Valve Manufacturers Association of America
75th Annual Meeting
October 3-5-2013
The Breakers Palm Beach, Florida
Profitable Top-Line Growth
For Industrial Manufacturers
Thursday, October 3rd  3:00—4:30PM  Ponce de Leon Ballroom 2 and 3
by
Dr. Jim Hlavacek
[email protected]
Chairman and CEO
The Corporate Development Institute, Inc.
Charlotte, North Carolina
www.corpdevinst.com  800.322.3540 /704.366.9024
Welcome and Good Afternoon!
• Help celebrate VMA’s 75th Anniversary
• Number of our past and current clients are here
• Thank you to:
– Bill Sandler for the invitation
– VMA members for teleconference interviews
– Malena Malone and the VMA Staff
2
Dr. James D. Hlavacek
James D. Hlavacek has more than 35 years of industrial experience and is an internationally recognized executive
educator, businessman, and industrial strategy consultant. He has a unique combination of business experience,
practical publications, presentation skills, and academic credentials. Jim Hlavacek is the founder Managing Director of
Market Driven Management™ and founder, chairman and CEO of The Corporate Development Institute, Inc. based in
Charlotte, North Carolina.
Jim is a frequent speaker and workshop leader at national and global company meetings. He has authored five books including the
best-seller, Market Driven Management, co-authored with B. Charles Ames. His most recent book is Profitable Top-Line Growth for
Industrial Companies. He has written more than forty practical articles on technical marketing, new product development, distribution
policies and business development for high tech and industrial firms that have appeared in leading publications, including five in the
Harvard Business Review.
For twenty years, Dr. Hlavacek was the editor-in-chief of Industrial Marketing Management, the leading international journal of
industrial marketing published in New York and The Netherlands. He is a past vice president and director of the American Marketing
Association, was chairman of the marketing department at Case Western Reserve University and was formerly the director of The
Institute for Executive Education at Wake Forest University. In his earlier career, he was in technical service and sales with Hooker
Chemical, now called OxyChem. Dr. Hlavacek has conducted management development programs at many universities including
Columbia, Penn State, Stanford, Wisconsin, The London Business School, University of Chile and Tokyo University. He has received
numerous teaching awards from industrial and high-tech executives. He has developed and presented more than 1,500 in-house
executive programs to help make technical marketing and technology the entrepreneurial compass and growth vehicle for industrial
firms around the world. About half of his management development growth workshops are conducted outside of North America.
Jim Hlavacek was born in Hinsdale, Illinois. He received a BS degree in Chemistry from Southern Illinois University, an MBA in Industrial
Engineering from Louisiana Tech, and a PhD in Industrial Marketing from the University of Illinois -Urbana-Champaign. Jim is on the
Board of Directors of Nucor Steel, Mueller Systems, Xtek and Madison Electric. He has three adult children and resides with his wife in
Charlotte, North Carolina.
Contact Information:
Email: [email protected]
Phones: 704-366-9024/800-322-3540 Fax: 704-366-8933
Address: PO Box 470188, Charlotte, NC 28247-0188
Administrative Assistant: Donis Andrews – Email: [email protected]
3
Our Industrial Clients—Chemical Firms
4
Our Industrial Clients—Equipment Firms
5
Profitable Top-Line Growth for Industrial Companies
Today’s Topics:
1. VMA Telephone Needs Analysis – Challenges to
Profitable Top-Line Growth
2. The Profitable Growth Diagnostic – Timken Example
3. Realities of Today’s Valve Markets
4. Four Common Company Growth Stages
5. Ten Steps and Best Practices to Create More
Profitable Customer Value
6
Diverse VMA Membership
• Large, medium and smaller sized companies
• Market segments and applications served
• Wide product range – valves, actuators and controls
• Commodity, semi-specialty, and custom engineered
products/smart solutions
• Public, private and private equity ownership
• Global, multinational and regional footprints
7
Needs Analysis:
Telephone Interviews with VMA Members
• Cross-section of VMA members
• One hour teleconference interviews
• One question for each VMA member to think about
before each teleconference was:
“What are some issues you and VMA members are
facing that are challenging profitable top-line
growth?”
