Tag Archives: Model

How Do You Balance Scalable Growth with Quality Service? Five Thoughts

Situation: A CEO wants to determine whether and to what extent his company’s service model is scalable. He wants to determine whether it is possible to add additional clients by adjusting the ratio of clients to staff. The tricky part is determining whether the company can increase the client to staff ratio while minimizing the impact on client service. This is critical because client service is the company’s “secret sauce”. How do you balance scalable growth with quality service?

  • Start by profiling the current client base from high to low maintenance. For example, set up a grid with axes of sophistication and frequency of desired contact as follows:
    • A – unsophisticated and desire frequent contact
    • B – sophisticated and desire frequent contact
    • C – unsophisticated and desire infrequent contact
    • D – sophisticated and desire infrequent contact
  • Analyze the client base and assign each current or new client to category A, B, C or D.
  • Distribute client relationships so that no member of the team has too many A’s. This may make it possible to assign more clients to each staff member.
  • Also consider matching staff to client type. Some staff may be better working with unsophisticated clients, while others are more adept with sophisticated clients.
  • As this model is developed and built, try different alternatives for matching staff to clients. This can help to identify additional alternatives for achieving the company’s objective.

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How Do You Position Yourself as the New Leader? Five Points

Situation: A medium-sized company has just been acquired. A long-term employee has been named CEO of the entity. During his tenure with the company, he has established solid relationships within the company and is well-respected. He understands that he is no longer a co-worker but is now CEO. How does he best position himself to both employees and to the acquirer? How do you position yourself as the new leader?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Proactively engage the team in a dialogue about the direction and potential of the company. Focus comments on the positive and the potential of the firm and the combined entity. The acquirer is bringing a new sense of excitement and energy to the firm. They will be looking for key leaders who share their excitement.
  • Market yourself to the new owners.
    • Develop a list of hopes, desires, and needs.
    • Dialogue with the acquirers and learn their hopes and dreams for the combined entity.
    • Look for synergies between your and their hopes and desires. Create your own marketing campaign around these synergies.
    • Position yourself an essential member of their transition team.
  • Select a mentor from the acquirer. Actively seek out their advice and guidance. Use them as a sounding board as you develop your campaign as new CEO.
    • The new organization is now just a plan and may be very flexible.
    • Ask acquirers about the model that they see. What are their key objectives for the first year? What niche do they wish to fill buy acquiring the company? As the key liaison between the company and acquirer bring value to the transaction.
    • When speaking to them, listen for their questions of how they see you fitting into the organization. This will present an opportunity to define your role by addressing their key needs during and after the transition.
  • The same suggestions apply to an individual receiving a promotion within the same company.

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How Do You Maintain a Healthy Work/Life Balance? Three Perspectives

Situation: A CEO finds that even on vacations he is obsessed with what is happening at the office. This keeps him from relaxing even during time off. Moreover, his family notices this and is unhappy that he isn’t spending his vacation time with them. How does he turn this around? How do you maintain a healthy work/life balance?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If an individual is still working most of the time when on vacation this has a number of negative effects.
    • It makes the vacation even more stressful than normal work. First, a vacation is meant to provide distance and perspective from the workplace, as well as to allow time to relax and recharge. Second, this is time set aside to enjoy being with family and focus on work robs everyone of this. Third, while on vacation, there are fewer resources at one’s disposal so solving problems from afar is more difficult that when in the office.
  • To address these issues, plan on the next vacation to be “fully unplugged.”
    • Designate a “substitute” to act as CEO during this vacation. Assure that this individual has their own “go to” person to work with if they encounter a situation that puts them in over their head. Perhaps this can be a member of the board or another senior officer.
    • Plan the next vacation for two weeks to test the substitute model.
    • An additional benefit is that this can provide assurance that even if an unexpected situation prevents the CEO from being present, there is an assurance that the company can operate without the CEO if necessary. This boosts the value of the company.
  • Remember that success as a CEO is measured partly on the ability to have a fully operational office when the CEO is absent. Build and conduct the role so that the company operates well when the CEO is not there. This is consistent with a healthy growth model and long-terms plans for building a successful company.

