What kind of marketing executive is Marc Heffner?

Marc Heffner is a CPG-trained, full-spectrum marketing executive with Fortune 500 experience. His work spans product development and go-to-market strategy, brand positioning, CRM and marketing operations, healthcare patient acquisition, and cross-functional team leadership across the US and Mexico.

What industries has Marc Heffner led marketing in?

Commercial and residential heating equipment, commercial coffee equipment, door hardware, industrial manufacturing, and healthcare, including multi-location dental service organizations and a specialty oral surgery group.

What results has Marc Heffner delivered?

Examples on this page include a product launch that grew from under 1% to 42% of its category in fifteen months, a seven-stage product development process that improved speed to market 33%, the CON·X·US connected-boiler platform named among the year's best new products, a brand campaign that raised impressions 60% at 16% lower cost, and a healthcare call center program that raised answered calls 72% and cut missed calls 90% while marketing spend was cut by roughly half as a share of revenue.

Does Marc Heffner have healthcare marketing and HIPAA experience?

Yes. He has led marketing and patient-contact operations for a 14-location dental service organization and built the growth strategy for a four-office oral and maxillofacial surgery group. He is HIPAA trained and designs patient acquisition programs around minimum-necessary data handling.

EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE · PRODUCT & GTM · LEADERSHIP

Built to grow brands,
products, and
businesses.

Great strategy plus great execution wins. Here are nine times I rolled up my sleeves with my team and did both, with numbers you can check.

See the work ↓Discuss an opportunity ↗

Strategy in the room,
not just on a slide.

Marc Heffner

PRODUCT & GTM
BRAND & DEMAND
PEOPLE & RESULTS

WHAT BOARDS AND CEOS HIRE ME FOR

The whole marketing job, done the Fortune 500 way.

Corporate strategy, not just campaigns

Plans that hold up in the boardroom. Finance, product roadmap, competitors, production, advertising, and sales launch, all in one plan.

Functions built from zero

I built a marketing department from one person. It grew into a team that ran national ads, digital, PR, trade shows, and customer marketing while the business doubled.

P&L accountability

I owned the trade-show P&L. Booth traffic grew 50%, even at slow shows. Conversion rose 29%. ROI improved 64%.

Product and innovation leadership

Five-year roadmaps. Five launches in one year. Connected-product specs written with customers. And the names behind trademarked features.

HOW I THINK ABOUT STRATEGY

Strategy and execution. You need both.

I've watched great plans die in the hallway. I've also watched good teams work hard on the wrong plan. Only one box wins, and that's where my teams and I try to live. Every story below started there.

And great execution never comes out of a marketing silo. I work side by side with sales, product, finance, operations, and the people who answer the phones. Marketing works when the whole company pulls in the same direction.

“A plan nobody can repeat back isn't a plan. It's a slide.”

Marc Heffner

Not sure which box you're in? Let's find out.

STRATEGY × EXECUTIONHow I size up a plan before we spend a dollar.

1 · SPECIALTY HEALTHCARE GROWTH STRATEGY

A surgery group that grew by knowing exactly where its patients come from.

The challenge. A four-office oral surgery group in Southern California lived on referrals from general dentists. But it had no clear picture of which referring offices, which neighborhoods, or which surgeons actually drove production. The newest office needed its own growth plan. And the economy was turning.

What I decided. I built the marketing plan the way a CFO would read it. Start with the economic signals that shape elective care. Map every patient and every dollar of production to a zip code. Forecast production by surgeon and office under three growth scenarios. Then, and only then, pick tactics. The bet: the referral network, not consumer ads, was the growth engine.

How we did it. We tiered referring offices A, B, and C, with a goal to move 5% of B's to A and 7% of C's to B. I designed a tiered incentive system that gives credit for referral-building work, from a quick visit to a one-on-one lunch to a lecture, so the surgeons' outreach could be tracked against referrals. A CRM ran the workflows for referred patients and referring offices. A monthly lecture series put the surgeons in front of their referrers. Social media pointed at referring doctors, not the public.

What happened. Quarterly revenue across the four offices rose 18% from Q1 to Q3 of the baseline year. The zip-code work showed that twenty zip codes produced half of all production, which focused the next year's spend. Instagram following grew 25% against a 20% goal. The plan set a 14% revenue growth target on three levers: case value, new patients, and reactivated referrers. Practice financials are private. Figures are indexed.

“Choose your customers, narrow your focus, dominate your market.”

Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema, The Discipline of Market Leaders

Leading a referral-driven practice? Let's map where the growth really is. →

QUARTERLY REVENUE, FOUR OFFICES COMBINEDIndexed, Q1 = 100. Baseline year of the plan. Practice withheld.

