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

Why Use Interim Marketing Management?

Why is using interim executives in key marketing and sales leadership positions beneficial to companies?

As my co-author and I showed through case study after case study [in Leadership on Demand], interim management specifically focused on revenue represents one of the quickest ways to innovate.

Innovation doesn’t have to be in your product line or your technology – it can be in new thinking about how to use your CRM (customer relationship management) system. It can be in going direct where previously you’ve relied on the channel. It can be in looking at your product offering and customer base a new way.

For example, a few years back I helped a software company that had a product line ranging from $295 to $11,995. After spending a couple months with the salespeople and in the trenches with customers, I stratified the product line for efficiency. The low-end products could be freely test-driven on the site and upgraded to paying versions by talking to the support technicians. The high-end products could no longer be obtained via the site, but rather began with a sales conversation to qualify buyers. Prices were no longer published but quoted custom. Within 9 months, the average selling price increased ten-fold and the company got acquired by a publicly traded competitor at an extremely healthy multiple.

Management guru Peter Drucker predated the advent of interim managers but his philosophies support them wholeheartedly, especially: “Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center.”

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.

What is an Interim Executive? Interview with Interim Management Expert Chuck Besondy

Chuck Besondy is a principal at One Accord Partners and is co-author of Leadership on Demand: How Smart CEO’s Tap Interim Management to Drive Revenue. You can read more about Interim Sales and Marketing Management by Chuck Besondy at his blog One Riot-One Ranger.

Can you give a brief explanation of what an interim executive is and how they can help an organization?

To answer this question properly would require writing a book, which has been done. Visit www.leadership-on-demand.com.

I’ve seen many definitions of interim management. The one I like best is:

“Interim management is the temporary provision of additional management resources and skills. Interim management can be seen as the short-term assignment of a proven heavyweight interim executive manager to manage a period of transition, crisis or change within a company. In this situation, a permanent role may be unnecessary or impossible to find at short notice. Additionally, there may be nobody internally who is suitable for, or available to take up the position in question.”

The way this alternative staffing solution helps organizations is often profound and significant. If we look at the functions of Sales and Marketing, interim executives fill gaps in leadership, fill gaps in skill sets and best practices, fill gaps in bandwidth, and fill gaps in expertise—all for a season—so that higher levels of revenue performance and growth can be achieved. Sometimes the business is in a crisis or turnaround situation, most often however the company simply needs to quickly fill a critical short-term gap in order to maintain momentum and growth.

When should a company consider hiring an interim executive?

One way to look at this question is to realize that most executives and senior managers are in reality employed for an interim period. They just don’t know in advance when their contract ends. The fact is, a company uses a senior manager only for as long as that manager provides value to the organization. That may mean 6 months. That may mean 3 years or more. Consider that the average tenure for a CMO in a large corporation is 27 months and you begin to see the truth in this.

A company should consider hiring an interim executive (in marketing or sales) when any of the following situations exist:

Revenue has flat-lined or is in a state of decline and the existing revenue team is unable to turn the situation around.
Inject interim managers with objective insight, fresh energy and proven best practices into the organization to work side-by-side the existing team for a season.

A leadership gap exists.
If there is going to be a vacancy at a director, VP, or C-level in the marketing and sales organization for more than 2 months the organization will experience a loss of momentum. Put an interim executive in place to provide skilled leadership while a search for a FTE progresses.

A bandwidth gap.
Most companies face this situation at least once a year. Typically, the gap in resource bandwidth is associated with the go-to-market activities for a new product, or a market expansion. In these situation there simply isn’t enough experienced managers to effectively handle the temporary surge in work load. Bring in interims to either drive the new initiative, or to maintain the primary business activities.

A skill-set gap.
Small companies trying to become mid-tier companies; mid-tier companies trying to break through to be large companies frequently face the same problem. The management team lacks some of the experience and skills necessary to take the company to the next level. An interim executive can provide that needed level of expertise for a season, taking the company to that new level, and coaching the existing management team along the way.

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It’s a Great Time for a Revenue Tune-Up. Where is that Reset Button?

by Chuck Besondy

In light of the global economic chaos smart CEO’s recognize that this is actually an excellent time to assess and tune every aspect of the company’s revenue engine. “Business as usual” just won’t cut it because we’re not facing an “as usual” market. The time is right for an interim executive, the master mechanic of a sputtering revenue engine.

Fresh ideas, complete honesty, and an absence of bias is required to conduct an insightful audit of the company’s revenue engine—the marketing and sales functions that lead to revenue generation.

This is yet another excellent scenario for using interim managers. Frankly, only an outsider can provide the unbiased perspective necessary for an accurate assessment of the inner workings of the revenue engine. Also, only a well-seasoned executive with strategic and tactical or operational experience in marketing and sales has the in-depth experience that an assessment requires.

Here’s what one typical interim engagement might look like if aimed at assessing the effectiveness of a company’s revenue engine and realigning it for achieving 2009 revenue targets. This engagement could be lead by a VP or C-level interim marketing executive with back up from a VP-level interim sales executive (or switch the lead and backup roles).

1. Assess characteristics and capabilities of the sales force and channel partners. Define the ideal set of characteristics needed for success over the next 12-18 months and make recommendations how to align the organization accordingly.
2. Assess the compensation strategy and plan. Revise as necessary.
3. Assess the opportunity pipeline. Just how real is the forecast? Revisit and adjust the opportunity scoring methodology—remember this isn’t business as usual.
4. Revisit and assess if the stages of the pipeline are well defined in light of today’s business climate and how your customers are purchasing. Is a CRM system being used properly?
5. Evaluate if marketing and sales strategies and tactics and properly aligned to each other and to the pipeline.
6. Assess every component of the marketing plan, specifically the positioning strategy and all lead generation activities. Are the right investments being made? Will the marketing activities be sufficient to generate the required leads?
7. What metrics are being used to measure marketing and sales? Are these the right metrics or are there others that better indicate contribution to company objectives?
8. Conduct an analysis of the competitive landscape. A formal SWOT analysis is good, but at least conduct an analysis of positioning, messaging, and direction. How does the company compare?
9. Review all customer satisfaction surveys, or if none exist conduct a survey that includes key question for Net Promoter Score.
10. Assess management. Are the right people in key roles within Marketing and Sales? What skills are missing that should be added via training or outsourcing?

No doubt the list could include 20 steps or more. It wouldn’t be difficult to create another list of 10 steps with completely different activities. However, I’ve seen that if these areas are evaluated and tuned to the realities of the marketplace by un-biased, seasoned executives, the company’s revenues will jump.

In this example scenario the two interim executives assigned to the engagement could conduct the assessment and make the majority of changes in about 3 months.

There are three primary benefits to engaging interim managers for this work:

1. Unbiased, objective counsel from senior executives.
2. They drive the assessment and the action to make necessary changes.
3. They are focused on the engagement’s objectives while the existing management team keeps their eyes on the day-to-day operations.

Imagine: A revenue tune-up in 3 months. No loaner car required.

Want to learn more about the effective use of interim management in marketing and sales? Preview the book, Leadership On Demand: How Smart CEO’s Tap Interim Managment To Drive Revenue

You can read more about Interim Marketing Management by Chuck Besondy at his blog One Riot-One Ranger