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