When to Hire Interim Management

There are specific situations that arise in organizations in which hiring interim management is most valuable to the organization. The book Leadership on Demand by Chuck Besondy and Paul Travis describes 7 scenarios when an interim manager can make a significant impact on the bottom line.

1. Significant revenue or marketing event is in jeopardy

A significant revenue event could include an upcoming valuation, fiscal year-end, or a pending merger. Bringing in an experienced interim executive can give the organization a “shot in the arm” to help meet revenue goals when they carry additional significance.

2. Totally new strategies or programs must be implemented or tested

According to David Altounian, CEO of iTaggit.com, “I’ve learned that interim leaders in marketing are particulary useful when we’re implementing a type of marketing strategy or tactic that is completely new to us”. When an organization is implementing a new marketing or sales strategy but lack expertise, hiring an interim manager with specific experience in this area can help successful implementation of the new strategy.

3. A gap exists in a key position

When a sales or marketing executive leaves your company, an interim executive can fill the position and maintain momentum until a permanent replacement is found. Since there can be great opportunity cost to leaving the position vacant for months, hiring an interim executive can be an ideal solution to fill the gap.

4. A specific skill set is needed, but not permanently

If you recognize that your organization needs a particular skill set, but the skill does not exist within the organization, an interim manager can be a great source for that skill.

5. Additional bandwidth needed, but not permanently

If your company faces a temporary need for additional bandwidth at the executive level, such as during a product launch or formulation of a new strategy, tapping an interim executive can be a successful method for temporarily increasing bandwidth.

6. Objectivity in a leadership position would be beneficial, especially during strategic planning

An objective and outside perspective can help an organization make decisions that are less affected by internal pressures, politics, and myopic thinking.

7. Hands-on coaching and training is required to elevate skill and process knowledge of existing staff

Bringing in an experienced interim executive can provide existing staff with beneficial executive coaching and training. Interim executives often have 20+ years of experience, and they can transfer their knowledge and advice to current executives.

Photo by barunpatro

Interim Marketing: When a Specialist is Needed

One of the reasons an interim marketing executive can be invaluable at solving marketing problems at an organization, is that they often have a specific area of specialized expertise. This contrasts with the common practice of organizations to develop their executives to be generalists.

According to the book Leadership on Demand by Charles Besondy and Paul Travis:

Large companies believe in having succession plans and management development programs. Typically, a manager will be identified as having potential ‘for upper management’ and that person is groomed and mentored for years. We all know companies who have policies of moving executives from department to department, country to country, in an effort to prepare them for a senior management role. The goal is that senior managers should be well-rounded individuals with broad knowledge of the business.

While organizations definitely need executives with general knowledge in a lot of areas, organizations also need specialists to be effective. Bringing in an interim marketing executive to address a particular issue that they have extensive knowledge and experience in can be an effective way to improve specific areas of your organization’s marketing. One place to find interim marketing executives is at an interim executive company like OneAccord, which has 32 sales and marketing executives in 12 states, each with their unique set of skills and areas of expertise (view OneAccord Interim Executive profiles).

Photo by Keith Allison

How to Find the Right Interim Executive to Fill a Key Interim Role

How does a company find the right interim executive to fill a key interim role in sales or marketing?

There are a variety of elements needed in selecting the right candidates for interim sales or marketing roles. Certainly experience in the industry is a plus and having experience in the specific horizontals is valuable, however what stands out in selecting the right person are the characteristics that make up an ‘ideal’ Sales Executive or Marketing Executive.

We have spent several years and invested lots of money in determining the ideal characteristics of these key executives. Dr. Tami Hoogestraat, Psychologist, and I have modeled the characteristics of the top eight key roles (CEO, CFO, CMO, CSO, COO, CTO, Customer Service & HR) in organizations. We surveyed a large number of CEOs, Presidents and owners of businesses in small, medium and large companies and in a variety of industries. Our findings reveal that the characteristics needed for these roles are highly consistent, regardless of geography, industry or size of organization.

