A small firm doing one thing on purpose.
Cersosimo & Associates is the working name for the applied behavioral strategy practice Russ Cersosimo has been running for two decades. Pittsburgh-based, kept deliberately small, built around the founder.
One discipline. One operator. One short list of clients at a time.
For most of its history, the firm sat under the broader banner of management consulting — brand identity, technology, business development — serving a Fortune-class roster across two decades. Underneath every one of those engagements was the same actual discipline: figuring out what makes a buyer move, designing the system to do it, and operationalizing the result.
The firm is being rebuilt around that discipline now. Applied behavioral strategy is the name. The Behavioral Revenue System is the method. The book series is the IP. Pittsburgh is the office. The roster is intentionally short.
We do not staff up to scale. The work is custom and the operator stays in the room. Engagements are taken by introduction or direct inquiry, paced so each one gets the attention it deserves.
Russ Cersosimo.
Russ has spent two decades applying psychology to the way businesses sell, retain, and scale — from Fortune-class enterprises to founder-led practices. He is the author of Molecular Influence, with Elemental Influenceforthcoming.
The work spans sales strategy, customer management, systems design, and influence at the points where buying actually happens. Across that span, the through-line is simple: bottom-line outcomes shift when the psychology gets engineered into the system instead of taught about in a room.
Russ coined the discipline of Temporal Predisposition Mapping as the named framework for reading temperament before the room — drawing on the 2,500-year typology lineage (Empedocles, Galen, Jung, Marston) and modern Big Five personality science. TPM is the individualized read inside the firm’s operating spine, paired with Decision Science (the universal read) and Thought Engineering (the move).
Russ writes weekly and speaks selectively. The public posture exists to make the firm legible to the small number of operators it is built for.
- Molecular Influence on Amazon
- Elemental Influence — forthcoming
The book series under the method.
A few things we hold, even when it costs us a deal.
Persuasion is a verb people do to each other. Psychology is what is happening underneath whether anyone is paying attention. We design for the underneath.
Putting reps in a workshop rarely moves a number. Rebuilding the actual conversation, page, or cadence does.
In high-trust markets, the buyer is choosing a person. The firm's job is to make that person legible at scale, not to hide them.
One discipline, one method, one short list of clients. We say no to a lot of work, including work that pays.
We will tell you what is working, what is not, and what we cannot measure yet. We will not sell certainty we do not have.
We do not run a sales funnel, an auto-sequence, or a webinar machine. The firm reaches the operators it should by being clear about what it does and waiting.
A partial record of past engagements.
If this is the kind of firm you want to work with.
The first conversation is short and honest about fit. We take a small number of engagements at a time, by introduction or direct inquiry.