Tag Archives: Experience

How Do You Target CIOs of Large Companies? Six Suggestions

Situation: A company’s target customers are Fortune 1000 companies, some of whom are simultaneously clients and competitors. The key target is the VP/CIO. A prime concern of that individual is assuring that their IT systems never go down. What could the company do better to approach these target customers and reach the right decision-maker? How do you target CIOs of large companies?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The approach must be tailored to reach corporate level decision-makers:
    • Conduct a direct marketing campaign strategically as opposed to using a high-volume mailing with a low cost-per-piece.
    • Mail relatively expensive dimensional mailers to a small number of highly qualified prospects. Look for high impact to the best targets.
  • Research and identify the key targets within prospect companies.
    • The best success will come from prospects who have tried other options from the large competitors but are unsatisfied with the results.
  • Consider and research prospects within the large consulting firms. They may have tried IBM or similar options, but weren’t happy with what was provided, either because of cost, time or quality.
  • Also look at next-tier players. Success with these customers can become valuable references to the larger firms.
  • Position the offering as the “safe choice.”
  • Closely monitor customers and their experience with the offering – both pre-installation, during installation and post-installation. The key variables will be quality and ease of installation and adoption of the company’s offering.

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How Do You Align Cash Flow with Growth? Eight Points

Situation: A Company is growing faster than its cash flow allows. This concerns the CEO because this growth involves promising technologies and products critical to the company’s future. What can the company do to improve current and new cash availability? How do you align cash flow with growth?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Every growing company has experienced this problem and solved it; so can this company.
  • Grow more selectively. Review the available opportunities and select the most promising and profitable for focus. Restrict progress on less promising options for available time.
  • Search the Internet for books and resources that on this topic. For example, try “101 Techniques to Manage Cash While you Grow”.
  • There are experts, consultants and “Rent-a-CFOs” who specialize in this. Work with trusted contacts and/or search the Internet to identify appropriate resources who are familiar with the company’s industry and market.
  • Explain the situation and challenge to your vendors. Ask for opportunities to extend payments and “borrow” from them.
  • Explain the situation to customers and ask for better payments terms.
  • Borrow from an aggressive bank, factor payables, and/or find additional lending sources that offer attractive payment terms.
  • Be aware of and watch out for pitfalls that may cause serious problems. For example, an extended market contraction can leave the company stretched for cash.

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How Do You Train Others to Fill Your Shoes? Four Points

Situation: A CEO of a small but rapidly growing company needs to transfer her knowledge and experience to current employees and new hires. This includes project management, IT management and engineering. To support the company’s growth, she needs to focus on business development and closing sales to important clients. How do you train others to fill your shoes?

Advice of the CEOs:

  • Quash any skepticism associated with the release of control of areas that were previously overseen to grow the company to its current state.
    • Selected individuals with the capacity oversee these operations. As the working relationship develops trust will replace any existing skepticism about these individuals’ ability to take on these roles.
  • Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses. Focus on team management.
    • Hire sales people who will be tolerant of the odds and ends of prospective client behavior. Focus on effectively managing the sales team.
    • Train them to bring the CEO into key points in the sales process where that input can assist – after they have completed initial client development and know that a potential client relationship exists.
  • From time to time, it will be necessary to refocus the efforts of others. What can be done to facilitate this?
    • Ask questions. Try to refocus the conversation.
    • Seek clarification of what is said – “Let me summarize what I heard” – then refocus the conversation.
    • Adjust perspective. When an individual starts to ramble, they may divulge important information without considering the implications. Make mental or written notes and look for opportunities. Their talking can become a gold mine of information.
    • Use the conversation to make a personal connection. People love others who will listen patiently to them and infer trust and connection from this.
  • As CEO, the job is to help others succeed. The result is the success of the whole enterprise.
    • Remember that there are different levels of sophistication. Adjust the mindset and exercise tolerance over these differences.
    • Focus on passions and strengths. Get others to assist in areas which are not your strengths, but which may be strengths for them.

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How Do you Position Yourself as the New Leader? Six Points

Situation: A new CEO has just taken over at a well-developed medium-sized company? He will be a first-time CEO. The principal concern is how to introduce himself to the staff and customers. He believes that first impressions are critical and wants to get off on the right foot. How so you position yourself as the new leader?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Proactively engage both staff and customers in a dialogue about the direction and potential of the company. Focus comments on positive opportunities. Demonstrate a fresh sense of excitement and energy. Both staff and customers will be looking for a leader who shares their excitement. Demonstrate good listening skills.
  • There are a number of good books on leadership. Look for a title and theme that is appealing. An important point is the need to “market” yourself to both staff and customers.
    • Develop a list of hopes, desires and needs for the company. Add to this list based on what is heard from staff and customers.
    • Look for synergies between your and their hopes and desires. Create a “launch campaign” around these synergies.
    • This will position you as both an essential member of their team, and as a leader that others will want to follow.
  • Find a mentor. One who has deep experience with the role of “new Leader”. Seek their advice and counsel. Use them as a sounding board while developing a campaign for “Operation New Leader”.
  • Remember that both the company and the new vision are just plans and may require flexibility.
  • Ask others – particularly mentor and staff:
    • What is the model that they see? What are the key objectives that the company should accomplish during the first year?
    • What niche do they see the company aspiring to fill? From this may come insights into underdeveloped opportunities that the predecessor failed to leverage. Also, an opportunity to gain key allies within the company.
    • Focus discussions on what will bring increased value to the company.
  • While speaking to others, listen for their questions about the role of the Leader. This will present an opportunity to define the Leader role by addressing their needs as you transition into the new position.