The executive in charge of marketing is somewhat different from the characteristics of the executive in charge of sales. But, frequently the senior executive must incorporate both sets of characteristics. Generally speaking the marketing executive must excel at problem solving and decision making, while the sales executive must excel at social and communication skills. In combination, both of these must be present.

So, following are the characteristics (in order of priority) for each of these important roles:

Marketing Executive:

• Customer Focus

• Formal Presentation

• Resourcefulness

• Creativity

• Persuasiveness

• Passion for Company

• Strategic Planning

Sales Executive:

• Customer Focus

• Persuasiveness

• Formal Presentation

• Boldness

• First Impression

• Extroversion

• Passion for Company

Our 3Sixty Leadership Assessment is the best way to determine if your team has the right characteristics to succeed in today’s difficult environment.

Interim management executive, Scott Philips, is a C-level executive based in Portland with over 30 years of diversified experience in enterprise wide leadership. He is recognized as an action-oriented leader with strengths in strategic management, business assessments, global brand building, business development and enterprise selling. Scott’s experience in analyzing market data, developing solutions and effectively executing plans have resulted in significant revenue growth in a number of companies in a wide variety of industries. He can be reached at 503.913.2705 or scott.philips(at)oneaccordpartners.com

Photo by unlistedsightings

Drive Revenues With Executive Interim Management: Interview with Jeff Rogers, Co-Founder of OneAccord

Why does OneAccord exist?
It’s serving companies with a variable cost model, in project or interim, best in class people to to help companies with flat or stuck revenue.

What’s the mission of OneAccord?
The mission of OneAccord is to multiply business success, but do it through relationships, yet driving results. It’s not to write reports. It’s not to exist just to do strategy, but it’s to bring results for companies. It’s built on the relationship side, both internally on a collaborative model as well as what we do to facilitate working with the client.

What makes this the right time for OneAccord in the market place?
On the people side, there are more and more talented and savvy senior executives that are the market than ever before. Companies want a variable cost. They’re getting away from just the W2, long term, with all the associated benefits.

There’s a lot of mergers and acquisitions at the mid market level…so you have all these companies coming together. All of a sudden you have redundant management teams so people are getting popped out.

The gray ceiling, the reported age, where your viability in the market starts to shift, keeps coming down. They say it’s dropped a decade over the last few years. What that means is the average tenure has dropped. For an executive, the average tenure is typically 2-3 years. There’s a lot of great people who are at the peak of their knowledge and at the peak of their experience. They’ve got great convictions, they’re not political, they’re not trying to climb the corporate ladder, but they can bring tremendous benefit to companies. So those two influences of the right people and the right corporate environment make it great timing for OneAccord.

How do you see OneAccord developing in the future?
Fully built out we see OneAccord being about 500 partners,  multiple disciplines, but all around sales and marketing which is our expertise, serving as a catalyst for increasing top line revenue.

Jeff Rogers is co-founder of OneAccord Principals, which helps companies grow revenues with interim executives that can serve your organization on a project, interim, or permanent basis. He has been involved in both sales and management development for the last 25 years and has taught every aspect of selling: prospecting, presentation, closing, and answering objections. You can contact Jeff at Jeff.Rogers(at)OneAccordPartners.com.

Photo by kozumel

Why OneAccord Interim Management Exists

OneAccord was started for a number of reasons, one was the market needs, we saw that there were a ton of experienced people in the market that could be consultants but didn’t traditionally consider themselves as a consultant that growing demographic of baby boomers brought a wealth of experience with them but they weren’t used to delivering consulting in a classic consulting model, which was the senior person brings on the MBAs and the MBAs do all the work, it’s like the kid model if you will. So the gap that we saw in the market was to take advantage of all this experience, but also leverage that into both project and interim, and permanent roles. The average VP of sales is in a role 26-28 months so the opportunity to manage multiple projects or to work on an interim time frame to help a company get to a particular milestone was a particularly good opportunity for OneAccord.

