Questions You Can Expect:
As
we begin the benchmarking process, you can expect us to ask the following
questions during our initial phone call:
- Nature of business
- Does it serve a niche market
- Where is it located, number of locations
- Is it a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship
- Does the business own real estate or operating assets
- Number of years in business
- Gross sales/income
- What are your goals for having advisory services
- What is your timeframe
During this first communication, you’ll have an opportunity to ask any questions you have about our past work and our organization. This is a good time to discuss who will be performing the engagement and learn their qualifications for your particular industry. You’ll receive an estimate for our services at this time, followed by a written proposal via email, fax or mail.
Typical Situations:
Given our years of experience, we’ve seen hundreds of different issues that challenge our client. Here are some situations that may sound familiar to you:
- Are your assets providing the greatest level of return with maximum profitability, growth, liquidity and value creation? It might be time for a risk management review to reduce the uncertainty and increase opportunity.
- What value do you put on your time and how it's spent? If there's simply not enough time in the day or you're trying to strike some balance, then seeking the wisdom of one of our seasoned interim-entrepreneurial executives is a sound and cost-effective decision.
- If your staff doesn’t currently possess the skills to increase revenues and profitability or to improve existing capital structure, when you prefer working on new projects or spending more time with personal interests, our advisors' help makes sense.
- When each day seems like it's a crisis, because you're sweating payroll or operational inefficiencies are causing lost profits and market share, let us step into the breach and help right your ship.
- Perhaps your company's momentum has stalled or you simply want to know if you can streamline your process for better results. It might be a simple matter of our advisor and your team establishing milestones and realigning your company's vision or culture.
You face challenges; we offer solutions.
Your Hip-Pocket Problem Solver:
We understand and appreciate the privacy and sensitivity of each of the issues noted above and many like them. Our clients have given us a certain degree of “bragging rights” in solving many of these dilemmas facing them and their management teams.
Stakeholders gain confidence in our flexibility, patience and ability to build consensus and sift through the minutia. We cull out the relevant by taking active roles as advisors, interim managers or as a member of the board of directors.
When it’s all said and done, we mutually benefit by maximizing your assets’ values within acceptable time frames. This process is influenced by depth and breadth of the scope of our mutually agreed on engagement. It often follows a few common steps:
- Analyze financial and operational processes (where dollars come from and where they go)
- Identify tactical short-term solutions to increase top- and bottom-line results
- Focus on strategic longer term issues with rigorous regard to macro influences
- Facilitate fresh ideas to detect problem root cause(s) and measure what works
- Nurture staff, client and vendor relationships to maximize support of change
- Implement process improvements for cost savings and maximizing revenues
Each industry, each company and each situation has its own unique priorities. This establishes the amount of time and resources needed.
Here are a two examples of engagements that leverage our experience:
Board Director or Advisory Board Member
Board Director or Advisory Board Member. This relationship, an affordable way of accessing our knowledge, typically works on a yearly retainer basis. This helps to facilitate one-on-one coaching of the CEO and other top executives and provides them with access to world-class contacts.
Interim Executive
Interim
Executive. You can appoint one of our executives as an interim officer to
achieve specific business objectives, including staff training and
mentoring. Assignments are on a monthly basis and typically last about 90 to
180 days or until key milestones are met.
Project Specific Advisory Services
Regardless your situation, we offer a discrete, confidential evaluation from which we custom design a more traditional relationship and an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly rate solution that meets your business goals and timelines and is within your budget.
A senior professional who plays an active role heads each engagement; this
responsibility is not delegated to junior staff. Continuous communication
occurs, including written status reports and notice of any actions to be taken
to gain consensus.
Our engagements often involve interfacing with professionals such as attorneys,
accountants, financial advisors, lenders, and/or investors. Occasionally, family
members as well as key staff vendors, suppliers, and customers/prospects are
involved in operational enhancement.
Your focus and selection of depth and urgency dictates fees for services. Terms
are negotiable from straight billable hour to per project fee to a percent
commission to a cash + equity payment. We’ll get started with a signed
engagement and an advance.
The engagement spells out your goals and scope of services. Initial
consultations are free of charge. Initial site visits also are free, provided
reasonable out-of-pocket expenses are covered. Subsequent reimbursement for
project expenses is typical.