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How Do You Expand into a New Market? Four Points

Situation: A company is interested in expanding into new market. The CEO notes that they have little experience in this market, but it is lucrative, and they believe that their technology has effective applications in this market. How do you expand into a new market?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If the new market is technical it is important to identify the standards that govern production in that market. Examples include ISO 9000 processes and 13485 ISO Medical Standards. Start work on these now to assure that the products and services under development meet market standards.
    • While it will take effort to become ISO compliant, this investment will bring significant benefits in terms of regularizing all the company’s processes and procedures.
    • There may be some early resistance, but the long-term benefit is worth the pain.
    • Being ISO certified helps the company to sell its services. Many clients will not consider the company as a serious vendor unless it is ISO certified.
  • Pull in an outside consultant to do a quick gap analysis between where the company’s current procedures are and where they need to meet the standards.
  • Will ISO certification provide a competitive advantage?
    • It will never disadvantage the company and may provide a competitive advantage with customers.
    • Use Blue Ocean Strategy to create a new advantage for the company around ISO certification.
    • Industry will eventually require vendors to increasingly become ISO certified. If the company is already there it will be ahead of the curve and may be able to gain a premium price for its products and services by being there ahead of others.
    • European and International companies increasingly insist on ISO certification – they are ahead of the US.
    • Create a Market Road Map. Identify the markets that the company could serve. Look at the requirements for doing business in these markets. It may be possible to find additional leverage in ISO certification that will allow the company to enter additional markets with minor incremental additional cost.
  • Will ISO certification add an additional cost structure to the company’s services?
    • Under ISO, a company can have both ISO and non-ISO projects. Company standards will simply identify which projects are which and when non-ISO standards apply. Standards can be changed under ISO as new non-ISO opportunities arise. It is just a matter of updating procedures.

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How Do You Develop an Employee to the Next Level? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has a key employee who wants a higher level of responsibility. Currently this employee is primarily focused on business development. He’s good at this but wants a higher level of experience. The CEO agrees. How do you develop an employee to the next level?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If you ask this individual what needs to be done, what happens?
    • Revenue is number one. This is where he is focused, but he wants more than this from his role.
    • If this is also the CEO’s primary objective then the CEO needs to back off and direct him to split his time between closing high level opportunities and training his direct reports to be able to close lower-level opportunities on their own.
  • To the CEO – thinking about your own experience, how did you mature to a higher level when you had primary responsibility for business development?
    • Answer: I built and trained staff to do this and delegated these responsibilities to them.
    • Allow this individual and other key managers within the company to do the same thing, and coach them along the way.
    • Empower this individual to build his staff and enable them to take on more of the functions that he no longer wants to handle himself. Allow him to prioritize his time to focus on: hiring and training of his key staff and coaching and supervision as they grow into their new roles.
  • Consider this solution as a larger project manager role. Take a key product and empower this individual to design, build and manage the organization to deliver this product.
  • To frame this solution short-term, start with a 1-on-1. Ask about his vision – what he wants as his role and how he sees building this.
    • Follow by laying this out in terms of the company’s objectives – be specific as to what this looks like.
    • Look for a win / win reconciliation between the CEO’s and the employee’s visions that meet both of their objectives. Get on the same page with this individual, so that this fulfills both of your needs.

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What are the Options for Your Next Phase? Six Suggestions

Situation: It’s a new year, and a CEO is thinking through options for the coming year and beyond. She has decided to leave her company and establish a new role and career for herself. Immediate concerns are funding the transition and entry into a new career. What are the options for your next phase?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The area that can be built most quickly to provide income is a consulting practice based on the experience developed as a CEO and as a specialist leveraging past experience. Building a new practice is a big commitment. Make this the initial focus and get a few gigs to get the ball rolling. The company is an early option, as well as some of their key customers. These relationships are already in place.
  • On the academic side, investigate Executive Education programs in Business Schools. Here the clientele is different from normal undergraduate and postgraduate education – actively working managers and executives. For this audience the combination of experience as a CEO and academic credentials is advantageous. For this audience, a lack of credentialed teaching experience is largely counterbalanced by the weight of professional experience.
  • The Professor / Consultant track looks best if established as a 5-year plan.
  • While getting established in a new role there will be an initial challenge managing the time demands of teaching, research and developing a consulting practice. Think of this as managing the multiple functions of a company. It will be important to establish early priorities to accomplish the desired plan.
  • A professorship does not necessarily tie financially to current goals but can be an important strategic adjunct to consulting efforts. In a certain sense, teaching will have to be its own reward.
  • To the extent possible and depending upon how the board responds to the decision to leave the company negotiate the best possible severance package. This can tie into some of the suggestions, above.

