What Are Your PMI Success Chances?

The following questions can serve as a starting point for those contemplating integration in the wake of a merger. If your leadership team can answer all nine questions concerning your next PMI transaction, that bodes well. If there are gaps in your company’s responses, or some grey areas, then the prospects for a successful PMI may well be reduced. And an abundance of blanks on … [ Read more ]

Micro and Macro Management Questions

A great MICRO manager asks questions like:

  • What are the deadlines for a particular project?
  • How do we measure progress (and are we making progress)?
  • Is there sufficient feedback exchange?
  • How do we promote more accountability within the team?

But how about the MACRO part of management? Beyond your day-to-day role as a manager, you must also consider each person’s career trajectory.

A great MACRO manager asks questions like:

  • What

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Evaluating a Potential Joint Venture Partner

You need to group your questions under three very broad questions:

  1. Does the partner have the skills and resources I need? It’s important to distinguish between the skills a partner possesses and what the JV needs to succeed. They may not be the same thing. You also need to make sure that your proposed partner has been reinvesting and upgrading its skills, and not

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4 Business Model Design Parameters

If you were to design a business model from scratch, you would have to make four decisions:

  1. What are the boundaries of my business, both vertically (the degree of integration along the value chain) and horizontally (the width of the portfolio of products offered and markets served)?
  2. What is the nature of the relationships between my business and parties outside the boundaries of my business,

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10 Tough Questions to Ask Sales Prospects

Are you asking your prospects the wrong questions?  When most sales reps are developing a B2B sale, they limit questioning to generic issues like which products the prospect is currently using.  Here’s a better idea: ask questions that reveal if the prospect is truly qualified to buy and how the buying decision will be made.

Here are ten sample questions, adapted from material provided by Keith … [ Read more ]

Leadership Supply Process Questions

  • Can we quantify our supply of and demand for leaders, both now and in the future?
  • How many positions are filled by external recruitment versus internal promotion?
  • What’s the win-rate for “must have” recruits?
  • How do our retention rates for top and mainstream talent compare with those of our competitors?
  • What is the rate of retention of external hires versus internal promotions?
  • What are the overall promotion rates by

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10 Questions About Executive Compensation That Every Company Should Know How to Answer

  1. What are the implications of our business strategy and our approach to value creation for our executive compensation system? What behaviors are we trying to motivate? Does the system support our strategy? Does it encourage our executives to act like owners?
  2. Is the overall pay package appropriately balanced? Between fixed pay and variable pay? Between short-term-variable and long-term-variable pay? For each level of the

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Pricing Process Questions

  • Are your pricing policies well-defined, allowing for both control and flexibility?
  • Are those policies aligned with strategies to grow revenue and profits?
  • Are mechanisms in place to monitor pricing policy compliance over time to identify potential abuse?
  • Do you have incentives in place to encourage pricing compliance and increase sales growth?
  • Is there a process to handle pricing exceptions? Are they clearly defined?
  • Are roles, responsibilities, and decision rights

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