Member / Philippe Lavie

August 11, 2015

Philippe Lavie

Interim COO, CSO

Learn More About InterimExecs RED Team of Top Interim and Fractional CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CIOs and CMOs or Call Us at (847) 849-2800 

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Philippe created KeyRoad Enterprises, LLC in 2002. KeyRoad helps high growth companies more effectively plan, accelerate, and manage their revenue growth.

KeyRoad, a sales transformation and effectiveness organization, works with B2B companies (with existing revenue between $3M and $300M and sales forces of 3 to 1000 of sales people) to change business behaviors to sell more effectively. By focusing on sales effectiveness programs (process, selling tools, and training), advisory and mentoring services to business owners and sales forces, and sales infrastructure including growth planning, our clients have achieved a minimum of 10x return on their investment, 27% incremental revenue, and sustained revenue growth overtime. For more information visit www.keyroad.com

With approximately 40 coaches, consultants, and instructors to help in the delivery of KeyRoad Training, Planning, and Managing offering, KeyRoad has developed a global revenue growth consultancy and advisory firm with offices in San Francisco CA, Paris France, and Chicago IL. Focusing mainly on high technology, medical devices, manufacturing, and the services industry, KeyRoad has worked with well known privately held and publicly traded companies.

Philippe brings over 30 years of managerial, sales and business development experience in high technology companies in the USA and Europe. He started his career with the Portland Trail Blazers and after three years in the world of sports, co-founded and established an $8 million business in the online event and entertainment ticketing space.

Thereafter Philippe worked in the high technology world in direct and channel sales, sales management, business development, and marketing, both domestically and internationally. He worked with Daisy Systems, Optrotech, and Sun Microsystems for ten years, where he grew three industries from $16 million to $375 million in revenue in five years. Since then Philippe worked with three start-ups, Onlink, MindCrossing, and OnDemand, as vice president of sales and business development, acting COO, and senior director of sales and business development.

www.keyroad.com

SELECT EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE

Company Stage Focus: Early Stage, Private Equity Backed, IPO, Public, Private, Family Owned

President, KeyRoad Enterprises

A sales transformation and effectiveness organization, works with B2B companies (with existing revenue between $3M and $300M and sales forces of 3 to 1000 of sales people) to change business behaviors to sell more effectively. By focusing on sales effectiveness programs (process, selling tools, and training), advisory and mentoring services to business owners and sales forces, and sales infrastructure including growth planning, our clients have achieved a minimum of 10x return on their investment, 27% incremental revenue, and sustained revenue growth overtime.

Interim Strategic Account Director

Establish and manage a new strategic account initiative (SAI) with company, which serves as a resource for talent management.

Interim Chief Revenue Officer

In support of the existing executive staff, drove a strategic planning process, lead a sales transformation to accomodate transactional and complex sales opportunities, trained the sales force, and advised, mentored, and coached the revneue generation staff.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Trained over 1000 sales people to perform more effectively
• 100% reference ability from our clients over the past 10 years
• Managed upward of $375M in revenue for public technology company in three industries: Transportation, Media, Publishing
• Helped migrate a public company from a 60/40 direct channel model into a 60/40 indirect channel model over an 24 months period
• Since creating KeyRoad, helped clients secured 27% incremental revenues, generated at least 10x return on money spent for services, and sustained growth over time.

BOARD EXPERIENCE

• Primex Wireless, a $24M manufacturing company in healthcare and education markets
• Trice Construction, a sub $18M concrete construction company
• Vantaggio HR, a mid-size human resource professional service company

EDUCATION

• Bachelor Economics, College Sainte Barbe
• MBA, Institut Superieur de Gestion

ARTICLES

• Hire to Replace Mediocre Performers or Train to Instill Best Practices?

Years Executive Experience: (18)
Number Interim Assignments: (3)
Number Board Roles: (6)
Company Size: ($1M-$500M)

SPECIALTIES:
• Sales Engagement Roadmap Design and Optimization
• Sales Messaging
• Sales Training and Enablement Programs
• Establish Sales Infrastructures
• Business Development
• Client Relations Management
• Direct Sales
• Partner Programs
• Pricing Strategies
• Sales Forecasting
• Salesforce Training / Assessment / Recruitment
• International Business
• Board Advisory

CREATING EFFECTIVE SALES TEAMS

INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE
• Computer Hardware/Backbone
• Business Services
• Manufacturing
• Education
• Engineering
• Entertainment
• Executive Search
• Information Services
• Internet
• Management Consulting
• Medical Devices
• Professional Services
• Restaurant and Hospitality
• SaaS and Cloud Computing
• Sales
• Staffing and Recruiting
• Transportation and Logistics

The 4 Ways COVID-19 Has Transformed Sales

February 16, 2021
The 4 Ways COVID-19 Has Transformed Sales

Engaging in person may have been the go-to sales tactic for decades, but COVID-19 has amplified what many in the industry have felt for years: Buyers and sellers want a digital and remote experience. No office drop-by, conference room pitch, or long dinner necessary. But it doesn’t just check the social distancing box. Adapting to an online sales structure makes for easier scheduling, cuts travel expenses, and can often be more efficient. And there’s no looking back.

