Marge Murphy is a born-and-bred New Yorker. With degrees in engineering and computer science, she eventually rose to New England regional sales manager for a New Jersey company.
Children came along, and Murphy decided to give up her hectic travel schedule to stay at home. Then "my husband arrives home one day from work and says 'we're going to move to Ohio.'"
Little did she know that her husband's change of employers would change her future.
"One of their product managers approached me a couple of years after we were here and said Marge, we have a new project, a product we're looking to launch, and you've got some sales experience, you've got the technical expertise, could you call 25 clients, introduce the new product and get some feedback?"
Good work begat good work and the jobs grew larger. Acadia Lead Management was born.
"It's a mixture of lead qualification and market intelligence," says Murphy, the company's president. The company connects with respondents to a client's marketing activities and filters them, she says. "Those that are not sales-ready stay in our process and we continue to nurture them and build a knowledge database for our clients."
Launched in 1999, Acadia has five employees and 35 to 40 consultants around the country. It was named among the fastest-growing companies in revenues by the Dayton Business Journal last year and picked up a new award in January: "Rookie Business of the Year."
"About four years I incorporated," explains Murphy, "so was still considered a rookie business."
Source: Marge Murphy
Writer: Gene Monteith