Dave Parker is an interim executive with 20 years experience in marketing and sales who specializes in catalyzing change in startup and growth companies as well as turnaround leadership. He has served on the board of a number of companies and organizations, including Classmates.com and Guidant Financial. He has been recognized by the World Technology Network for Innovation in the Software Industry, Forbes best of the Web and the Puget Sounds 40 under 40.

Mr. Parker welcomes your questions at Dave.Parker@oneaccordpartners.com or 206.812.9419
Skype: DWParker1

How Can Interim Management Increase Revenues?

Interim management can be an effective tool for increasing revenue growth at a company. Can you give an example of when you have been hired in an interim marketing or sales management role in which you helped a company increase revenues?

The client is a network security consulting firm, needing to transform its sales structure and culture from a product focused approach to a service based revenue stream.

Founded in the 1990’s, the market around the internet, hosting/outsourcing, security, along with the move from product to services was rapidly developing, with few standards. The client desired to build a significant regional presence, associated revenue stream, business processes & resulting
strong business valuation, with the intent to be acquired. The sales team was made up of 15-20 direct sales reps with little leadership, structure, or defined metrics.

The OneAccord Solution
OneAccord guided the organization through the design and implementation of a comprehensive sales and re-engineered organizational, created new roles, position definitions, metrics and recommendations for new compensation structures. OneAccord helped to define authority and accountability to revenue generation, define a sales strategy and assisted team members and management in execution.

Engagement Highlights

• Development of a comprehensive Revenue Generation Structure

• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities

• Defined accountability to results

• Tools for measuring critical activity

• Field tested manual

• Internal sales training process

• Creation of an inside sales team partnered with a direct enterprise level group

• Channel Partnerships developed

• Improved revenue generation

Results
Over the 3 year project, moving from project based work to Interim Sales Leadership, there was a significant increase in the critical sales activities, including cold calls, building industry relationships, channel partnerships, and targeted account acquisition.

Jeff Rogers is founder of OneAccord, an interim executive company, that provides best in class interim sales and marketing leadership for companies all across the country.

In 2008 I was Interim VP of Sales for a Midwest company in the Gift Industry. I was brought in while they conducted a nationwide search for a permanent VP of Sales. The company ended 2007 down in sales and was starting 2008 in the same downward direction. As Interim VP of Sales I focused my efforts on reversing this trend. I identified several critical processes and procedures to implement to reverse the negative sales trend. By the end of March, 2008 their sales were +9.5% over the same period in 2007. The engagement was extended through the fall of 2008 as OneAccord focused on several other revenue generating opportunities after the permanent VP of Sales was hired.

Interim management executive, Richard Brune, is a sales and marketing professional with over 25 years of experience in building and managing some of America’s most recognizable consumer brands including Stanley Tools, Hartmann Luggage, REI Inc., Swiss Army Brands and licensed products with Eddie Bauer and Disney.

SITUATION:
Truck and Commercial Vehicle Product Category had very negative quality reputation in marketplace and significantly lagged market share of automotive products. Internally low existing sales and persistent quality issues resulted in defeatist attitude about potential to improve. Sales people creatively avoided selling this segment of the product line – as they did not want to stake their personal reputation on a poor quality offering.

ACTION:
Research competitive products to bench mark key features that drive customer preference and product performance. Direct engineering activities to develop distinctive products that fit within manufacturing capabilities. Create internal business plan for increased sales and lower warranty costs would offset increased piece cost. Develop Training materials and Sales Support materials including brochures and magazine advertisements. Coordinate launch product through sales force and customer base. Built on momentum by communicating both internal and external success stories.

