Selected work

Evidence that process, technology, and people can move together.

These transformations were led by Bluff City Digital founder John Sanders across prior operating leadership and current executive work. They are not presented as Bluff City Digital client engagements.

How to read these studies

Named results reflect John’s leadership within a larger team and organizational context. Confidential current-employer details are intentionally anonymized, and no result is attributed to Bluff City Digital unless it occurred through the agency.

01

Prior operating leadership · Hollywood Feed

Specialty retail · E-commerce and fulfillment

Turned digital commerce into a connected operating system.

Starting condition

A growing specialty retailer needed its website, order fulfillment, customer service, acquisition, and financial ownership to work as one customer experience.

What changed

  • Owned the processes behind online sales, fulfillment, customer acquisition, customer satisfaction, and channel P&L.
  • Used continuous testing and iteration to improve the buying experience and conversion path.
  • Launched same-day delivery and curbside pickup, then built a five-person service team spanning live chat, phone, and email.
  • Managed the migration of three acquired e-commerce properties and built an SMS program for ongoing customer engagement.

Outcome

The work connected digital demand to fulfillment and service while producing durable, measurable growth across the online channel.

26×online revenue growth in four years
2.5% → 20%+conversion-rate improvement
100,000+SMS subscribers added in one year

Results from John Sanders’s prior operating leadership. Hollywood Feed was not a Bluff City Digital client.

02

Prior operating leadership · Hollywood Feed

Multi-site retail · Operations and training

Built repeatable operations for multi-site growth.

Starting condition

Rapid expansion required store development, staffing, training, merchandising, and day-to-day standards to become repeatable across locations.

What changed

  • Coordinated store development, merchandising, staffing, training, and marketing as one operating system.
  • Established repeatable construction and opening practices while working with architects, contractors, and local regulators.
  • Managed and developed a team of more than 100 employees, including training and succession planning.
  • Built an interactive training program with two-way video and audio so one presenter could teach employees live across every store.

Outcome

The operating model supported growth from three to 25 stores while giving teams a consistent way to learn, open locations, and execute.

3 → 25stores during the expansion
100+employees led and developed
2-waylive video and audio training across locations

Results from John Sanders’s prior operating leadership. Hollywood Feed was not a Bluff City Digital client.

03

Anonymized current executive work

B2B operations · Revenue systems

Replaced competing account lists with a governed revenue workflow.

Starting condition

Sales leadership had overlapping account claims, inconsistent company names, and unclear boundaries between prospects, leads, active accounts, and dormant relationships.

What changed

  • Worked with sales leadership to define the qualification gate, lifecycle states, ownership rules, and exception path.
  • Normalized rep-supplied data against Salesforce records and separated clean matches from decisions that required human review.
  • Designed how Salesforce and ZoomInfo should support prospecting, qualification, account coverage, and reactivation.
  • Produced lifecycle flowcharts, import-ready files, a recommended coverage model, and a runbook that preserved unresolved decisions instead of hiding them.

Outcome

Leadership received one governed operating model, clear ownership decisions, executable rollout files, and a visible list of exceptions to resolve before implementation.

Company, employee, customer, record, and pricing details are intentionally omitted. This work was performed in John Sanders’s executive role, not as a Bluff City Digital client engagement.

Your workflow

Start with the operating problem—not the software.

The Operational Systems Diagnostic finds the bottleneck, defines the reliable future state, and gives your team a roadmap it can act on.

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