According to an October 2020 McKinsey survey, more than 90% of buyers expect to continue with a remote or digital model even after COVID-19, and only 20–30% of buyers want to “ever interact with reps.”

Those kinds of numbers prove just how disconnected much of the industry is from the zeitgeist, explains InterimExecs RED Team executive, Philippe Lavie, who specializes in sales transformation and helps high growth companies more effectively plan, accelerate, and manage their revenue growth.

According to Lavie, selling in 2021 (and beyond) calls for a deeper understanding of the buyer, the seller, and just how drastically the marketplace has evolved.

Here, he dissects the four critical ways inside sales teams need to change in order to stay afloat and succeed in our new normal.

Continue reading →

Landing Page_TASC Business Assessment

May 20, 2016

Get a Complete Business Roadmap by a Top Operating Executive

To succeed in business, it’s dangerous to get stuck in the day to day minutia. You need a big picture — a vision and strategy for the future. But it can be difficult for busy leaders to focus on strategies when they’re overwhelmed by the immediate demands of running a business. They spend most of their time down in the trenches, rather than surveying the horizon and making plans to boldly win far more than competitors.

Find Executives

Assuming that your business is dedicating adequate resources to big-picture thinking, how many of those plans have been put into action versus sitting on a shelf? Even with a plan in hand, developing strategic blind spots along the way is also a threat. Problems don’t only arise from the risks you understand or don’t understand. The biggest danger may be from those things you don’t see coming at all. Periodically having an outside expert assess your business can eliminate these blind spots and bring greater overall clarity about what’s working, what isn’t, and how to improve.

LET’S TALK ABOUT WHERE YOUR BUSINESS IS AND WHERE YOU WANT IT TO GO >

What is an Operational Roadmap?

Before an organization builds, expands, or renovates, a master blueprint is needed. An operational roadmap from the InterimExecs RED Team is an assessment of your business that sets strategic priorities and formulates an action plan to achieve your biggest goals. If additional resources are needed to execute, we can then rapidly deploy an interim executive or executive team.

Your Company's Health Report

Doctors give patients an annual physical to establish health baselines and detect problems before they are serious. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as the saying goes. Taking a bit of precaution now, when a problem is still small, is easier than dealing with a full-blown crisis. So why don’t we approach business the same way?

When you’re focused on the day-to-day, you can lose sight of the big picture questions that will drive your organization forward. Is everything running smoothly and optimally? What can be improved? What KPIs should you have in place to best track operational and financial performance? Is your organizational design fast and efficient?

We created a business roadmap tool for owners, investors, and management teams to get a clear assessment of their company and operations. Think of it as a health checkup for your business, performed by a top operating executive who can identify areas for improvement, develop an action plan, and deliver results.

PHASE 1: DISCOVERY

Interviews with key senior management (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.), select members of the team, and customers take place along with research and review of data and analytics. An executive or team analyzes key metrics from financials and sales, unique IP, markets, brand awareness, risks, regulatory issues, competitive outlook, and operational flags.

PHASE 2: HEALTH SNAPSHOT

The result of a deep dive into everything from finance and accounting to operations, marketing, IT, and sales is a clear view of what’s running optimally and what can be improved. In a health snapshot, a company receives a fresh outside perspective on areas that include strategic vision and alignment, business governance, operational execution, information technology, people and capabilities, culture, performance trajectory, and financial viability.

PHASE 3: OPERATIONAL ROADMAP

From a health snapshot comes an operational roadmap which outlines areas of opportunity and prioritizes which initiatives should be tackled first across sales, marketing, and information technology.

Request Your Operational Roadmap

Find out how the RED Team can help you achieve big results in the year ahead

Get Started

Interims are not consultants. You are accessing the power and brainpower of boots-on-the-ground operators, who have a wealth of experience working with companies that span across size and industry. We don’t like big binders that end up sitting on a dusty shelf. A TASC business assessment provides an outlook of a company that points to results and how to get there fast.

– Robert Jordan, CEO, Association of Interim Executives

Not Just Advice. We Mean Action.

We all know the story. A company pays thousands (or millions) of dollars to get advice packaged up in a pretty report by a consulting company’s fresh MBA. And then…nothing happens. Maybe it’s a lack of resources, but ultimately, no one actually executes on the plan.

