Thriving with Expert Advising: Getting What You Want and Need
The Rolling Stones knew an important scouting truth: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you’ll find you’ll get what you need.” Our scouting and expert advising leads clients to understand their wants and needs and how to achieve them. yet2’s strategic insights, clarifying vision, and ability to drive client success make our expert advising a valuable tool in our client’s toolbox. Our expert consults do not offer band-aid solutions. They get into the nitty-gritty and offer understandings, opportunities, and support that address the root of clients’ tech needs.
Comprehensive Insights: Advising NASA on Water Collection Challenges
At yet2, we endeavor to provide genuinely beneficial insights to our clients. We strive to ensure our client’s progress is as smooth as possible by considering a variety of factors, be it technological or not. We peer into the finer details to spot and resolve problems before they arise, or to find angles to work for a more complete solution. For example:
Currently, we are advising NASA in their pursuit of understanding the challenges of water collection women face in underdeveloped rural areas. In this active project, our expert advising takes form in two ways: helping NASA understand its target audience and how we can incentivize the audience to be participants. Both of these points are crucial for NASA’s success. Our scouts are working to find sources of insight into the areas under investigation that will allow NASA to gather accurate, impactful, and relevant data. Working with clients to define and clarify the target audience and the desired data promotes successful execution. We don’t just look at our client’s concern; we look around it to see how different intersections affect our client’s work. Having gained an understanding of the target audience, advising about incentives is particularly vital. Through our years of scouting and advising, we understand that incentive is indispensable for collaboration. Helping our clients understand how their work and presentation appeal to their possible collaborators allows them to direct resources that will bring results. Our work has shown us the types of incentives that appeal to solution providers, and we advise our clients in a way that maximizes deal-building.
Reimagining the Problem: Pivoting Client to Consider Next-Best Options Based on Early Market Feedback
Another aspect of our consulting is reimagining problems and solutions to find creative answers for our clients. By redefining the problem, we widen the range of solutions giving our clients more flexibility and working around constraints. For example:
A client fearful of supply chain shocks caused by COVID-19 wanted alternative US-based end-to-end manufacturers of their product. Unknown to our client, their original supplier was the only US-based manufacturer of their formula’s active and supplemental ingredients: a fact we verified early in our search. A direct match for our client’s needs was not there. However, we continued searching and brainstorming alternatives. Through our various channels, we identified thirty possible solution providers with either the active or supplemental ingredient and ten who had both but were outside of the U.S. We presented this data to our client’s stakeholders and proposed three new strategies that would still result in an end-to-end manufacturer of their product: work with a non-US manufacturer, work with a US active ingredient manufacturer to produce supplemental ingredients or work with a US supplemental ingredient manufacturer to produce active ingredients. Although the manufacturer would not have an end-to-end US product already established, we worked with our client to navigate conversations with seven providers they moved forward with.
Pitch Day Event: Pushing for Early Inclusion of Key Stakeholders
Even with valuable insights or creative prospective solutions, sometimes a further push is needed to take our clients to where they want to be. This push can be helping clients capitalize on opportunities or convincing clients to move in directions that will pay off later. Because we are committed to giving our clients the best solution, we strive to ensure the available resources are used to their fullest potential.
A longtime client approached us looking to discover a minority-owned beauty supplier as part of an expansion and R&D effort. We collaborated with the client to create a Pitch Day Event for prospective partners. yet2 scouted forty-two participants and narrowed it down to twenty-five which we examined in detail alongside our client. We pushed our client to include stakeholders from their incubator team in the Pitch Day Event because we believed their contribution would help us choose a prospective partner. Including these stakeholders ended up being a crucial point in our efforts. The partner our client eventually selected was a prospect the initial project team passed on. The stakeholders from the incubator team saw the prospect’s potential and decided to go for them.
After deliberation and more vetting, our client decided to move forward with the partner selected by the incubator team. However, after the Pitch Day Event, partnering discussions began to falter. Making sure our client would benefit from this opportunity, our experts stepped in to advise both sides on building a strong partnership. Our client and the partner resolved the difficulties, ultimately resulting in the launch of 2 SKUs.
yet2’s experts are here to get what you need to thrive. Our expert advisers work diligently to understand the nuance. Before jumping into solution-finding, we take the time to understand our client’s business context and available budget to make sound judgments. We see what barriers are present and find ways around or through them. However, we don’t just disappear once the challenge is overcome.
After helping our client find their minority-owned CDMO, we remained part of the project team after the deal was signed, serving as a liaison between the two parties. For our client, we helped navigate marketing issues, material and ingredient changes, quality control, and decision-making. We also served as a conduit for the CDMO, helping maintain communication and setting reasonable expectations for production.
From beginning to end, yet2 is there. Our expert scouting and advising have been honed for years to provide our clients with what they want, and if not that, what they need.