s broken, and promoting what they are doing right in a way that will resonate with future customers,” she said.
One example Zhivago points to as a common mistake among her clients is the “About” section of the company’s website. “Potential customers will almost immediately go to a company’s website and ‘who are they’ is the first question a potential customer asks, because ‘who are they’ will determine how they behave when I’m their customer,” she said.
Zhivago says more often than not the people don’t get their questions answered because there is either no “About” section or the section is all text, leaving the potential customer unable to, “really look into the eyes of the team running the company.”
But being a revenue coach is only the latest chapter in her journey of a career in sales, marketing and management. “I’ve been through several career redesigns,” said Zhivago. “I think you have to remake yourself every five to 10 years.” Zhivago found herself drawn to sales and marketing during college. She originally went to school in San Francisco to be a teacher, majoring in music and English. Zhivago says she put herself through school with a sales job and a few singing gigs when she realized which path she would take.
“I really felt that marketing and selling was so much more interesting,” she recalled. “I was a very good singer, but I just felt like giving someone a few minutes of pleasure being up on stage and singing a song and taking them on that journey was not quite as impactful, as world-changing, as helping someone realize their dreams. That’s what I do. I help people realize their dreams and the entrepreneur, the CEO, they have big, world-changing kind of dreams, and they need help.”
Zhivago began trailblazing in the field from the get-go. “I really started my career in high-tech; I was selling machine-shop tools. … I was working for Pratt & Whitney, and that experience taught me what not to do selling, they didn’t train me, I just went out there and started to sell, so I learned the hard way what didn’t work.”
Despite being a woman in an extremely male-driven industry at the time, Zhivago says she didn’t experience much in the way of sexism. “I found, and what I continue to find, is that they really don’t care where the knowledge is coming from, if it’s good knowledge. So if you’re still whining about somebody not paying attention to you it’s probably because you’re not saying things to them that make them want to pay attention to you.”
Prompted by the lack of tools she thought that marketers were giving to the salespeople, Zhivago quickly underwent her first career redesign shifting her focus to marketing. At 28 years old, she started her company, Zhivago Management Partners, with her husband in Silicon Valley in 1979, focusing on marketing services for the high-tech industries in the area. The next career redesign came in 1991 when Zhivago’s husband decided to retire. She slowly began to convert her business from an outside marketing firm to one that helps in-house marketing efforts at companies, but that quickly progressed beyond marketing. “I started renting myself out as a VP. I was a rent-a-VP for about eight years and I would go into companies, their marketing, sales, or product-management departments and basically turn them around so they were more effective.”
Zhivago credits her success as an executive to her process-oriented nature: “I am a strong believer in process. I’ve continued to be an absolute rabid learner and teacher of what I learn; testing things out in the marketplace, seeing what works, and then as soon as I know it works I turn around and I teach people how to do it. That’s really what I’m doing now in my books, speeches and consulting work.”
Zhivago also branched out and began working for businesses beyond the high-tech sector. Spurred by the development of the Internet as a platform for commerce, her clients began to run the gamut from travel and health care businesses, to sellers of food and consumer goods.
It was also during that time period when Zhivago and her husband decided to relocate to the East Coast, settling in Jamestown in 1996 because they wanted to live on the water and support their passion for sailing.
Tired of the travel associated with serving as a rent-a-VP, Zhivago finally underwent yet another career redesign settling into her current role as a revenue coach, but there’s no guarantee this will be the last stop on her career journey.
“I will go where the market is,” she said. “When something new comes out, I’m like a leopard on the back of antelope.” •

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