Happy Birthday Greenfield Services

Greenfield Services co-Founders Heinz Wagner and Doreen Ashton Wagner

Fourteen years ago this month, my husband Heinz and I signed incorporation papers to establish our company, Greenfield Hospitality Services Inc.  At the time we were embarking upon the path of self-employment as a means to get out of the corporate “rat race.”  We wanted to move to North Glengarry, Ontario, to enjoy a quieter pace and family environment with our (then) two year-old daughter.

We started Greenfield as a consultancy devoted to hotel sales and food & beverage operations in 1998.  Seeing a niche in phone lead generation for the meetings and events industry, we created a small call centre operation which grew from three people in 2001, to a team of 19 by 2010.  We dropped “hospitality” from our official corporate name to reflect the fact we were working with membership-based organizations, not just hotels and resorts.

By mid-2011, as the B2B sales and marketing world began to shift, Greenfield morphed again.  This time the transformation took us from a traditional, outbound marketing services firm, to a full-service demand-generation consultancy.  We still focus on two main markets; the hospitality and meetings industry (where our clients are hotels, resorts, CVBs, and other meetings industry suppliers), and professional/trade associations.

While many of our clients remain the same, what we do for them has changed significantly.  We don’t just “work the phones” to promote event attendance anymore.  Our work is much more strategic; we help our clients create environments where potential members, attendees and sponsors seek to engage. 

If marketing used to be like a game of darts – where marketers tried to “hit the mark” with prospects – now we focus on making our clients more attractive.  It’s still a game of darts, except that now we also create an inbound, magnetic field.  One where we first build trust by creating education-based, valuable content; getting that content found; generating interest and starting business relationships.

English author W. Somerset Maugham said, “Life is change.  Growth is optional.”  In the game of life and business, at Greenfield, we choose growth.  Thank you for your support, everyone.  The best is yet to come.