8
VMA Members
Teleconference Responses to the Question
Analyzing responses of challenges to profitable top-line growth:
• 28-30 different responses from the interviews
• Content analysis revealed six common thread areas
• Any one of the six common challenges could cause a
VMA member to lose sleep
• Let’s look at the six VMA common thread challenges
9
Common Thread VMA Profitable Growth Challenges
1. Globalization and increased imports/exports
2. Users want more performance, safety and value
3. Smarter customers, distributors and integrators
4. Rapidly changing product and process technology
5. New requirements, materials and solutions
6. More industry and government regulations - - and
currency fluctuations
Let’s now look at how to face these challenges…………….
10
Enablers of Globalization
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
English is the world language
Telephone
Jet aircraft
Barcodes
Shipping containers
Computers and IT
The Internet
The world is a global village!
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Realities of Today’s Valve Markets
1.
Smarter and more demanding regional and global customers – In
terms of product performance, cost of ownership, better service and
they resist price increases even if they are flourishing.
2.
Cost of producing any product must trend downward – Over the long
term it is essential to be a lower cost supplier or profit margins will
erode.
3.
Advancing technology is shortening product and process life cycles –
Therefore increasing the risk of pay back on the product development
and automation investments to simply keep pace.
4.
Complacency with existing products and services – Understanding
customers changing unmet product/service needs is too often met with
no urgency, denial and failure to obsolete your existing products.
5.
Lack of focus in R&D and sales – Failure to target narrow market
applications to focus product development, application engineers and
salespeople with the right skills, training and incentives inhibit
protecting and growing market positions.
12
Realities of Today’s Valve Markets
6.
Market maturity is a mind-set – Most so called “mature markets” and
commodity products can be revived with demonstrably better new
products and/or services. Product and process technological change
doesn’t stop in slow growth markets; in fact it intensifies.
7. Compensation drives behavior – Show me how managers are paid and
I’ll show you how they behave. Are they paid for profitable top-line
growth or primarily for the bottom line?
8. Successful long term industrial companies learn about unmet needs in
the entire value chain – Do you regularly elicit ideas directly from all
members of the value chain with no proxies?
9. Commercial and technical people have been trained on how to conduct
in-depth technical interviews – with OEMs, distributors, system
integrators, end-users and other lead members in the value chain.
10. Successful long term companies are learning organizations –
Knowledgeable employees working smarter and safer may be your only
sustainable advantage. Are your training funds more vulnerable than a
trade show budget?
13
Lessons from a
World Class U.S. Manufacturer
•
•
•
•
•
Replaced International Harvester as the leader with
better products and superior dealer uptime service
Mostly organic growth - - license/acquire small new
technology for agriculture and construction business
Dual emphasis on product and process innovation
Large equipment has more computing power than the
first space shuttle (GPS, software, and joy sticks)
CEO said their two greatest competitive advantages are:
1.
2.
To continually learn faster than our competition
To continually improve a great dealer partnership network
Deere’s Mission is “To continually improve the
productivity, safety and uptime of our customer’s
equipment with a win3 value propositions.”
14
The Needed Transformation to Meet New Realities
1. Move from Inside-Out Thinking and Actions
2. To Outside-In Thinking and Actions
Let’s now identify the necessary cultural,
mind-set and skill-set changes…………………….
15
How an Inside-Out Industrial Company Operates
• View their markets too broadly, classifying them by product
types and sizes rather than by user requirements, applications
and emerging and unmet needs.
• Their thinking and actions tend to be dominated by existing
product and process features that are blindly assumed to
provide an unquestionable competitive advantage.
• Most are not intimate enough with their customers across the
value chain to tailor a product/service package that provides
greater value.
• Many are too inward looking - - complacent, arrogant,
bureaucratic and believe their own propaganda.
16
How an Inside-Out Industrial Company Operates
Continued:
• Often make sweeping generalizations about competitors, but
don’t have the facts to make side-by-side comparisons of
competitor features, performance, life cycle costs or market
positions.
