Marc Grandbois
President, Schwank Ltd.
Member, TEC 280
I implemented Kraig Kramer’s CEO Tools within the first 90 days of my joining Schwank. The 90-day top 5 deliverables is one of the most powerful management tools I have seen. This has fully focused and aligned our employees on doing the right actions to achieve our goals, and made our communication very transparent. The financial indicators have given us a model dashboard: we now know where we are heading. Most importantly, our owners know what is happening which gives them confidence in us.
-
Steve Gregory, a TEC colleague and now TEC speaker completely changed our monthly sales planning process. The result is tangible sales growth.
-
Based on Alan Beaulieu’s forecasts, we implemented cuts ahead of the recession and now are investing in R&D, marketing and sales ahead of our competition. We are now seeing the effects of our actions with profits and growing sales.
-
When I first joined Schwank, a few of my TEC members recommended I follow a plan from the book “The First 90 Days”. This really helped me avoid common mistakes during the first 90 days, and I initiated actions that produced results. It also gave my owners realistic expectations.
-
I led our management team’s 2-day workshop on overcoming the 5 dysfunctions of a team based on Patrick Lencioni’s workshop. Our team really gelled and allowed us to be profitable through this latest economic crisis.
-
Patrick Renvoise’s “Selling to the Old Brain” and Jaynie Smith’s presentation on competitive advantages have given us more powerful messages and market positioning. Our advantages are more clearly understood by our sales force, our focus is on what our customers gain from our offering, which has made us more effective in growing sales.
-
Tom Searcy’s “Whale Hunting” model changed my focus to be directly involved in closing big customers, and as a result, we have gained major new business.
-
Gary Markle’s “Catalytic Coaching” allowed us to drop our dysfunctional performance management program and substituted it with more motivated coaching. This has strengthened our team and made us into a better performing group.
-
John Asher provided us with an evaluation tool for new sales people, and our top performers are the ones who scored well.
-
Michael Allosso’s talks on “You on your best day” and “Best Performance” made me realize I was on stage every day, and this helped me fine tune my performance.
-
Dan Wertenberg’s presentation on the “3 roles of the CEO” has helped delegate and given accountability to my team #1 at the right time in our development.
-
Our Chair, Ray Levesque organized a presentation on Social Networking during an Executive Session. We are now implementing and marketing using these new techniques.