WHERE PRODUCTION COMES FROMShare of total production by number of top zip codes.

Revenue index and zip-code concentration computed from the practice's own production data in the marketing plan. Follower growth from platform analytics. Dollar figures, provider names, and office identities are withheld.

2 · COMMERCIAL PRODUCT LAUNCH

Zero to 42% of the category in fifteen months.

The challenge. A commercial heating company was losing share to newer, more efficient rivals, and its own mid-range boiler was getting old. The new one had to cost less to run, meet tougher emission rules, and fit in a smaller space. It also had to win over two very different buyers: the engineers who spec the job and the contractors who install it.

What I decided. I led the eight-person team that defined and positioned the product, and I ran the 18-person marketing team that launched it. Two calls mattered most. Build one story around fire-tube technology and 98% efficiency. And write separate messages for engineers and contractors instead of one message that half-fit both.

How we did it. Five models, 10:1 turndown, a footprint of 6.2 square feet, and one launch calendar shared by product, sales, and the channel. When demand ran ahead of early parts forecasts, we managed production and the channel month by month instead of overpromising.

What happened. In fifteen months the new platform went from under 1% to 42% of the category's monthly sales, while the category itself grew 25%. The line on the right is the real shape, dips and all. The platform picked up industry innovation awards in its first two years.

“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management

Launching a product that has to take share? Let's talk about the go-to-market. →

NEW PLATFORM SHARE OF CATEGORY SALESMonthly, 15 months from launch. Company and product identity withheld.

Source: company monthly sales table, first 15 months after launch, expressed as the platform's share of category dollars. Dollar values are not published. Component-supply constraints are from first-hand account and are not evidenced by the sales data itself.

3 · HEALTHCARE MARKETING, CALL CENTER & PATIENT BOOKING

In healthcare, the phone is the front door. We rebuilt it.

The challenge. A 14-office dental group across Arizona and California was spending heavily on ads. One region was spending about a third of its revenue. Nobody could tie a marketing dollar to a booked patient. Call volume was high, conversion was all over the map, no-shows ate the schedule, and every bit of it had to follow HIPAA.

What I decided. I ran marketing and the patient call center together, because in healthcare the booking is the conversion. Three calls set the agenda. Run the call center on daily, per-agent numbers. Treat phone skills as a trained skill, not a personality trait. And tie marketing spend to booked and shown patients, not clicks, with a goal of cutting spend in half as a share of revenue.

How we did it. Three teams with three jobs: an onshore inbound team for new patients, an offshore outbound team, and a recare team to bring back existing patients. A daily huddle reviewed inbound, outbound, appointments, and conversion for every agent. We paired it with standing phone training: be relational, not transactional; ask for the appointment inside three minutes; listen with empathy; and seven house rules like no busy signal and new patients seen within three days. Show rate and an incentive plan came next. Every patient's referral source went into the practice system. And all of it was built HIPAA-trained: the minimum necessary information on the phone, in the data, and in the reports.

What happened. In the first year, answered calls rose 72% and missed calls fell 90%. Lead-to-booking conversion across all 14 offices more than doubled, from 16% to 37%. Booked appointments grew 30%. On the spend side, the tracking showed one vendor was eating more than half the budget and returning about 1.4 times its cost, while our own Facebook and Google programs returned three to eight times. I rebuilt the mix around that evidence, cut the vendor, and cut marketing spend by roughly half as a share of revenue. Patient and provider data stay private. The figures here are totals only.

“Customer-intimate companies do not pursue one-time transactions; they cultivate relationships.”

Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema, Fortune

Running a multi-location healthcare group? Let's talk patient growth that respects the rules. →

THE PHONES, MONTH BY MONTHIndexed, January = 100. First year of the program. Organization withheld.

RETURN BY CHANNEL, 120-DAY VIEW

THE OPERATING RHYTHM

DailyPer-agent huddle: inbound, outbound, appointments, conversion

WeeklyPhone-skills training, show-rate review, lead-source audit

MonthlyBookings by channel, 30/60/90/120-day return, recare yield

Seven rules

No busy signal. New patients never on hold. Seen within three days. Answer when patients call. Caring, not screening. Minimize screening, maximize trust. Say yes.

Call volumes and bookings indexed from the organization's monthly call center and appointment records. Channel returns are new-patient collections divided by spend on the 120-day tracker; the legacy vendor figure is its monthly average. Team names, agent-level data, patient records and dollar amounts are withheld. HIPAA training is a personal credential; no compliance certification of the organization is implied.

4 · CONNECTED PRODUCT INNOVATION

The technology was ready. The customer story wasn't. So we wrote it.