• Tend to be risk adverse and defensive of the status quo
making them leery of anything that challenges their culture.
• Key functions, especially R&D, tend to operate independently,
without being aligned to the requirements of target markets
or applications.
• Marketing and sales programs revolve around aggressive
efforts to get short term orders rather than understanding
and solving customer problems and learning from lead users.
17
How an Outside-In
Industrial Company Operates Around the 5 C’s
There is nothing magical about the way an outside-in or market driven
company operates, but the contrasts between such a company and
inside-out companies are dramatic.
1. All the thinking and actions of a market driven company begin with a
complete understanding of the applications and requirements of specific
Customer Groups, market segments or applications.
2. They study and document Competitor performance to determine relative
strengths and weaknesses in each market niche or application.
3. They objectively compare their existing Capabilities with changing market
requirements and are willing to make the changes necessary to serve
attractive market segments while forgoing or withdrawing from others.
4. They constantly strive to improve their Costs and/or product performance so
they can provide their target customers and owners with greater value.
5. They work together as Cross-Functional teams to ensure that all key
activities, priorities, and decisions are synchronized to serve target markets
or application needs.
18
Common Industrial Company Growth Stages
Four Common Stages:
1. Entrepreneurial
2. Rapid Growth Years
(Outside-In)
------------------------------------------------
3. Slow or No Growth
4. Decline
•
•
(Inside-Out)
Many organizations have a life cycle that follows these
4 Stages - - What happened to Westinghouse, GM,
Kodak, Sears Roebuck and others?
How do you get a drifting business unit in Stages 3 or 4
back to Stage 1 or 2?
19
Common Industrial Growth Stages
1. Entrepreneurial (Outside-In)
A. A technical founder sees a niche
opportunity and focuses on it better
than anyone else.
B. The organization is informal,
technically disciplined, Spartan
surroundings and everyone operates
with a collaborative team spirit.
C. New ideas flow freely, nothing is sacred.
D. The immediate customer and downstream users are
seen as the boss.
E. Everyone acts and responds with a passion and real
sense of urgency.
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Common Industrial Growth Stages
2. Rapid Growth Years (Outside-In)
A. More products are added, new markets
and countries entered.
B. More investment in plants, equipment,
fixed cost and overhead.
C. More structure, policies, controls
and organizational levels added.
D. Mergers, acquisitions and cultural
“integrations” occur.
E. Effective customer solutions and prompt service take a
backseat to meeting sales quotas and getting products
shipped on time.
F. Department isolation, more form filling and
bureaucracy creeps in.
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Common Industrial Growth Stages
3. Slow or No Growth (Inside-Out)
A. Volume objectives take priority
to cover fixed costs.
B. Smaller growth opportunities are
overlooked or disregarded; little or
no customer or product passion.
C. Margins and market positions slip, become risk adverse.
D. Bureaucracy expands; response and cycle times slow.
E. Aggressive self-starters are not hired, leave, develop
other interests and mediocrity is tolerated.
F. Operating units pursue reorganizations, head-count
reductions, buy and sell businesses, but don’t address
their root cause deficiencies.
22
Common Industrial Growth Stages
4. Decline (Inside-Out)
A. Obsolete products, plants and
technology.
B. Under-pricing to maintain sales,
plant utilization and market share.
C. Mediocrity and demoralization
permeate the entire organization.
D. Inadequate margins and declining productivity.
E. Financial engineering by management and the banks.
F. The vultures circle as “options” are explored.
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Relearning How to Organically Grow
• How do you take a company or business unit in the
previous maturity or decline stages and rejuvenate it to
become a profitable growth business?
• You can make a business look good in the short term, but
you must generate profitable top-line growth or the
business will go backwards.
• Great industrial companies don’t just buy, shrink
and sell businesses - - they relentlessly
build and improve the business from
within to increase customer value and
then shareholder value.