RESULT:
First year unit sales increase of 20%. Eliminate poor quality reputation in the marketplace on this visible product category. Field evidence and acceptance of superior quality occurred within 6 months of launch. Re-energized sales force to aggressively pursue sales opportunities with existing accounts and more importantly new accounts who were not open to prior discussions due to previous persistent quality issues.

Interim management executive, Dale Hintz, is a highly organized, strategic and creative executive with expertise in product research/development, price optimization, market segmentation and mapping brand strategies. He can be reached at 972.824.6923 or dallas(at)oneaccordpartners.com

Last year after speaking with a CEO of a company doing 8 figures per year, he realized I had been VP Marketing for a competitor of a company he had received news of an auction on — and engaged me for a few days in order to help him determine the potential value and an appropriate bit amount. So for under ten grand, he got serious “feet on the street” with eyes that had different “focal range” than his.

When that particular acquisition opportunity didn’t manifest, he expressed his appreciation for adding value without ramp-up time and said he wanted to launch a SERVICE business to complement his SOFTWARE offering. Unfortunately, given economic conditions, his management team was up to their eyeballs in alligators — so this new business opportunity would ALSO have been unable to contribute any revenue or profit to the corporate coffers.

He thus engaged me as an Interim VP New Business Development to explore the business and create it if indeed the opportunity were real. In a four-month timeframe, I:

• Scoped customer pain and tested the value proposition and price elasticity

• Created a brand with input from the legacy marketing department

• Developed interoperability arrangements with a JV partner to ramp fast

• Built a financial model demonstrating the opportunity to DOUBLING REVENUE

• Returned the business, packaged in a box, such that the existing team could run with it

Paul Travis is an interim marketing executive at OneAccord. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He can be reached at Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com and at 206-910-2222.

Hire an Interim Marketing Executive? 7 Ways Interim Management Can Help an Organization

Avoid Performance Gaps

The most obvious reason to hire an interim executive is to fill a vacancy when an executive leaves until a permanent replacement can be hired. Quickly hiring an interim marketing executive can reduce the negative impact in productivity often caused when an executive leaves a top position.

Save Money by Not Hiring a FTE

Your company may not need a full time marketing executive for the entire year. An alternative is hiring an interim marketing executive who has 20+ years of experience to establish a sales strategy for the year. You only pay him or her for a couple months while they lay out a strategy to take sales to the next level and then have a competent manager, who is less expensive, to maintain the strategy for the rest of the year.

Increase Bandwidth to Tackle Tough Challenges or Take Advantage of Opportunity

When facing extraordinary challenges or a tremendous opportunity, it can benefit an organization to bring on additional resources to temporarily increase bandwidth at the executive level. An interim marketing executive can work in tandem with the full time marketing executive to get things done at a key time for the company.

Get High Cost Executives for a Fraction of the Price

It can cost an organization a million dollars to hire an experienced and proven marketing executive to take your revenue to grow to the next level. Factor in the headhunter commission, the signing bonus, competitive salary and benefits, and the costs can add up. The alternative is to hire an interim executive to do the same thing but without a lot of the expense. An interim marketing executive who has a proven track record or growing a company by several multiples in revenue can be hired on to work a couple days a week and not require the bonuses, benefits, and finders fees.

Acquire Difficult to Find Executive Talent

An interim executive from a good interim executive firm often has 20+ years of experience at Fortune 500 companies. Often executives with this type of experience would be difficult to acquire for a small or midsized company. However interim executives with this level of experience are easily accessible, you just have to contact an interim executive firm like OneAccord.

Interim Management Executives are Often Overqualified

Often times a small to medium sized business will hire an interim executive with 20-30 years of experience at larger companies. In this case overqualification can be a good thing. Interim managers have a very steep learning curve, and their experience helps them make an immediate contribution. They also can mentor and train up younger executives at the company.