The RED Team consists of interim executives who have run, grown, and turned around businesses. While this experience lends itself to creating a strong roadmap, the true strength of interims is that they can be engaged to make the plan a reality. For organizations stretched for internal resources or wanting to speed up the timeline so they don’t sit stagnant, a project-based or interim executive can be a powerful solution.

Dick Lindenmuth

“The company had lost $6 million in the last year. We presented a financial and operational business assessment to the investors and owners, and then engaged in implementing the plan. Three months later we were cash flow positive.”

Dick Lindenmuth Interim CEO
Damon Neth

“In a business assessment we bring to light processes, efficiencies, organizational needs and challenges and map those to the structure of an organization. These are high value, quick hits that are designed to move the football incrementally down the field.”

Damon Neth Interim CIO, CTO

True Operators Deliver Strategy and Implementation

  • Align the team, partners, owners, boards and employees
  • Grow sales and expand markets globally
  • Fix what is stuck, stalled, shutdown or stagnant
  • Maximize the value of a current or future transaction
  • Optimize profit, systems and processes
  • Create a new product, process, spinoff, JV or new company

A Low Risk Way to Engage

With your operational roadmap in hand you will know if you have the right team in place to implement. Need more resources? You can instantly access rapid executive deployment (RED) to seamlessly move into execution mode where your interim executive or RED team carries out the plan.

Request Your Business Assessment
Philippe Lavie

“We always go through an assessment to figure out what is going on within the organization from a revenue generation standpoint. We can quickly look at how they’re organized, how they function and if there are any constraints within the function of sales.”

Philippe Lavie Interim CSO
Michelle Barnes

“I find a lot of times organizations don’t really know why they’re in the situation they are. They just know they’re in a bad situation. I work with the staff, the board and some of our major funders to figure out what is really happening and present it back to the board.”

Michelle Barnes Interim CEO
Request Your Business Roadmap

Institute

August 3, 2015

Are You Ready to Expand Your Career as an Interim Executive?

Start with the Interim Execs Institute

The Leadership Program for Interim Execs is Here.

Great interims are change agents who do more than just give great advice…they implement. If you are expert at moving the meter in companies, the Leadership Program for Interim Execs is designed to help you take your career to the next level through a series of audio programs featuring top experts.

The Fundamentals of Interim Management

The Fundamentals of Interim Management

  • 101 Introduction
  • 102 The View from 50,000 Feet: The New and Expanding Career Choice
  • 103 Negotiating Agreements & Getting Paid Handsomely
  • 104 How to Go to Market
  • 105Findings
The Advanced Program for Interim Executives

The Advanced Program for Interim Executives

  • 201 Structuring Multiple, Parallel Assignments
  • 202 Entering Into Assignments as a Team
  • 203 Taking Assignments Around the World
  • 204 How PE Funds Utilize Interim Executives
Becoming an Interim Exec Specialty Breakout

Becoming an Interim Exec Specialty Breakout

  • 301 Interim CFO
  • 302 Interim CIO/CTO
  • 303 Turnaround
  • 304 Interim Chief Sales Officer

Start the Leadership Program

You Have the Credentials. Now Multiply Your Results.

InterimExecs work with 2,000+ interim executives over 15 years has been distilled down to
three programs and a discussion with 24 experts.

  • What is interim management?
  • The mindset of a successful interim executive
  • Steps to become skilled and trusted by clients
  • Best practices for negotiating a contract
  • Secrets to structuring payment
  • How to execute assignments as an interim
  • Ways to present yourself to the marketplace
  • The benefit to parallel assignments
  • How to strengthen your positioning with a team
  • Interim management around the world
  • Ways to work with Private Equity funds
    …and more

This is everything you need to know to be successful as an interim executive

Start the Leadership Program Now

Hear from a Panel of Veteran
Interim Execs & PE Funds

Dick Lindenmuth
Dick Lindenmuth

Interim CEO with 30+ years experience in domestic and international operations ranging from high-growth to distressed environments.

Tony Evans
Tony Evans

Interim CEO with 18 years interim experience and $880M of value added to companies across Europe and the Middle East.

Astrid Rapp
Astrid Rapp

Interim CFO with 20 years experience and interim assignments with 10+ companies throughout Europe and the US

David Neafus
David Neafus

Interim CFO with 20+ years CFO experience, managing all aspects of financial performance and HR for client companies.

John Collard
John Collard

Interim CEO with 35 years in business and 45 transactions totaling $1 billion along with numerous operating roles.

Mona Pearl
Mona Pearl

Interim COO who’s been involved in over 20 startups, lived on three continents and speaks six languages.

Robert Hudzik
Robert Hudzik

Interim COO who’s managed multiple international post-merger acquisitions ranging from $20M to $2.6B.

Sanjay Dvwivedi
Sanjay Dvwivedi

Interim CFO for the past four years serving with six companies, five in India, one in the US.

