August 5, 2013
John Collard

Recover & Preserve Value: Working Successfully With Turnaround Professionals

John Collard | CEO, COO, Turnaround

The turnaround of a business in financial distress involves managing the business and its problems. The process is time consuming and requires a special set of skills. The problems of the business are often compounded by owners or management who are facing financial distress for the first time and who are reticent to change. This is where a turnaround specialist brings his art to the process.

The identity of the client must be clear. The client’s identity may appear clear at first glance, but it can quickly become blurred. For example, the owner of a closely held business may be as concerned about personal guarantees as about the survival of the business. In addition, if the lender has referred the specialist, the specialist must make it clear to all parties whether the lender or the business is the client.

Turnaround specialists generally are either interim managers or consultants. Interim managers will replace the CEO, take the decision-making reins of a troubled business, and guide it through its troubled waters, hopefully to safety. Turnaround consultants advise existing management without taking an operating role within the company. Although some specialists are willing to act as either an interim manager or a consultant, most prefer to act as one or the other.

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August 1, 2013
Scott Philips

Not so Basic Sales Basics!

Scott Philips | CEO, CSO, COO, CMO, Turnaround

For the past several months, I’ve been using our blog to highlight the various elements that we focus on as a company. Writing the posts has been great, but every now and then I hit an area that is so many “miles deep” in terms of content that I become completely stumped on how to boil it down (which is why we have, oh, 50 or so posts in the hopper for the future).

Revenue generation is one of those areas.

Why is revenue generation complicated? It’s complicated because every company is unique, and because there are a million marketing “tips and tricks” out there to try. I wracked my brain for a bit on this one and have decided to keep it basic. Since a blog is not the space for eight-point “how-to’s” and twenty-quadrant charts, I’m simply going to share a truth I’ve found to be fairly universal for companies when it comes to boosting revenue (specifically pertaining to sales and marketing):

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July 18, 2013
Philippe Lavie

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

Philippe Lavie | CSO

The world, as we all have known it during the late 90s, is gone. No longer are sales executives order takers and if they think this is the game, the awakening has been and continues to be rude. Culpepper Sale Study, a benchmark for the world of sales, released the following statistics:

1… Fact: 94% of all sales veterans have had less than 5 days of any formal sales
training.
2… Fact: 87% of all sales managers have had less then 8 days of any formal sales
training.
3… Fact: 98% of all salespeople don’t follow a consistent sales methodology.
4… Fact: 93% of all sellers volunteer a price decrease without being asked.
5… Fact: 87% of prospected inquires are never followed up by a sales contact.
6… Fact: 81% of all sales take five calls or more.
7… Fact: 80% of all salespeople are willing to accept a 90% rejection rate.
8… Fact: 40% of all sales veterans experience bouts of call reluctance severe enough
to threaten their contribution in sales.
9… Fact: 93% of all sales veterans have had no training on how to generate their own
leads

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July 16, 2013

PE Dealmaking Soft in 2Q: Pitchbook Report

PE investment seemed poised for a spike in 2013, but Pitchbook’s 3Q 2013 Private Equity Breakdown spells out how that hasn’t happened, at least so far this year.

“While public equity markets experienced strong gains throughout the first half of 2013, PE deal-making was at a lackluster pace in 2Q 2013, reaching a new quarterly low since the depths of the financial crisis,” Pitchbook reports. PE firms invested $71 billion across 318 deals in the second quarter, down from the 420 investments in 1Q 2013 and far off the 671 investments in 4Q 2012, where late-year activity saw $141 billion in investments.

Meantime, exits saw a “slight uptick” in the third quarter– 108 portfolio company exits totaling $17.1 billion–but that activity was still the second lowest quarterly total in the last three years.

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July 3, 2013

Blessed are the Cheesemakers; Well, Certified at Least

The American Cheese Society, a trade group, recently jumped on the certification bandwagon. They’re giving cheesemakers the chance to get certified. The organization is offering a professional exam this year for about 150 artisan and specialty cheesemakers .

Of course, Europe is the leader in the perfecting of the cheese-making process and the evaluation of it. But no one’s exactly sure—as far as we know–who invented certification as a practice or where in the world it first emerged.

What we do know that certification in a given profession can make a significant difference. Who wants an accountant when you can have a Certified Public Accountant or Chartered Accountant?

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July 3, 2013

Paging Dr. Interim: U.S. Healthcare Fix in the Boardroom

Everyone knows the U.S. healthcare delivery system is sick, and cost increases unsustainable. Difficult reforms are underway, piecemeal and painful.

Many experts have taken a swing at the U.S. healthcare behemoth. Who is powerful enough to take the problem on? Probably not government, probably not hospital groups, and probably not insurance companies, according to Ron Hammerle, an interim executive specializing in the healthcare field.

The solution to healthcare, Hammerle argues, involves large U.S. retailers, including those who might run the local supermarket. Still a minority viewpoint at this point, but Hammerle said it is rapidly catching on.

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June 26, 2013
Scott Philips

Introducing the TNP Diagnostic for Workforce Engagement and Motivation (DWEM)

Scott Philips | CEO, CSO, COO, CMO, Turnaround

TNP: Why look at employee motivation and engagement?
Scott: The purpose of business is to make money, right? To make money you need customers, products or services, a strong value proposition, and an ability to deliver on that value proposition. Productivity and profitability rarely (if ever) occur without an engaged and motivated workforce. Success is dependent on it.

TNP: How do you define employee motivation and engagement?
Scott: Employee motivation is what draws an individual to their work and workplace or what personally stimulates them to high levels of performance. This is unique for virtually every person, and is much more internally driven. Leaders who know how to motivate their employees know how to sync with those employees’ internal drive. Engagement is essentially external elements that connect or involve individuals with outside stimulus. Engaged employees are attentive, they contribute, they are stimulated, and they show care for what’s happening. The outcome of both strong engagement and motivation is higher productivity and profitably. These things should matter to every company.

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June 19, 2013
Dominic Luzi

Four Steps to Transforming Your Business

Dominic Luzi | CTO, CIO, COO

In today’s business environment, it is not enough to stay on a level playing field with your competition: it is an essential ingredient in the formula for success to lead out your markets. Turbulence is a great place to be as long as you are the one creating that turbulence and defining the market. That leader’s position is the one that commands top margin performance and value to shareholders. Having lead a number of successful global transformations, I think it is time to net this process out to the four steps that will get you there, quickly.

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June 18, 2013

WEBINAR: Avoiding Fraud and Corruption

Experts like interims are in demand, and not always by clients who are acting with integrity. How do you spot corruption before taking the gig?

And once inside the company, how do you make sure everyone’s playing with integrity, and that partners and vendors are likewise? Poor leaders ignore corruption at their peril, and the toll corruption takes is incalculable. There are the obvious effects: theft of resources, injury to a company’s reputation, and, in a worst case scenario, even federal indictments. Maribeth Vander Weele, president of the Vander Weele Group, a corporate investigations firm that specializes in preventing and investigating complex fraud schemes, says less obvious is the toll that internal corruption takes on a company’s effectiveness. “Time and time again, when our team looks beneath the covers of bad decision-making, we see some form of corruption as the source.” In the webinar, Vander Weele presented red flags that must catch the eye of the interim executive. Vander Weele also spelled out ways to avoid corruption, and actions that must be taken once it is identified.