Avoid Public Scrutiny of Executive Changes

According to the book, Leadership on Demand by Chuck Besondy and Paul Travis, public companies are required to disclose changes at certain executive positions. Too many replacements of top executives at a public company can lead to speculation by stock analysts that there is trouble in the company and stock price can be negatively affected. Hiring an interim executive to work in an interim capacity is usually not required to be publicly disclosed, which can help avoid this type of scenario.

Photo by Barun Patro

Interim Marketing Executive to the Rescue

What if your company had millions dollars at risk due to a lack of marketing leadership in a key executive role? Whether a marketing executive just left the company or a shift in the business environment presents new opportunities or threats, an interim marketing executive can provide the needed leadership for positive revenue growth. The book Leadership on Demand describes some of the risks of not having a key executive position filled.

The more precisely you pin a cost to the problem, the easier it will be to justify the investment in an interim engagement. Is $2MM in revenue at risk? Is 1% of market share, valued at $15MM, at risk because the test marketing schedule of a new product is in jeopardy? Are you experiencing delays in acquiring $20MM additional financing because you’re spending half your time in the VP Marketing role, rather than 100% of your time in the CEO role? Loss of opportunity and loss of business momentum can have huge ramifications for your organization.

In a competitive environment, companies can not afford to wait months until a key executive position is filled by a permanent hire before taking action. In this time of rapid change in the business environment, companies can not afford to let the competition to pass by due to a lack of bandwidth at the executive level. These are some of the scenarios in which quickly hiring an experienced interim marketing executive can save the day.

Photo credit

The Recession May Make CMOs More Numbers Driven

John Quelch wrote a thought provoking article (How CMOs Should Function in a Recession) which touches on how the recession can alter the role of the CMO in an organization. Not only do they have to come up with creative ways to stretch marketing spend further but they have to be more cognizant of the return on investment on marketing spend.

The recession will have two important, lasting results for CMOs: First, financial accountability of marketing is here to stay. Only in a few high-margin fashion-intensive categories will the shoot-from-the-hip right brain marketer survive. Second, improved accountability requires CMOs to be financially literate, to understand the balance sheet as well as the income statement impacts of marketing initiatives. The result will be a new generation of CMOs who command more respect in the C-suite and hold their jobs longer as a result.

If Quelch is right, successful CMOs in the future may require an analytical skillset that outweighs the creative skillset. In the classic debate of whether marketing is an art or science, this may give the science side the lead for now. The recent Stephen Baker book, The Numerati, describes how business is becoming more analytically driven as artificial computer intelligence is able to give marketers new insights into the behavior patterns of consumers, connecting the dots when human intuition comes up short. For example a computer sorting mountains of information from consumers online, found that Netflix users who rent romatic comedies are more likely to rent cars for the weekend. A data analysis also found that drinkers of hard liqour drinkers often buy Gatorade. These consumers likely wanted to prevent hang overs by drinking or mixing liqour with the electrolyte rich sports drink. This information could be valuable for Gatorade’s marketing department who could use this to target liqour buyers to increase sales.

Have you seen any examples of numbers becoming more important in the role of a CMO or marketing department?

Interim Marketing Fits Perfectly for the New Work Model

The Did You Know presentation on You Tube illustrates the rapid and radical changes going on in the world. One aspect of life that is shifting is the nature of work. Here are some interesting facts from the video:

• The US Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner has 10-14 jobs by the age of 38.

• 1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than a year. 1 in 2 has been there less than 5 years.

The trend of shorter job durations has a huge impact on how business will operate. Companies of the future will rely less and less on permanent workers and more on the specialized temporary worker who can accomplish a specific task with great effectiveness, even at the executive level. This is how interim executives can really help an organization who needs an effective leader to set a new direction for marketing, reinvigorate a sales force, or a myriad of other important jobs in marketing or sales. A interim marketing executives does not require a huge annual salary with an expensive benefits package. They can accomplish a goal by coming in a couple days a week or working a couple months to roll out a new product or execute a new national marketing campaign. Once the job is done, they can go away until you need them again.

« Previous Page — Next Page »