24
Relearning How to Organically Grow
When I arrive at headquarters to meet the CEO or top management
leadership team the concerns usually sound like the following:
“We have had little or insufficient top-line growth in our existing businesses
over the past years. We are not as entrepreneurial as we once were, and
there is a lack of urgency. Our people don’t think out of the box. We had
two pricey consulting firms here. They sent in some young MBAs from fancy
business schools, who told us some very similar things – raise prices, cut
costs, reorganize, and, if that didn’t work, sell the business(es) and redeploy
the assets. Some of our acquisitions over the past years have masked our
lack of organic growth. A couple of the acquisitions that the consultants and
investment bankers advised us to buy were disasters. These acquisitions
took a lot of time and resources away from our core businesses. If the stock
analysts understood our stagnant situation, our stock price would drop like a
boat anchor.”
25
Summary of Moving From
Inside-Out to Outside-In Thinking and Actions
Inside-Out Thinking (Current State)
Your
Company
Existing
Capabilities,
Technology
Products &
Solutions
Inside-Out
Planning &
Responses
Broad
Industries/
Channels
OEM
Customers
& Distributors
Stated Needs
Outside-In Thinking (Future State)
Your
Company
Existing
and New
Capabilities,
Technologies,
Products and
Solutions
Outside-In
Front-End
Planning
1
2
Inside-Out
Responses
Narrow
Markets/
Applications
Unmet
Ideas & Needs
in the
Value Chain VS.
Competitive
Offerings
Current State Model
Future State Model
• Push What We Like to Make and Sell
• Focus on Volume and Me-Too Solutions
• Target Markets and Customer Unmet Needs are
Not Embedded in All Functions of the Business
• Cost Plus Pricing—No Value-In-Use Pricing
• Narrow Focus on Target Applications/Customers
• Passionately Learn the Value Chain’s Stated &
Unarticulated Needs From User Field Interviews
• Design for Validated Important Unmet Needs
• Develop Sound Win/Win Value Propositions
Copyright 2013 by Market Driven Management and The Corporate Development Institute, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from James D. Hlavacek at [email protected]
26
Assessing Your Profitable Growth Capabilities
• It is important to assess each business unit’s
capabilities for profitable top-line growth.
• In my book, Profitable Top-Line Growth for
Industrial Companies, there is a 14 point growth
diagnostic.
• This growth diagnostic was developed to
determine whether a business unit has the right
capabilities to accelerate profitable top-line growth.
• The 14 point rating scale has two extremes. The left side
describes the worst case situations that represents growth
creation liabilities. The right side addresses the ideal
capabilities for accelerating profitable top-line growth and
innovation.
27
Assessing Your Profitable Growth Capabilities
Growth Diagnostic in the Book (cont.)
• The growth diagnostic has been developed with
managers from a wide range of industrial companies to
pinpoint areas for improvement.
• The growth diagnostic identifies which of 14 factors
inhibit achieving value creation and profitable growth.
• More importantly, the diagnostic helps establish a
reference point that can track what progress has been
made after in-house training programs.
