Cases – IVANNESTERENKO – Strategy Mentor

Success Stories

Transforming Business Growth

Discover how we helped entrepreneurs overcome challenges and achieve measurable results through tailored strategies.

Case Study: From Struggling Agency to B2B Powerhouse

Marina, CEO of a small marketing agency and co-founder of a mid-sized B2B company in warehouse construction, approached Ivan for help in defining a clear strategy. Her request came from a set of pressing pain points:

Ongoing negative profit, despite increasing business opportunities and a growing customer base.
Overwhelming workload managing two businesses and scaling sales simultaneously.
Above all, a lack of support from her team and misalignment with her co-founder.

In the first 30 minutes, Marina shared her numbers. In the next 10, she proposed her own path forward: doubling down on brand, boosting marketing, and even renaming the company.

But in our conversation, we identified the real root issues:

Conflicting roles: founder, general manager, and head of sales — all at once.
No dedicated sales lead and no structured sales approach.
Unclear positioning and portfolio strategy.

We agreed on a focused plan:

Hire a Sales Director with a structured approach and skills in marketing automation.
Build a clear portfolio and concentrate marketing on the most profitable segments.
Clarify roles and responsibilities across the leadership team.
Commit to reaching break-even within a realistic timeframe.
Align with the co-founder on the new direction and the resources needed.

One year later:

The company now has a stable structure, including a Sales Director — freeing Marina to focus on her general management role.
The business implemented its portfolio strategy and focused on key account needs.
It was successfully integrated into the parent B2B company, eliminating duplication, better serving the largest client, and streamlining management.

Case Study: From Survival Mode to 10X Growth Strategy

DBaza is a SME with revenue around 1 mio euro in the segment of Educational Consultancy and SaaS in Digital Health partnering with biggest Pharma and device producers for diabetes.

CEO has called Ivan asking for help. Main issues formulated in first conversation:

Team is not engaged in strategic conversations
Biggest customer after many years starts considering Dbaza as transactional partner giving more and more priorities to bigger names despite clear difference in value provided by Dbaza.
Revenue has stagnated and even dived due to covid and lack of decision ownership on a customer side.
Feeling fatigue from constant survival mode and dependance on the biggest customer and its internal politics and people rotations.

After first conversation it was clear that:

Existing strategy was not reflected in prioritized activities and didn’t give enough traction on new Saas services.
No sound clear growth strategy linked to resource needs.
Small team was very much dedicated to delivering existing project.
Skill set of the team was great for delivering value but not for forward lookign strategic view.
CEO held other roles, like business development and product owner beyond being founder and dealing with all financial issues.

After participation in few internal meetings and initial diagnostics it was proposed to separate operational meetings from strategic conversations.

Instead of having regular strategic talks it was suggested to move all thoughts, findings and market insights into One Two Day Strategic Workshop.

This workshop gave the significant results:

Clear vision and strategy how to 10x the business in 5 years.
Creating 3 key strategic initiatives to move from survival to growth
Defining additional projects to attract resources and plan long term resource needs.
Allocating ownership to managers.
At the end we got engaged and enthusiastic team.

After the workshop we agreed for 1 year support to implement strategic review process which turned into multi-years collaboration and includes beyond strategic function, mentorship, coaching and special projects, like Funding.

Looking back went right:

Offloading product manager role from CEO
Focus on brining new customers.
Securing presence in the biggest customer by introducing focus and follow up on Stakeholder management.
Productifying biggest service tool helped to bring significant attention and start projects with other divisions of big Pharma group.

What didn’t go so well:

Huge reorganization at the biggest customer affected capability to aquire more resources
Attracting financing takes longer than expected due to market conditions.
Marketing strategy was put on slow motion.

Case Study: Entering a New Market Segment

Macsa ID is a leading global supplier of laser-cutting and laser-coding equipment. It is a fast-growing company based in Barcelona. The CEO contacted Ivan to help with the promotion of their high-speed coding solution to the packaging industry.

During the first conversation, we uncovered a list of challenges:

The product is perceived as too expensive and not fitting most of the flexible packaging industry requirements.
There are one-off sales of other products scattered across the packaging industry, not giving a full picture of the segment and product benefits.
Customers are often confused due to incorrect understanding of the company and product capabilities.
The company’s sales organisation works across industries and often through dealers, not providing full feedback on product performance.

After initial conversations, both sides agreed to change the goal of the consulting assignment from “sell more of the same stuff” to “building a comprehensive strategy for the flexible packaging segment.”

We set up a 4-month program based on Ivan’s proprietary Growth Strategy Framework. The project took a bit longer due to COVID restrictions. But as a result:

A roadmap to success to reach up to €15 million turnover was created.
A very simple and actionable strategy document was created and approved by management for execution.
A new sales department focusing on the flexible packaging industry was established.
Initial resources were allocated.
An action plan for the coming 6 months, including resource needs and coordination with R&D and other departments, was created.
Complimentary mentorship support was provided to the newly appointed Head of the Flexible Packaging Division during implementation.

What was the essence of the success formula used by Ivan and the team?

Acting as an outsourced project lead, not as an external consultant.
Conducting live customer and industry interviews using a unique questionnaire, allowing us to learn much more even from first-time meetings. We gained deep insights into customer challenges, long-term aspirations, and the relevance of Macsa ID’s portfolio to their business and innovation priorities.
Running four monthly 2-day workshops with the core customer team. We engaged top management in strategy design and followed a well-crafted, unique, and tailored process to define the best possible scenarios and solutions.
Using a “turning every stone” approach: we looked across the whole industry and matched the portfolio against the needs of the entire value chain, uncovering new opportunities and challenging previous assumptions.
Synchronizing shared resource needs with the rest of the organisation. In particular, we aligned across units on what not to do to maintain clear boundaries and ensure resources matched the division’s action plan.
A dedicated team was hired to take ownership of strategy execution from day one.

As a result of this strategic work:

Macsa established a strong presence in the flexible packaging industry.
Some of the industry player interviews turned into leads and future customers.
Key findings allowed the company to adjust the product portfolio to better fit market needs.
The simple strategy and action plan document enabled the newly hired team to start executing without the need for lengthy market research, alignment, or prioritisation.

The project was viewed as a great success by the customer. Despite being run during COVID and experiencing some delays, it reached all the goals set upfront.