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What Do You Manage as You Adapt to Market Conditions? Four Points

Situation: A company is in the process of adjusting its customer and business focus in response to changing market conditions. Gross margin on projects that have been the company mainstay in the past have fallen significantly. The CEO is evaluating different adjustments to address this. What do you manage as you adapt to market conditions?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The company’s business model is shifting from a staffing agency to a product development model. This means that the business must be driven by a different set of parameters and metrics:
    • A different time/utilization mix.
    • Different personnel – the company needs managers.
    • Changes to the organizational chart and incentives.
  • How does the company currently charge clients for Project Management?
    • Currently it is time and materials.
    • Consider charging on a percent of project cost basis. For example, 15% of total project cost. The pitch will be that the client will be able to reduce the overall cost of the project – ideally in both dollars and time – and that the company will have increased accountability for delivering these results.
  • How will this impact the company’s cash position? How will the company retain adequate cash flow during the transition?
    • The current cash position is 4 months of projected monthly cash plus receivables.
    • If there is drop to 3 months, flag a yellow caution light.
    • Two months becomes a red light.
    • What is the backstop if the company runs shy – if, for example, some engineers are not very active? In this case, will deferral of unpaid vacation time and other options allow the company to survive without further draining cash? Have a meeting with key managers to evaluate the impact of this option.
  • Consider looking at competitors for possible collaborations. This can be delicate because they may want to steal the company’s personnel and there are other risks, but sometimes promising deals can be arranged.

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How Do You Get and Keep the Right People on the Bus? Four Solutions

Situation: A company is experiencing an employee turnover rate of 12%, vs. a company target of 6-7%. This has occurred due to a change in the company’s business environment during the recent downturn as they sought to optimize business practices. Long term employees no longer felt like the office was the “same place.” How do you get and keep the right people on the bus?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Turnover has been a problem principally in the home office – the largest office – but has not been a problem across the rest of the country.
    • Has the company looked at what works in the other regions, vs. what has not been working in home office?
    • Could the problem be related to size and structure of the home office operation? The home office has 55 people whereas the other regions are composed of smaller working groups of 12-15 employees. Does it make sense to look at smaller working sub-groups within the home office, or some different structure that more closely mirrors the regions with low turnover?
  • What can be done to boost morale in the home office?
    • Try creating smaller working teams to mirror the smaller team atmosphere of the other regions.
    • Create a “small office” atmosphere. Build walls to visually separate subgroups – creating their own “space” to foster subgroup affiliation and bonding.
    • Increase the autonomy of the subgroups – and enhance the career path possibilities within the subgroups.
    • Focus on successes, what the “Teams” are achieving, and the contributions that they make to customers and the company. Express Team successes in terms of the impact that they’ve had on customers.
    • Look at the Olympic Team model – individual performers who support each other ferociously to accomplish Team performance goals.
  • Create a visual mural on a large wall representing – perhaps with some humor added – the vision of growth for the company and the opportunities that will accompany this growth.
  • Ask the home office team for input on how to build strong functioning teams or challenge them to define and build the teams.

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How Do You Implement Your Vision for the Future? Seven Points

Situation: A CEO has a clear vision for the future of her company and what she wants to build. Her ambition is to revolutionize her industry. What are the most important things that she should to make her vision a reality? How do you implement your vision for the future?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • It is critical to take charge of the vision for the company and to see that the company has or hires the right people to implement the vision.
  • As CEO, remove yourself from the day to day.
    • Hire a Director of Operations ASAP.
    • With the right experienced Director of Operations, the infrastructure to support the program will fall into place. This individual will help to assure that this happens because he/she will be incentivized and motivated to perform.
  • Concentrate the focus for the next 4-6 months to scale the present operation to the point where the model can be “franchised.” Consider expanding the model through sites with managers who have an ownership interest.
  • An important initial step is rounding out the training process.
  • The greatest value of the present site is to serve as a demonstration site to show potential customers how installation of the technology in their operation would work. With this in mind, build a working demonstration model on the present site to the dimensions and scale that customers would see on their sites.
  • To shorten the lengthy sales cycle, create and sell a feasibility study for the technology. Agreement to a feasibility study represents commitment from the prospect and conducting the study will create buy-in on the part of the customer.
  • As the new technology is launched, CEO time will be spent away from the initial site. Prove that the site can run in the CEO’s absence before leaving for extended periods of time.

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How Do You Build Teamwork Across Account Teams? Four Observations

Situation: A CEO is concerned that there is a lack of teamwork across the company’s account teams. Often, they compete with each other rather than sharing knowledge and information. While some competition is good, too much can stifle growth. How do you build teamwork across account teams?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • It looks like the company needs to change its account management culture. There is a need to review the entire operation and rethink how the account teams interact with each other.
    • Schedule meetings with the full account staff – attendance required – describe the concern and encourage teams to share ideas and resources.
    • The commission structure drives performance. Tie financial incentives to collaboration. Reward the teams on collaborative efforts disproportionately to individual team effort – Y% commission for individual team effort vs. 1.5 x Y% commission for collaborative effort.
    • Increase monitoring of revenue and client acquisition – for the full group as opposed to individual account teams.
  • To keep a manageable level of competition among teams, group them into “leagues.” The leagues compete against each other for production and financial rewards. Encourage them to develop social interaction to build the league spirit.
    • A twist on this is temporary “leagues.” Shift team and league groupings from time to time to share best practices and resources. Measure the results. Track and reward the best league performance over time.
    • Be sensitive to the possibility that individuals may respond differently to league vs. individual team incentives. Those who respond more positively to the league concept can become the collectors and disseminators of best practices among the teams. This creates a status incentive to complement the financial incentives.
  • Consider the peer-programming model from the software industry. In this model, two people are occasionally teamed with one as lead and one as back-up. Let them learn from each other for a period and then return to normal operation. The same can be done with teams.
  • Does the company really have a problem? If the corporate competition leaves at 5:00PM but the company’s staff are working weekends to produce, maybe things are OK!