The challenge. Lochinvar had built something the boiler market hadn't seen. Two-way mobile control of a boiler, or a whole plant of them, with no third-party box in between. To the contractors and facility managers who'd buy it, "connected equipment" didn't mean much yet. It needed a name people would remember and a reason to care.

What I decided. I came up with the name, CON·X·US, and the positioning behind it. The name says what it does: it connects you to your equipment. The positioning put the features in the buyer's words. See status from anywhere. Change setpoints and reset curves from your phone. Get a text the moment a boiler alarms. And do it for a fraction of what a building management system costs.

How we did it. That positioning became the spine of everything that followed: the launch ad ("Boiler control from anywhere"), the product video, a webinar series, QR hang tags on the boilers, new literature, and sales training. A cross-functional launch team met every Friday until the platform shipped on the KNIGHT® and FTXL™ lines.

What happened. CON·X·US launched as the industry's first boiler-management platform with native iOS and Android control. Within a year, Consulting-Specifying Engineer readers named it one of the year's best new products, and the app won a Bronze in the Apps for the Engineer category. Lochinvar's engineers built the tech. The name and the story were mine.

“Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.”

Philip Kotler

Have a capability the market doesn't get yet? Let's find the story. →

CON·X·US™, KNIGHT® and FTXL™ and the CON·X·US logo are trademarks of Lochinvar, LLC, shown here to illustrate past work.

The CON·X·US mobile application on a smartphone, showing boiler status, system temperatures and modulation

5 · CRM & MARKETING OPERATIONS

The CRM nobody used became the way the company sold.

The challenge. A manufacturer was paying every year for a CRM its sales team ignored. Nobody had ever shown them how it would help them close. Web traffic, trade-show contacts, agency campaigns, and sales calls all lived in different worlds. Leadership could see the marketing activity. It couldn't see the revenue.

What I decided. I led a five-person team to build one plan and one training program for sales and marketing together. My rule: a system people don't use is a cost, not a capability. I also hired a digital marketing team with a simple brief. Make content, run it through the system, and report against KPIs we all agreed on.

How we did it. We wired marketing automation into the CRM, so every lead was captured, scored, and followed to a win or a loss. We cleared the bottlenecks in the e-commerce path. We defined the KPIs once and reported them the same way to sales and marketing.

What happened. Online sales grew 22%. Forecast accuracy improved 63%. The system paid for itself in two months instead of the eight we'd planned on. The CRM nobody used became the way the company sold.

“Today's leader is the company that views customer loyalty as a fragile condition that requires fastidious attention.”

Fred Wiersema, The New Market Leaders

Paying for a system your team won't use? Let's fix adoption, not just the software. →

BEFORE · SYSTEM CHANGE · AFTER

Before

Web traffic

Trade shows

Agency campaigns

CRM (unused)

Sales calls

Activity everywhere.
Visibility nowhere.

Change

CRM + marketing automationone lead record, one pipeline

Training

Content team

Shared KPIs

After

Lead → conversiontracked end to end

Forecastbuilt from pipeline data

Reportingone view for sales and marketing

Technology needs adoption.

Operating model from the historical lead-generation integration program. No proprietary performance figures are shown.

6 · BRAND POSITIONING & DIGITAL EXPERIENCE

Everyone claimed "number one." We claimed something true.

The challenge. A technical-product manufacturer competed in a category where every brand called itself the leader. So nobody believed any of them. Its website was hard to use and buried in search. Buyers couldn't tell what made the company different, because the company had never decided.

What I decided. I set three tests for the new position. It had to be unique, so no competitor could say it. It had to be true, so no customer could knock it down. And it had to be backed by market facts, so it would hold under pressure. Where those three overlapped was the only ground worth standing on.

How we did it. The position became a tagline. The tagline became the idea behind a new website. The website became the center of a PR and social plan that told one story in every channel.

What happened. Website views rose 129% in the first six months after relaunch. The tagline is still in use by the brand worldwide, more than a decade later.

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

Michael Porter, What Is Strategy?

Can't say in one sentence why you win? Let's find the position you can defend. →

WHERE A DEFENSIBLE POSITION LIVES

7 · BRAND LEADERSHIP THROUGH AN OWNERSHIP CHANGE

After three generations, the family was stepping away. The brand couldn't flinch.

The challenge. Wilbur Curtis Co. was the number two brand in commercial coffee equipment, run by the same family for three generations and nearly eighty years. Halfway through a brand strategy I was leading, the company announced it was being sold. Customers wondered who they'd be dealing with. Employees wondered if they still had a future. And every ad in the category, Curtis included, looked the same: a machine on a white background.