Scott Philips
Scott Philips

Interim CEO with 30+ years general management experience with over 200 companies and interim assignments with over 20 organizations.

Michael Pfeffer
Michael Pfeffer

Managing Director of Post Capital Partners (New York), a family fund and private equity fund with hundreds of millions of dollars under management

Paul Pickard
Paul Pickard

Managing Director of Stewart Capital Management, a family fund with a long-term focus and an ability to work with companies lacking a full management team.

Sean Roberts
Sean Roberts

Vice President of Huron Capital Partners (Detroit), a private equity fund that has raised over $1.1 billion since 1999.

Dominic Luzi
Dominic Luzi

Interim CIO expert in delivering business transformation solutions for small/medium enterprises and global enterprise

John Lafferty
John Lafferty

Interim CFO with 40 years experience working with entrepreneurs, startups, emerging and mature businesses

Yoav Cohen
Yoav Cohen

20+ year experience in CFO, COO and  CEO positions successfully shaping strategy, driving growth and improving operations

John Matthesen
John Matthesen

Interim CIO with 21 years experience in high-tech, expert at taking companies from startup to global enterprises

Mark Palmer
Mark Palmer

Interim CEO and Chief Sales Officer with 40+ years experience focusing and restructuring technology companies

Tom Murray
Tom Murray

Interim CIO for organizations undergoing significant change due to business growth, merger & acquisition or company re-organization

Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan

CEO of the Association of Interim Executives, entrepreneur, with 20 years helping companies launch and grow

Gary Brooks
Gary Brooks

Interim COO to 27 under-performing manufacturers and distributors where he re-established a foundation of profitable growth

Philippe Lavie
Philippe Lavie

Interim CSO expert in helping B2B companies, $3M – $300M in revenue, change business behaviors to sell more effectively

Eric Kish
Eric Kish

Interim CEO and turnaround executive, with expertise in PE backed turnarounds ranging from petrochemicals to software

Learn How to Excel At Interim Management

“The interviews commanded your attention all the way through.  The facilitation, questions and participants’ content responses were outstanding.  It truly is a life-changing decision to fully commit to the interim designation and make it work. I’m sure glad I went down that path.”

- John Lafferty -

“I describe myself as being a great sprinter, not a great marathon runner. I don’t want to be in an organization more than 18 to 24 months frankly because my value is up where I can get clarity on the issues and on the solutions that they need and then help work with them to get those solutions started and moving down the road.”

- Scott Philips -

“You need to be able to operate very quickly. And my experiences working with interims, they get things done in a very incisive and laser-like way, which you do not find commonly within the permanent ranks of a company.”

- Tony Evans -

The key differentiating factor between a consultant and interim executive is decision making. In a consulting capacity you advise existing management. And in the case of turnaround situations, often times you are advising the same management that have made poor decisions before and caused the company to get into trouble. Why would you think you would have a different outcome?”

- John Collard -
Download Now

From Great Interims Come Great Results

In the Leadership Program for Interim Execs audio series, veteran interim executives and private equity fund managers will give you a broad understanding of the opportunities and challenges in becoming a highly successful interim executive.

The Fundamentals of Interim Management

The Fundamentals of Interim Management

  • 101 Introduction
  • 102 The View from 50,000 Feet: The New and Expanding Career Choice
  • 103 Negotiating Agreements & Getting Paid Handsomely
  • 104 How to Go to Market
  • 105Findings
Advanced Look at Interim Management

Advanced Look at Interim Management

  • 201 Structuring Multiple, Parallel Assignments
  • 202 Entering Into Assignments as a Team
  • 203 Taking Assignments Around the World
  • 204 How PE Funds Utilize Interim Executives
Becoming an Interim Exec Specialty Breakout

Becoming an Interim Exec Specialty Breakout

  • 301 Interim CFO
  • 302 Interim CIO/CTO
  • 303 Turnaround
  • 304 Interim Chief Sales Officer

Start the Leadership Program

European Interims Face Fee Pressure

August 16, 2012

While Europe’s economic woes have factored into the fee structures and engagement levels of interim executives in recent years, Europe-based interims are concerned about another force putting pressuring on fees: headhunting firms.

Interims from Europe say the market is awash in placement firms looking to match European interim executives with the companies that need them. Of course, there are reputable placement firms that specialize in placing interim executives, but those firms aren’t the problem.

Fakers and Posers Flood the European Interim Market, Fee Pressure Up

European interims are concerned that many of today’s middlemen promise interim executive placement services, but are muddying the definition of interim and harming a specialty that lives by its promise of top-flight decision-making backed by experienced strategy execution under a fixed timeframe.

For the high rungs of interim executives, that watering down is resulting in lower fee structures.

Continue reading →