HeLT Consulting helped us take on the daunting task of rebranding our 17 year old consulting firm to reflect a new direction. Heidi Toboni has a clear and thorough process that kept my ego in check while she methodically uncovered and summarily shot all my sacred cows. No small task indeed.
The results have been nothing short of amazing. We’re focused and clear on our message and our business is growing rapidly as a result. Plus, it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. We’ve decided to keep Heidi on our team over the long haul as she continues to be a valuable partner.”
—Steve Trautman, Founder and Principal of The Steve Trautman Co., the global leaders in knowledge transfer for Fortune 500s and 1000s
“In 2010–11 we hired HeLT to guide us through a company rebranding effort and help us improve the management of our subbrands. We ended up shifting our company brand identity to focus firmly on our roots as a Franciscan media organization and to leverage the very strong brand equity that surrounds St. Francis and the Franciscan name—an untapped resource that HeLT brought to light through research. Since then, we’ve heard overwhelmingly positive feedback from our customers and stakeholders about the brand change and seen observable effects in many areas of our business.
For example, our largest revenue-producing subbrand, one of the nation’s leading Catholic magazines St. Anthony Messenger, is a different magazine now than it was a few years ago. A combination of changes including content development based on information from our branding initiative has helped us produce a more appealing product. There’s a decision-making filter that we apply that came out of the branding initiative with HeLT. Our staff is using that branding work to guide what the magazine should look like and the core reader values the content should address. Now we say, ‘These are things customers said they want, so we’re going to give them that.’ Last year, the magazine won the Catholic Press Association’s General Award of Excellence in its category—something we had not won in years.”
“I worked with Heidi at HeLT to help get my first book, Can’t Not Do: The Compelling Social Drive that Changes Our World, published. I could not have done it without her, plain and simple. Further, there are few people I’ve worked with in my career that were more dedicated, insightful, smart pros than Heidi. I can’t imagine anyone better to work with on personal branding and book publishing. Unequivocal recommendation and if you wanna know more, feel free to contact me. THANKS, HEIDI!”
“Our first experience with HeLT was every bit a positive one. Under Heidi’s skilled direction we were able to asses and improve our methods of product positioning, and develop improved methods for interdepartmental participation in product development.
Prior to Heidi’s consultative work with us, we were efficient but separate departments within the publishing house; we are now operating as an organic whole with one vision: to produce the best product possible and to position it accurately in the Catholic Marketplace.”
“Heidi Toboni is a woman of vision who can execute quickly. While working with Heidi for over ten years, I found her to be naturally curious, highly intelligent, analytical, and creative—with a penchant for action. She led many key initiatives that made major financial contributions and organizational improvements to our company. One was our brand development process, which, years later, continues to contribute to our growth. She conceptualized and developed our first Web sites, then expanded them to provide services within niche markets. From these offerings, customers rated us very positively on innovation and responsiveness.
Heidi is passionate about understanding consumer behavior and needs, and can translate this into actionable strategies. She led our company’s use of ongoing online customer research, enabling us to make effective product and marketing decisions.
Heidi’s integrity is high and her work ethic strong. I highly recommend her.”
“I’ve worked with HeLT Consulting + Services, Inc., both as an author and as an agent/consultant. Most recently, Heidi Toboni has helped one of my biggest client’s develop his brand and strategic plan for reaching customers, especially through the web. As expected, Heidi has gone the extra mile by helping to overhaul my client’s website, write scripts and production guidelines for video, book speaking gigs, and develop new products. She has been instrumental in helping my client grow his business and reach.
In addition to her results-oriented style, Heidi is a joy to work with. If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to build your business, HeLT is your solution.”
“I’ve worked with Heidi Toboni over a number of years on a large-scale and award-winning Web site. Her expertise was instrumental in designing technologies that were compelling, flexible, and cost-effective.”
“When we decided to branch out from producing educational DVDs to adding a small independent publishing company, we didn’t know where to begin. Heidi Toboni showed us exactly the type of printing, marketing and distribution options that would work best for a small publisher.
More importantly, she outlined the exact decisions we needed to make in the order we needed to make them, and identified what pitfalls we needed to avoid. She taught us how to think like a publisher. As a result, our books performed far in excess of what we’d expected. We continue to use Heidi as a consultant to help our business stay ahead.”
“We hired HeLT to help us align the look of our website with our new direction, which included a greater emphasis on the high-end travel market. Our business’s new affiliation with Virtuoso—a travel consortium that accepts members only in the top 3% of travel-related companies—was another factor in revising our image. HeLT consulted on our redesigned brand logo and produced our new website—writing copy, selecting photos, and building pages that reflected who we are today while conforming to the constraints of the Virtuoso-packaged features we had chosen for our site.”
“Heidi Toboni’s ability to listen well, understand a client’s needs, apply the principles of branding, and be a creative problem-solver makes her an excellent brand consultant.
I first went to Heidi for marketing and publicity help for the Institute of Theoretical Science’s inaugural symposium, and I had not yet considered the importance of brand-building. With Heidi’s guidance we were able to focus our institute’s vision, to be our industry’s “must-attend” conference in the Midwest. Heidi’s attention to detail and her ability to quickly understand our needs and come up with an action plan were incredibly important to our success, but, in my mind, what really made her shine was her follow-through: how she helped us at every step established a course of action for building our brand. Her creative suggestion to incorporate the idea of “Midwest hospitality” into our symposium plans was a breakthrough for us, and her corresponding branding strategies helped us craft a unique identity that set us apart from our competitors.
We executed her brand recommendations and the resulting feedback from our attendees was tremendous: her ideas helped us create exactly the brand image that we were aiming for.”
“I’ve had the great pleasure of working with Heidi Toboni on a number of large, complex projects and have always been impressed at the intelligence, determination, and creativity that she brings to every project she undertakes. I’ve trusted Heidi with key projects that needed the highest degree of excellence and she has always come through.
In addition, Heidi is one of the most ethical and conscientious people I’ve ever worked with.”
“It has been a privilege and a delight to work with Heidi Toboni. She partnered with me, as my developmental editor, for the two books I have written. The first one, How Big Is Your God?, won the 2008 Eric Hoffer Award in the Self-Help and Spiritual category.
Heidi shared and helped distill the vision for my books, supported my intended message with a passion, and gave me the structural format I was looking for. She walked the editorial journey with me as a friend—listening and sharing.
Besides her great editorial skills, Heidi has a spiritual depth that helps her to understand and express spiritual and mystical concepts with much ease. Her hard work and commitment makes Heidi a great and valuable asset to the publishing world.”