At the age of 7, while most of her friends were outside playing with their dogs, Lori Turner was busy cultivating her entrepreneurial spirit.

She decided to put on a dog show, charging 75 cents per dog and a quarter per spectator.

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Lori Turner of Red Rover Marketing, says her firm’s “one-on-one coaching” makes it stand out. “She’s just intelligent. She makes you smarter,” says client Laurita Jackson, owner of Memphis Chemical and Janitorial Supply.

“I had seen others in the community do it, and I thought I could put on a better show. I made fliers with markers and crayons, and got my neighborhood friends to ride their bikes on the weekend and pass out fliers,” said the now-39-year-old.

Though her mother made her return the roughly $13 she made, her pioneering predisposition was set, and last year the managing partner of RedRover Sales and Marketing saw a 69 percent growth during a down economy.

“I thought it was a really good return on my investment,” said the Belton, Texas, native of her first business endeavor. “At an early age I was a marketer, and as soon as I got anywhere close to college, I knew this is what I would seek out.”

Boasting such clients as The Med Foundation, national hotel chains, and a major medical research and development company, among others, Turner claims she never shuts down.

“I work weekends, nights and whatever it takes to get the job done,” she said.

That includes not just marketing, public relations and communications for her clients, but also sales training.

“I believe that’s what sets us apart,” she said. “We do one-on-one coaching. I’ll ride around with a sales rep and act like a fly on the wall and watch his sales pitch and coach him between appointments. I’ll be in a hospital canteen wearing a hair net listening to them pitch their product.”

That’s why Laurita Jackson, owner of Memphis Chemical and Janitorial Supply Company, sought out Lori and her 4-year-old company.

“She understands your business first. She worked with us on our sales team, figuring out our strengths and weaknesses in our particular industry and how it applied to the differentiators we needed to push,” Jackson said.

Since coming on board with RedRover just over a year ago, Jackson’s company was also able to increase sales during a time when competitors are not.

“A lot of that I attribute to (Turner),” Jackson said. “She’s just intelligent. She makes you smarter.”

Turner has the résumé to match her roster of results.

For 15 years she led marketing and communications divisions for large national corporations before she decided to go out on her own.

“I knew I would be an entrepreneur at some point in my career, but I knew I needed big corporate experience to cut my teeth,” Turner said. “I worked with some of the top ad agencies in the country, and I was able to see what I liked and where they didn’t deliver.”

In the fall of 2005 she and co-worker Julie Lunn, now Turner’s co-founder and managing partner, met for dinner to discuss their new business prospect, and over a game of pool and using a white board the two planned what would become RedRover.

“We knew we wanted to offer a combination of services, not just marketing, but also training and coaching sales teams,” Turner said.

The name didn’t come so easy.

“We stayed up 40 hours brainstorming a name,” Turner said. “It’s so critical. We really wanted to do some innovative branding.”

Their mutual love of dogs won over, and now their mascot, Rover, speaks for them on their Web site, in their e-mails, and even over the phone sometimes.

“It’s all positioned from Rover’s point of view,” Turner said. “It’s been fun. Even in it’s simplest form, people think they know the brand. It has served us very well.”

Her penchant for paws carries over into the company’s pro bono work as well, with the Humane Society of Memphis and Shelby County as its sponsored client, and most days Turner’s two dogs can be found lying on their dog beds at the office under the paw print stickers that decorate the walls and doors, interior and exterior.

When she’s not busy generating ROIs for her clients, Turner is out in the community leading seminars, ghost writing for the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guerrilla Marketing, serving on the Sales and Marketing Society of the Mid-South board or helping to found LaunchMemphis.

“I frankly don’t see how she does what she does,” said client Larry Green, COO of Martin, Tate, Morrow and Marston law firm. “And she’s still able to deliver such a high level of personal attention.”

“I love a challenge,” she said. “I thrive on adrenaline.”

Lori Turner

Age: 39

Business: Co-founder and managing partner, RedRover Marketing and Sales

Address: 516 Tennessee,, Suite 124

Phone: (901) 266-2662

Web site: redrovercompany.com

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