Succession Secrets

The faster your company grows the earlier your and others’ succession can happen. 

And for rapid growth, sales effectiveness is critical.

What often kills sales effectiveness is long sales cycles.  Some industries, such as IT Solutions, Government Contracting and my own previous business, Investment Banking are notorious for having long sales cycles. Brruh.

The longer the sales cycle, the more resources it consumes and the riskier each sale becomes.  The more time it takes to close the sale, the higher the chance for the client to change his mind, for circumstances to change, or even for the money to disappear from the customer’s purse.

In this episode, I share with you a quirky process Vistage groups use to shorten sales cycle for their members and some of the ways I succeeded with shortening sales cycles in my business and what I see worked for others.  Shortening the sales cycle by just 25%, can grow your sales by 33% and your profits by 50% or more.

Tune into the show, you won’t regret it.

Your Succession is Success!

Succession comes from the latin “succedera”, which means:“to come close behind”.    I believe that we all must have a succession plan to move to the next level in our career and in our business.

Every leader, be they founders, operators or mid level managers, need a succession plan.   In this podcast you can hear about 6 different succession situations in an organization and how the person graduating from and the person coming close behind is looking to accomplish.

Listen to me explaining the six succession situations,one or more of which will most likely resonate with where you are in your business life and career.

In future episodes I will start answering your questions, so please tweet whatever you would like to learn about succession and entrepreneurship to #asksuccessionsteve. You may also message me on Linkedin, Facebook or Instagram.

Your Succession is Success!

“Succession” has traditionally been thought of as being “Succession Planning”.  Set a date.  Look for a successor. Groom him or her for the job. Transition. Retire.

Listen to Steve, as he explains why family companies treat “Succession” as a one-time event and how this is not helping these businesses achieve fast growth. Learn how Private Equity-backed businesses and Fortune 500 companies think about Succession and what is the average succession cycle of each of these groups and why.

Listen to this podcast episode to find out what a continual succession program is and how it can help your company grow and attract better talent.

Listen to Steve’s story about how he positioned his fledgling investment banking firm when he first arrived in America and how this strategy will help you not just win niche business, but reach out to the broader market. 

Welcome back Succession Seekers! 

Time is money. – More than money.  Money lost can be recovered, but time lost is gone forever.

If you want to become more valuable to your business, you have to grow the value of your time.

If your goal is to make $200,000 a year, your work will have to earn you $100 every hour, assuming 250 full working days in the year.  If you want to make a $1 million, your time must be worth $500 an hour. 

In this podcast Episode, your succession coach Steve Preda will share with you his number one strategy to help his clients use their time more effectively.  He also shares strategies on how to continually jack up your hourly charge. 

You will also find out how this strategy helps morale in the whole company and how it boosts growth across the organization.

Question of the Day: What is the best use of your time?

Your Succession is Success!

Welcome back Succession Seekers!

Culture is the biggest determinant of a company’s success.  You shape the culture with the behavior you model and the values you embrace.

The role of the culture is to institutionalize the values and behaviors that the business’ founders espoused to make it successful.

With the right culture ingrained in the business, it can scale and stay successful even when its founders are gone.

The good news is that culture is nigh impossible to copy and it cannot be faked. It is a way of being.

Listen to my story about companies I worked with that had cultures of compliance and cultures of initiative and why and how they chose their paths.

Question of the Day:  What type of culture are you attracted to and why?

Fear and Greed are the strongest emotions in business.  Greed makes us more optimistic than warranted, and what is safe. Fear makes us lose perspective,get paralyzed and occasionally over-cut our business, limiting its future.

Listen to my story of how Greed pushed me to over-extend my business and the painful process of how fear brought it down to earth and what it did to my vision. 

Learn how my employees reacted to the downturn in the economy and to the subsequent upturn, which took me by surprise.

Find out how entrepreneurs can learn temper their fears and their greed.

Question of the Day:  How do you handle your fears in business?

Sometimes the best salespeople come from unexpected places. Recall stories of eager waiters and enthusiastic shop assistants who get hired by entrepreneurs passing through town, to promote them to successful sales careers in their companies.

A friend of mine is running a successful body repair franchise shop hired in from an insurance company.  He is has built a great book of business from his relationships at his former employers.  Listen to his story and how he is about to hire new markets into his company.

His competitors are hiring extroverted car body shop managers who are good at converting incoming traffic into customers.  However, they are not great at channeling demand to their shop, not having relationships at the source of that demand.

Listen to this episode of Succession Secrets to hear my story of selling businesses at premium prices to industry outsiders and to find out how my friend is about to double and triple his business in a matter of months, rather than years.

Question of the Day: How can you hire your market, rather than just salespeople?