Early stage executive teams and corporate boards evolve out of necessity.  The crystal ball during those years rarely reveals a clear vision of resource requirements necessary when chasm leaping growth is within reach.   For example, your Sales Vice President develops a multi-million dollar opportunity with a Global 100 prospect that is an exact fit for your product's feature set.  After you invest several man-years of presales effort, the deal is lost due to improperly uncovering the non-feature requirements.  Typical roadblocks are financial due diligence, security risks, product localization, standards adherence, pricing structure, and on and on.   Although formidable, many of the obstacles can be overcome with sophisticated and creative deal structures.  Reality is that most deals are lost due to the absence of exposing the total customer requirement set and building trust through the process.   It is that element of trust that has enabled me to consistently build strategic relationships with the global leaders in Financial Services, Insurance, Automotive, Aerospace, Energy, Paper & Pulp, and the Government sectors.

Who in your organization negotiates with key vendors?  Many corporate cultures decentralize selection and negotiation to first and second line management.  As you hit your growth stride, those thousand dollar expenditures evolve into enterprise projects that could cost six digits.  Does your IT person have the experience to save 10% to 25% on their best and final offer?  Have you developed an important relationship with a vendor but need a "bad cop" to get the best deal?  At both public and private companies I have had direct purchasing authority for tens of millions of dollars.  One valuable lesson learned was that friendship often biases purchasing negotiation.  Although it is essential to create win/win relationships with key vendors, it is their job to determine whether an offer is acceptable.  It is your company's responsibility to get the best product at the best price.

Distribution expansion is critical to double digit growth.  The challenge in today's global internet world is more often qualification of distribution choices versus identification of available channels.  As business gets more complicated, I advise my clients to revert to the basics.  I cannot express how many times business expansion fails when companies do not reevaluate "who is the customer", "what problem does my offering solve", "who will my customer trust to solve their problem", "what value does the solution represent", and "who in the organization can commit or purchase".   When you answer these simple questions it becomes manageable to evaluate international distributors, internet affiliates, technology partners, association endorsements, and other expansion opportunities.  I have built companies servicing 70+ countries, managed subsidiaries throughout Europe, developed indirect distribution channels in Asia, provided internet offerings through affiliate sales channels, negotiated OEM contracts with public companies, and dedicate myself to studying emerging distribution success.

Emerging growth engagements often result in assisting the team select additional full time executives.  Michael.