28
Market Driven Profitable Growth Diagnostic
Using the Growth Diagnostic:
1. Helps focus corrective actions on 4 areas
needing the most improvement
2. Helps develop the appropriate
improvement programs in the
4 areas
See the following Timken Company example……
29
Example
Market Driven Profitable Growth Diagnostic
Four Areas For Improvement:
#1 – Market/Customer Facts
– Intimate day in the life customer interviews are needed
– First learn about unmet needs of end-users and
distributors as “hooks” before meeting with OEMs
– Have technical/commercial teams trained in observing,
shadowing and traveling to end-users and other value
chain members to discover stated and unarticulated
customer needs
30
Example
Market Driven Profitable Growth Diagnostic
Four Areas For Improvement:
#2 – Market Segmentation
– Need to define markets or applications, not industries
– Need to determine how our OEM customers’ segment
– Need to determine which competitors focus on which
segments
– Need to learn about each segments value chain and
then interview lead users across the value chain to the
end-users (accept no proxies)
31
Example
Market Driven Profitable Growth Diagnostic
Four Areas For Improvement:
#10 – New Products
– Need cross-functional new product teams
with P&Ls
– Need more firm milestones/deadlines for all projects
– Need to think of features then benefits  and
resulting economic value customers receive
– Need metrics and incentives to reduce time to market
– Need to develop value propositions that document
money saved or made within each segment’s value chain
32
Example
Market Driven Profitable Growth Diagnostic
Four Areas For Improvement:
#13 – Cross-Functional Planning
– Need more profit centers and accountability
– Need business plans (not just a marketing plan) for the
most attractive segments/applications and growth
opportunities
– Need cross-functionally developed business plans
– Need better technical/commercial close coupling in
developing the front-end business case - - no hand offs
33
Result of the Growth Diagnostic Workshops
TIMKEN
J. W. Griffith
President and Chief Operating Officer
WORLDWIDE LEADER IN BEARINGS AND STEEL
March 6, 2009
Dr. James D. Hlavacek
Managing Director
Market Driven Management
2116 Sutton Springs Road
Charlotte, North Carolina 28226
Dear Jim:
Great to hear from you and to see your continued interest in The Timken Company. As you can see, the work done
while you were here has spawned a revolution that will truly create a new company.
I am flattered by your interest in the quote and am pleased to have it in your book. The quote is fine "as is" other
than one apparent typo, which is corrected on the attached copy.
I will pass along your letter and information on the sessions to my business leaders for them to follow up as
appropriate.
Sincerely,
Jim
cmb/2009jwg.doc
Attachment
THE TIMKEN COMPANY
1835 Dueber Avenue, S.W.
Canton, Ohio 44706-2798 U.S.A.
Telephone: (330) 471-6399
Facsimile: (330) 471-4041
34
Going Beyond the Growth Diagnostic
• Once you have improved four of the 14 diagnostic
areas, as Timken did, you must continually bring
more value to customers to accelerate profitable
top-line growth.
• There are 10 proven steps and “how to” best
practices to continually create more value for
industrial customers.
• Let’s now examine each of these 10 steps and best
practices to accelerate profitable top-line growth…..
35
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 1:
Technical/commercial teams must define narrow market
segments/applications and identify lead companies and information rich
contacts. – including end-users, dealers, system integrators and OEMs
throughout each value chain. Then observe and interview users at their
workplaces to discover and validate stated , unarticulated and emerging unmet
needs for a front-end business case.
Best Practices:
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
Define narrow and attractive market segment/applications for focusing
Identify the value chain users in each narrow market/segment application
Get beyond the often vague voice of the customer (VOC), improve job outcomes
Get immersed in the end-users’ workplaces, value chain and their OEM’s operations
Learn the application’s language/lingo and job place pains
Job shadow and interview users in their workplaces, not in a conference room
Identify and verify stated and unarticulated important unmet needs
36
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 2:
Collaborate internally and externally to design proprietary
solutions with a business strategy, IP and a sound front-end
business case – Each new feature/benefit that was identified and validated.
Features that don’t provide value should be dropped - - e.g. that customers don’t
need or won’t pay for.
Best Practices:
A. Identify important New Features  Then Benefits  and Resulting Economic Value
B. Collaborate internally within your Company to develop better solutions
C. Collaborate externally with suppliers, and 3rd parties to develop better solutions
D. Develop and protect proprietary trade secrets, patents and especially trademarks
E. Paper patents or “patents that matter” at John Deere
F. Understand the importance of filing, maintenance and enforcement of IP for
patents, brands and especially for trademarks
37
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 3:
Use prototypes/samples and side-by-side lab and field trial
comparisons to document – with data, how much better each new
feature/benefit is in percentages versus the existing Best Known Solution (BKS).
Best Practices:
A. Agree to the best BKS and the economic value it provides customers
B. Develop prototypes or samples to test new features with customers
C. Conduct accelerated laboratory tests and manage field trials with customers
D. Document how your new solution is better on each feature than the BKS
E. The best new product wrongly applied is usually a “failure” - - be at the field trials
38
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 4:
Convert the feature/benefit using value calculators –
Convert percentages to money made and/or saved; reduced downtime costs,
life cycle costs, increased performance, longer product life, less maintenance,
better ROI, more sales and profit generated and/or productivity improvements
from your new solution as understood by your value chain members.