What I decided. I ran three months of research and led the strategy sessions that followed, then took the plan to the executive team. The research was clear. The company's real strength had never been the equipment. It was the people who built it, serviced it, and stood behind it. So we'd calm the market by showing exactly who had been delivering for eighty years, and who'd still be there tomorrow.

How we did it. "People of Curtis" put real employees on the page, each carrying one company value in a single word: Craftsman, Reliable, Confident, Passionate, Approachable, Innovator. I directed the agency, tailored the message by channel, and moved the media budget toward the specifiers, consultants, and food-service buyers who decide big installs. A three-year plan kept the story steady through the sale.

What happened. Impressions rose 60% year over year, from 5.5 million to 8.8 million, and cost per impression dropped 16%. Reach into consultants and dealers grew 229%, food service 78%, specialty coffee 33%. Inside the building, morale improved 83% on the company's own survey. Alongside the campaign I ran the rest of the function: a specifier lead program, Revit and BIM drawings for architects, a sustainability platform, five launches in one year, and a five-year roadmap that included connected brewers.

“Good is the enemy of great.”

Jim Collins, Good to Great

Facing a sale, a succession, or a merger? Let's protect the brand through it. →

Curtis and the People of Curtis campaign creative are the property of Wilbur Curtis Co., shown to illustrate past work.

People of Curtis ad: a smiling technician beside a coffee brewer under the word Craftsman

People of Curtis ad: a production employee under the word Reliable

8 · CROSS-BORDER PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Sixty people. Two countries. One way to build a product.

33%faster to market with new products, at lower manufacturing cost and higher margin

The challenge. At a global hardware maker, new products took too long to reach the shelf. Along the way, each department reshaped them to fit its own needs, not the customer's. Then they missed their sales numbers. Everyone saw the problem. Nobody owned it.

What I decided. I took on a 60-person team across the US and Mexico. Engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, marketing, sales, and distribution, all in one room. One rule: one process, from idea to launch, that every function would own. And the customer's voice goes in at the start, not in a review at the end.

How we did it. We built a seven-stage product process with a gate between each stage. Every gate had a named decision owner. Every function knew its job at every stage. Marketing sat inside the process, not at the end of it.

What happened. We got new products to market 33% faster. They beat their revenue forecasts. Cost per unit came down, and margin on the new lines went up with it. Best of all, the teams on both sides of the border said the work got better. That's what made the rest repeatable.

Is product development stuck between departments? Let's talk about the process. →

SEVEN-STAGE NPD PROCESS, CONCEPT TO LAUNCHStage names are illustrative; the original gate documents are not reproduced.

9 · INDUSTRIAL DEMAND & COMMERCIAL PIPELINE

Traffic and followers are not a pipeline. Quotes and orders are.

The challenge. An industrial manufacturer had good web traffic, a growing social following, and forms coming in every week. What it didn't have was any shared idea of how that activity turned into a quote, a work order, or a dollar. Marketing reported reach. The business wanted revenue. The two conversations never met.

What I decided. I reframed marketing's job around what the market would actually pay for: on-time delivery, quality, and market knowledge. Then I defined one pipeline from reach to revenue that sales and marketing would read the same way, with the same definitions.

How we did it. We connected the website and social channels to lead capture and the CRM. We split warm leads, the ones who'd already touched the company, from purchased lists. Quote volume, quote-to-order conversion, and average order value became the regular review instead of page views.

What happened. The company got a working model of where its quotes and orders really came from, and which digital investments deserved more money. Revenue and quote figures stay private. The model is the deliverable.

“By customer intimacy, we mean selling the customer a total solution, not just a product or service.”

Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema, The Discipline of Market Leaders

Want marketing measured in orders, not clicks? Let's build the pipeline view. →

ACTIVITY IS NOT REVENUEMeasurement model. No conversion rates are claimed.

HOW THESE STORIES WORK

Evidence over
adjectives.

Every story follows the same four beats, because that's how the work really happens: the problem, the calls I made, how the team executed, and what the numbers say.

Share, call, booking, and revenue figures come from the companies' own records, shown as percentages or indexes. Awards and media numbers come from published materials. Results from earlier in my career are stated as I recorded them at the time. Lochinvar, CON·X·US, KNIGHT, FTXL and Curtis are named. The other companies, including both healthcare groups, aren't. No dollar totals, patient records, or internal slides appear on this page.

If it can't be sourced, it isn't here.

THE NEXT CHALLENGE

Need a leader who connects the pieces?

Executive roles, board and advisory work, and the occasional hard problem worth a call. If one of these nine stories sounds like yours, start there.

Start a conversation ↗Meet Marc →

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