MEDIA & MARKETING

MEDIA & MARKETING

Kidd to lead Walker initiative aimed at mid-market firms

you

your products or services? Is it their low price? Maybe it’s their high quality? Or it might be the convenience of your location.

Here’s a better question: Are your customers loyal? Or would they buy elsewhere, given the chance?

Bruce Kidd wants to help Hoosier middlemarket companies find the answers. The former Indiana Economic Development Corp. director of entrepreneurship stepped down in December. Now Kidd’s settling in to his new job as a senior vice president of locally based Walker Information.

Walker, with 280 employees and $25 million in annual revenue, regularly studies how the business relationships of corporate giants like San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems Inc. work-and where they break down.

Walker hired Kidd to expand its research services from global companies like Cisco to Indiana’s middle market-or companies with $50 million to $500 million in annual revenue. Walker Information is aiming to double in size over the next five years by targeting the underserved area.

Middle-market firms have just as great a need as corporate giants to understand their customers, Kidd said. But they have few options for objective outside research, instead usually relying on the less-thanimpartial opinions of their own sales reps.