Best Practices:
A. Convert each feature/benefit from percentages to the cost savings and to the
added sales revenue customers receive
B. Reduced downtime is often a huge customer cost or savings
C. Calculate the total economic savings in the immediate and long term
D. All value assigned must be validated throughout the entire value chain
39
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 5: Widely communicate the total value users receive for
internal and external launches – in a documented superior value
proposition, technical papers, application and job stories, testimonials,
literature, training workshops, websites, distributor training and trade shows.
Best Practices:
A. Develop job stories in each application that documents the added value
B. Develop testimonials and reference sites as additional sales tools
C. Internally launch the new solutions with sales, technical service and distributors
D. Leverage favorable ‘word of mouth’ references
E. Websites are needed in the more common languages
F. Externally launch new products as if they were perishable fruit
40
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 6:
Value pricing and value-in-use selling – and share the economic
gains with each appropriate value chain party, including your company’s higher
gross margins.
Best Practices:
A. Share the added value with appropriate parties in the value chain – Win3
B. Capture a higher selling price for your higher value solution
C. Don’t leave money on the table when pricing demonstrably better new products
D. Implement value-in-use pricing for better new products, not cost-plus pricing
E. Do your sales, technical or application people have the right skills, tools, and data
to manage field trials and document the value-in-use?
41
Step 6: Value Pricing and Value Selling (cont.)
Cost-Plus Pricing VS. Value Based Pricing
1. Cost-Plus Pricing (Inside-Out)
Develop
New
Products
Know
Your
Costs
+
Set
Prices
Target
Market
Segments(?)
Value
Received?
2. Value Based Pricing (Outside-In)
Narrowly
Defined
Target
Segment’s
Important
Unmet
Needs
Develop
Demonstrably
Better
Proprietary
Solutions
Documented
Value
Propositions
for
End-Users,
OEMs
and/or Each
Value Chain
Group
Know
Your
Costs
Value Price
to
End-Users
& OEMs
and/or
Each
Value Chain
Group
42
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 7:
Communicate the documented total value to value chain
members and multiple buying influences – including technical, operations,
maintenance, operators, sales, marketing and P&L managers before
procurement people.
Best Practices:
A. Identify customer adopters who are 1) technology enthusiasts, 2) early visionaries,
3) practical majority and 4) skeptical late laggards
B. Demonstrate and communicate the total value received to the buying influences
C. Be cautious when communicating total value to procurement managers
D. Develop internal sponsors for adopting the added value new solution
E. Get initial sample orders, commitments or firm purchase orders
F. Migrate customers to higher value solutions
43
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 8:
Great companies treasure “long accident free periods” and
realize that improved safety sells new products – Safer product design and
operator training must be coupled - -go from safe, safer to safest in your industry.
Safety drivers include Ralph Nader’s book, “Unsafe at Any Speed”, Tylenol product
recalls, 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl/Japan, Gulf Coast/Deepwater Horizon, BP/Texas City,
and recent cruise ship accidents, all significantly raised the bar for safety.
Best Practices:
A. Two best practice safety driven companies – Volvo and DuPont
B. Move to elimination and prevention in product design and safety training
C. Benchmark with countries/states that have the toughest safety and environmental
regulations; Germany, Australia, California
D. Benchmark with industries/products with severe safety demands - - e.g. lift trucks,
cranes, aerospace, hospitals and medical manufacturers
E. Peer group pressure helps – widely publicize internally, monkey on the back, and BOD
F. CEO or Chairman recognition awards are needed
G.Safety must me a strong part of your culture, not just a theme or slogan
44
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 9:
Attracting and retaining the right people – Some companies pay
lip service to how important employees are - - their actions often show
otherwise. Great industrial companies invest a lot of time attracting, coaching
and challenging high performers and spend little on head hunters.
