We are Certified Management Consultants - through the Institute of Management Consultants.

The Certified Management Consultant (CMC®) designation is awarded to a select group of consultants (only 10,000 worldwide) who have demonstrated that they produce substantive results, adhere to the IMC USA canon of ethics, and manage their practices professionally. IMC USA participates in the 44-nation International Council of Management Consulting Institutes (ICMCI), which sets the global standards of technical competence and professional conduct. CMCs must maintain this level of performance and stay current with global standards to be able to renew their certification every 3 years.

SPIA's focus is to help businesses accomplish the one or more "real" goals - the kind that yield a meaningful accompishment over time:

Grow the company both in revenue and profits
Producing a quality of life enhancement that makes being in business fun again!

Positioning the company for sale
Creating the internal systems/procedures and making sure that there is competent senior level management in place and capable of taking over for the new owner. In effect, we help clients maximize the value of their business by adding profitable revenue, lower costs and the kind of financials that will attract a prudent acquirer.

Dealing with multi-generational transition
Building the internal systems that allow a company to bring in a family member, train them and give them the skills/knowledge and experience they need to be effective as a leader without putting the company out of business while they learn.

Closing down the business
That's not just a matter of closing the doors and turning out the lights. There are regulatory and financial issues that need to be handled properly to avoid expensive surprises after-the-fact.

To accomplish this goal, SPIA has a staff of professionals whose average tenure as professional consultants exceeds 30 years. Their skills/competencies includes: management/administration, finance/financial turnarounds, sales/marketing and operations/manufacturing. As a company – SPIA started as a one-man consultant company (Stimmel Consultants) in the early 1970s working with a wide list of companies such as STAPLES, IBM and Genuine Auto Parts (NAPA) to name a few.

  • Our TEAM

Craig Stimmel, CMC™ – President

Craig Stimmel is the founder of Strategic Planning & Implementation Associates (1971), and is accredited as a Certified Management Consultant by the Institute of Management Consultants. He's the father of two beautiful daughters, Lee and Stephanie - and two very pretty grand daughters, Carley and Lauren. Together with his wife, Vicki, he enjoys sailing, traveling and volunteering with both charities and civic groups.

As a CMC, Craig provides management objective advice and assistance relating to the strategy, structure, management and operations of an organization in pursuit of its long-term purposes and objectives. Such assistance may include the identification of options with recommendations; the provision of an additional resources or the implementation of solutions. Craig holds an MBA from the University of California (Berkeley) and has been awarded the coveted CMC accreditation by the Institute of Management Consultants - Washington, DC. Craig is a nationally published author of articles covering both distribution and service business development issues as well as being a featured speaker at trade events and conventions.

Karen Whitman – VP of Sales

Karen is a proven sales professional whose career began in the 1970s as an administrative assistant to the V.P. and Sales Manager of a large family - owned valve manufacturing company out of Worcester and Westborough, Massachusetts. A move to Vermont took Karen into the ski industry as sales manager for the Eastern representative office of the Garcia Corporation and the Lange Company. The opportunity of sales management and sales training and development took her career to a Fortune 500 company, where she earned six national sales awards. After retirement, Karen became self employed as a sales training and development professional. With a lot of energy still to burn, Karen turned to sales in the consulting industry and earned top sales awards in the two companies with which she was associated.

Roy Sequeira – Vice President

Roy Sequeira leverages process engineering and system interactions to help companies achieve their objectives. He has worked with companies large and small helping them build the infrastructure and internal systems and procedures that take them from flat to fast, profitable growth. His career includes many years in front-line field operations as well as senior management positions with high-tech firms. He consistently applies his strong business and engineering background to achieve outstanding results for clients, adapting his methods to the resources available.

Roy has worked in and with sales, business development, marketing, customer service, product & technical support, new product introduction, project management, program management, forecasting, business analysis and business process reengineering. In bringing new products to market, he coordinated the efforts of these functions, as well as those of engineering, product development, manufacturing, logistics and repairs, and back office functions like finance and accounting, to optimize cost and resource allocation to maximize the bottom line.

Victoria Stimmel – Communications Director

Victoria works with companies large and small, typically interacting one-on-one with a senior executive interested in enhancing or building internal systems/procedures that cut costs and make the company better able to compete. Where appropriate, she assists in the development of strategic & tactical operational plans focused on achieving long-term growth and financial success.

Operations can be the foundation of corporate growth. So getting them "right" is paramount to the success of that effort.

Most of Victoria's projects are on-going where she shares direct responsibility with the client executive in establishing an action plan that identifies the individual action items, the assignees, the timelines and the technology (if appropriate) to be used to monitor and measure the company's progress. Holding both herself and the client companies accountable for the success of the project, Victoria helps "tweak" the process so as to avoid challenges and keep the effort on-track. In those rare instances where a project is short-circuited (too many tangents, unexpected changes in economic or in the marketplace), Victoria will assist client executives identify remedies that will get the project back on-track.

Victoria has a MA in English and a BS in Communication with additional studies in marketing and operational management.