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How Do You Build Channel Sales? Three Key Points

Situation: A company has developed a disrupting technology that allows OEM manufacturers to produce high-end machines at a fraction of their current cost. The challenge is that the company does not possess the capacity to reach producers of high-end machines.  The CEO seeks advice on how to efficiently focus channel development. How do you build channel sales?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The dilemma is having a major disrupting technology in a market with a strong division between OEMs servicing the low/medium-end market and those servicing the high-end market.
    • This technology collapses the division between the low/medium and the high-end markets.
    • This shift disrupts the current business models of either group of OEMs, as well as their technology development plans. This is the source of resistance.
  • Therefore, the most promising channel development partner is either:
    • A low/medium-end OEM who is also a disrupter and who has the capability to develop a high-end sales and marketing effort; or
    • A high-end OEM that knows the market but who’s current strategy is failing and needs an entirely different solution to revive their prospects.
  • The near-term task is to gain market capability – both manufacturing and marketing/sales – and to use this capability to gain early market acceptance.
    • If, over the next 12 months, the company can begin to impact the market shares of the high-end OEMs, this is the surest way to gain their attention. Once the company starts to gain share, a likely outcome is that one of the high-end OEMs will buy the company to lock up their IP.
  • Another company used a similar strategy several years ago.
    • They entered a new market by way of a business collaboration with a high-visibility partner.
    • In one year, they took 30% market share from the market leader through this collaboration.
    • As a result, the market leader bought them because “it was less expensive to buy you than to spend the marketing dollars that we would have had to spend to compete against you.”

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What is the Best Way to Roll out a Business Opportunity? Six Suggestions

Situation: A CEO is reviewing options for introducing a new offering. The target customers are small companies or projects within larger companies. The offering includes both an initial product and follow-on services. Education or training will be a component of the offering. What is the best way to roll out a business opportunity?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • It is best to position the offering as a straightforward proposition at launch and develop proof of concept. This will provide experience and an income stream to fund more complex offerings based on the initial model.
    • It will also provide insight on how to sell the product and service in different markets – manufacturing, service, and software.
    • Leverage this experience to pursue more complex models.
  • Build a portfolio of case studies before pitching to paying companies.
    • Use companies with whom relationships already exist as the proving base. These will become references for new clients.
    • Develop data to show actual cost savings from the use of the product and services.
  • Establish a relationship with an existing company for which the offering is complimentary and cross-offer products and services on an ad hoc basis.
    • Trial the product and service with one of their clients in return for a royalty or share of the profit.
    • Ask that company to make the introduction.
  • Target start-ups – offer an initial package for a low price. Offer the product to start-ups for free and get them hooked as long-term customers.
  • What would be needed to roll the offering through growth equity firms or venture capitalists?
    • This will require some proof that the offering increases the ROI to growth equity and VC portfolio companies and funds.
    • Note that the portfolio companies of growth equity firms are larger and farther up the growth curve
  • In current economy the key message to prospects may be that the offering will help them to “right size” their company.
    • Take a closer look at the offering and determine whether it is configured appropriately for the current environment.

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How Do You Price a Product and Service? Five Approaches

Situation: A company offers a product combined with a service. Small companies can’t afford the combined price, but don’t need the full functionality of the combined product plus service. An option is to create an offering on a per-seat basis. In this option, how do you price seat utilization? How do you price a product and service?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Pricing needs to follow value. For large companies, functionality and seamless operation are key. Small companies have different challenges – they have less money and don’t need all the features required by large companies. Configure a limited product for this market.
  • Don’t de-feature the product – create a different use / pricing model. Consider a model that prices based on the user company’s revenue, with periodic review of their revenue and fees paid. As they grow and increase utilization, they increase their ability to pay for, and their need for full utilization.
  • Use a cloud model and create a “pay per amount of use” option. Limit this offering to X number of users or X number of projects to create a different product from the full license option. While this will require monitoring, it will differentiate the partial license option from the full license option.
  • Develop an alternative to what is offered by the chief competitor and create an offering that this competitor can’t compete with.
  • Before making a final decision, institute a formal process for collecting ongoing feedback from customers. This will help to clarify alternatives going forward.

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