Best Practices:
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
Lifelong employment at one employer may be a thing of the past
The rapid job hopping problem in Asia and elsewhere
Most industrial companies do not have enough qualified people to fill open positions
Organizations that are not growing have fewer challenging positions
Conduct better exit interviews and wide sharing of results
The rotten apple problem – a wrong hire – your worst and best options
Good people leave because of the wrong boss – not the whole company
Nine to five clock watchers wait – high performing talent does not wait
45
Ten Steps in
The Industrial Value Creation Process
Step 10: Create a learning organization to sustain profitable growth –
Learning includes cultural change, new mind sets, skill sets, better safety, speaking up, and
objectively learning from new product development mistakes. What is your
training/learning budget in good and slower times? Top-down leadership styles and
command and control organizations have difficulty with the more bottoms up culture
required in today’s knowledge organizations. John Deere’s mission to learn faster than
competitors as a competitive advantage is progressive, but requires an open, honest and
more bottom-up culture. Employee ignorance is always an option - and the highest cost.
Best Practices:
A. Top and general management must be passionate about training and learning as a
way to sustain high performance and remove the bad old ways.
B. Top and general management must participate in the needs analysis and open the
company to an outside-in search for the best training practices from many fast
changing industries - - software, electronics and medical.
C. Top and general management must be continually involved in training to attract,
mentor, retain and challenge the best people.
D. Eight tailored practical training workshops that we provide across the globe for
industrial companies who are or desire to be learning organizations.
46
Our Popular In-House Workshops and Speaking Topics
1. How Industrial Project Teams Become Market Driven
2. The Art of Technical Customer Interviews for the Front-End Business
Case: Discovering Stated and Unstated Important Needs
3. What Sound Marketing Should Be in an Industrial Company
4. Technical Marketing for Engineers
5. Working Better with Industrial Distributor Partners
6. Objectively Learning From Your New Product Mistakes
7. Value Pricing and Value Selling for Industrial Firms
8. Launching new Industrial Products as if They Were Perishable Fruit
Most workshops are 2 ½ days, conducted by Dr. Jim Hlavacek,
and all are offered with a satisfaction money back guarantee.
47
Our Process for High Impact Growth Workshops and Learning
Introductory
Visit
Step 1:
Needs Analysis
Step 2:
Team Preparation
Step 3:
3 Day Workshop
• Dr. Jim Hlavacek signs a
non-disclosure
agreement with your
company (NDA)
• Dr. Jim Hlavacek
conducts face-to-face
interviews with GMs,
business unit leaders
and technical/
commercial managers
• Company growth
target areas are
identified and the
corresponding
cross-functional
teams are selected for
the pilot workshop
• Dr. Hlavacek conducts the
satisfaction guaranteed
in-house workshop
• Dr. Hlavacek selects
needed modules and
prereading materials
• The company selects
a leader for each
target project or
growth opportunity
• Dr. Hlavacek initially
meets with senior
executives—the
leadership team, CEO,
COO, CTO, division GMs,
marketing and technical
managers to describe
the process and benefits
• Only investment for
clients is Dr. Hlavacek’s
travel expenses for the
introductory visit
• No hand-offs from Dr.
Hlavacek
• Dr. Hlavacek presents
the proposed in-house
workshop to the
leadership team for a
go or no go
• Workshop
prereadings are
distributed to the
workshop
participants five
weeks before the 3
day workshop
• First draft of a new product
front-end business case for a
new product or growth
opportunity is presented by
each team to top
management at the end of
the workshop
• Recommended follow-up
dates with each project team
including:
– Joint end-user (customer’s
customers) distributors and
OEM value chain lead
customer interviews
– Project team reviews
Copyright 2013 by Market Driven Management and The Corporate Development Institute, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from James D. Hlavacek.
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In Summary:
• Continually provide more value to customers
to accelerate Profitable Top-Line Growth!
• Let’s Celebrate the VMA’s 75th Anniversary!
• Thank You!
• Any Questions?
www.corpdevinst.com
Phones: 800.322.3540 or 704.366.9024
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