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“Revel-utionizing” Retail: Elevating the Executive Profile for Revel Systems’ Co-Founder and CEO Lisa Falzone

Revel Systems, is a San Francisco-based retail tech company that is (excuse the pun) “Revel-utionizing” the retail industry by transforming old school, clunky cash registers into sleek, sophisticated and secure point of sale (POS) systems for merchants worldwide.

Revel Systems is an award-winning leader in iPad POS systems for restaurants, retail outlets and grocery stores; it’s currently used in  thousands of enterprise locations including Goodwill, Dairy Queen, Smoothie King, Sonos, Belkin, Griffin, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and more. The Revel POS system offers a feature-rich POS solution with integrated payroll, inventory tracking, and advanced business analytics for both enterprise and small business customers.

One of our main objectives when we started working with Revel Systems was to elevate the executive profile of its co-founder and CEO Lisa Falzone. Following Revel’s $100M funding late last year (read our case study and results for that announcement here), the CPR team continued its high octane push for Revel in 2015 with a multi-faceted approach to building relationships for Lisa with top journalists and influencers.

Below are some high-level strategies for building an executive’s profile within target audiences, based on our experience with Revel:

1.)    Build and nurture relationships with key press and influencers – create a platform for the executive as an expert resource. At the forefront of our efforts was aggressive proactive outreach to business press, where we offered 1:1 briefings with Lisa to discuss her momentum in building the next billion dollar business from the ground up, all while maintaining majority share of the company with co-founder Chris Ciabarra. Pitches for Lisa centered on her success and drive as a visionary entrepreneur. The team stayed nimble and creative in our pitch angles; we even leveraged Lisa’s history as a competitive swimmer at Stanford to draw parallels between competitive sports and running a business – securing two bylines as a result.  Briefings were secured with publications including Bizwomen, Inc., Fortune, the San Francisco Business Times and Upstart Business Journal, as well as a byline on the Women 2.0 blog.

2.)    Showcase product innovation, executive leadership and industry momentum through awards and lists/rankings. We also began researching and submitting for relevant industry, product and executive awards for Lisa and Revel Systems. Since the kickoff of our awards program just two months ago, Lisa has been selected as a semifinalist in Northern California for EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® Award and a “Reinventor” in Upstart Magazine’s Upstart 100. We have it on good authority that there are more wins coming for Lisa and Revel in the weeks and months ahead – stay tuned!

3.)    Raise executive visibility and demonstrate thought leadership through speaker placement at industry events/conferences. Securing Lisa as a speaker at business and entrepreneurial-focused conferences made up the third component of our executive visibility campaign. We identified conferences ranging from invite-only executive conferences to widely-attended industry trade shows and pitched Lisa to present on topics including the future of commerce/payments and entrepreneurism. Again, while we can’t disclose anything publically yet, there’s word that Lisa will be hitting the stages of several key events coming soon.

A list of the coverage specific to building Lisa’s executive profile is below – REVEL UP!