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How Do You Hire and Retain the Right People? Four Suggestions

Situation: A CEO is concerned about employee turnover, particularly among promising younger employees. He doesn’t know whether these employees are different from past employees, or whether it is a function of the current economy and recovery. They look like a good fit during interviews and appear to fit well with the company when they come onboard. Yet, after a few weeks or months they leave. How do you hire and retain the right people?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Ask other companies in your area whether they are experiencing the same phenomena, and what they are doing about this. Are their experiences similar? Why do they think this is happening? Have they developed successful strategies to stem the resignations?
  • Conduct follow-up interviews 3 months after the employees leave. Use an independent party – or at least a neutral party within the company – to conduct the post-departure interview. While there may be a variety of reasons why individuals leave, are there similar themes in their motivations?
  • Are employees being treated similarly to the way that Margery Mayer and others have discussed treating customers – are they being heard?
    • Ask and listen to their true motivations – perhaps they value the opportunity to take an extended vacation for a life experience more than they value a raise. Intel and other companies offer their employees an extended sabbatical after a certain number of years of service. The employee does with this time what he or she wants.
  • Host informal beer and pizza sessions with employee groups. Keep the mood relaxed. Let them open up and complain if they so wish. It’s far better to let them air these feelings with the CEO than as buzz within the office – particularly if the see that they are being heard.
    • It is important to follow up and respond to what is heard. Employees appreciate the opportunity to be open and honest, but only if they sense that their input is producing the changes that they desire.

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How Do You Manage Growth in a Difficult Economy? Seven Suggestions

Situation: A CEO’s company has struggled due to difficult business conditions during the last year. Top among the challenges has been poor execution in hiring quality people, not because they weren’t available, but due to uncertainty. He is also concerned about infrastructure issues, particularly in IT. How do you manage growth in a difficult economy?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Focusing on IT, a key element for success in IT is having a clear definition of company needs. How does IT serve the company? What are the goals and objectives of the IT system? What kind of load must it be able to handle? What aspects of the system are most critical to company success?
  • Finding quality talent with the necessary experience is a challenge; particularly if solid goals and objectives haven’t been developed.
  • One CEO shared success managing IT. The company hired two IT professionals and had them report to an internal committee. This committee then communicated effectively with management.
  • Another CEO observed that some IT people look at their job as a process rather than a function; they just show up and fix things. Management of IT was improved by establishing clear objectives and holding the IT staff accountable for their performance against these objectives.
  • Another CEO told the story of terminating their IT person due to lack of consistency. IT must operate under management oversight, with clearly defined goals and objectives, and accountability.
  • Outsourcing some IT functions can help if used with care. On-site staff can focus on system maintenance and fight the inevitable fires.
  • IT costs should be thoroughly reviewed. They can be expensive. Look at IT costs as a percent of sales and compare expenditures with others in the industry sector.
  • Take a similar approach with other functions needing attention.

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How Do You Transition to a New CEO? Four Strategies

Situation: A company founder was advised by her Board to help them hire a CEO with more experience to run the company. This new CEO is now in place. As the founder gains more experience, the Board has indicated its willing to consider her as CEO. How do you transition to a new CEO?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Become the fire hose! Build a tight relationship with the new CEO and together build the future strategy that will enable you both to win.
    • Others will focus on past issues. Keep your approach and advice positive. Position yourself as a partner, not an adversary. Emphasize your supportive and collaborative capacities.
    • Become the new CEO’s go-to person: trustworthy, objective, knowledgeable, reliable. Nurture the development of chemistry with the new CEO.
    • When the new CEO asks what needs to be done, produce the plan. Leverage your knowledge and expertise to become his greatest resource.
  • Enlist the CEO’s support of one or more of the focused strategies that are already in play within the company. Build the support of the Board and focus on boosting company value to 2x sales. The Board won’t forget who produced the original initiatives.
  • You have more power than you imagine – both with the Board and the new CEO – due to your knowledge of the marketplace and the business. Use it wisely.
    • While there is a new CEO, the company has already been profitable and company operations are clean. The Board will remember this.
  • How do you boost the chances to eventually be named CEO by the Board?
    • Tie yourself very closely to the new CEO – be this person’s more important resource. Build and cement your position as his most important ally within the company. It will help you to gain his support for implementing your ideas.
    • Segue your relationship with the Board members to become the company’s next CEO.
    • At the same time, grow your successor within the company so that you will be ready to move up to CEO when the opportunity arises.

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