Bringing Creativity and Intelligence Together

Jim Harris, Leader of the Green Party of Canada 2003-06

In December 2005, the New Democratic and Conservative Parties defeated the government and triggered Canada’s second-ever election over Christmas.  After fighting a federal, provincial and municipal election in the previous year, the public and media had no appetite for this election.

As the Alberta Organizer for the Green Party of Canada, it was necessary for me to create a number of media-friendly public events that not only got people’s attention, but also showcased Green Party policies in a clear and positive manner.

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Situation

In December 2005, the New Democratic and Conservative Parties defeated the government and triggered Canada’s second-ever election over Christmas. After fighting a federal, provincial and municipal election in the previous year, the public and media had no appetite for this election.

In addition, the National Campaign Manager for the Green Party of Canada had resigned the week before the election. We were ill prepared and disorganized at the top.

It was necessary for the Green Party of Canada to consolidate its electoral gains from the 2004 election (4.3% or 650,000 votes) and do everything in its power to get youth,  its most supportive demographic to the polls.

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Embracing Change is about Managing Change.

The world is changing so quickly that it is often difficult for organizations to succeed without a business plan that is reviewed on a regular basis and a strategic plan that acts as a roadmap to attaining your goals.

Despite the great diversity of businesses I have worked with over the last 5 years, the fundamentals of business planning have always remained constant.  They are the key to your success.

I offer my expertise to help you succeed in business in three steps:

Step 1: Write or update your current business plan.

Step 2: Create a strategic plan to meet the goals of your business plan.

Step 3: Present your plan to raise capital from financial institutions (loans) or venture capitalists (equity).

Situation

The Vendor Manager assigned to work with Telus Marketing Services (TMS), an outsourced independent telemarketing firm,  struggled to find a consistent means of evaluating the TMS/Telus relationship.  His instructions were to manage the relationship such that he would extract the maximum benefit for Telus’ investment in the company.  The Telus executive would use his reports as a basis for determining whether or not they would continue this relationship.

Task

Through consultations with the Vendor Manager, I recommended that assessing Return on Investment would the most effective means of evaluating the Telus/TMS relationship.  Simply put, how much revenue did TMS generate on our behalf compared to how much they charged us?
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A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. They lay out, in broad terms, the vision for the organization and what it is they want to accomplish.

Through a process of active listening and discussion, we will develop a business plan that is best suited to your industry and developed into the format best suited to your purpose:

The Elevator Pitch: a three minute oral or written summary of the business plan. This is often used as a teaser to awaken the interest of potential funders, customers, or strategic partners.

The Formal Presentation: a slide show and oral narrative that will trigger discussion and interest potential investors in reading the written presentation. The content of the presentation is usually limited to the executive summary and a few key graphs showing financial trends and key decision making benchmarks. If a new product is being proposed and time permits, a demonstration of the product may also be included.

The Written Business Plan: a detailed, well written, and pleasingly formatted plan targeted at external stakeholders for the purpose of securing financing, raising venture capital or convincing potential customers to utilize your products and services.

Go to Step 2

A business plan identifies the opportunity and goal for the venture, a strategic plan lays out the specific path: time, money, and actions that need to happen to make the goals of your business plan a reality.

Set SMART Objectives: by creating specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound objectives, you will take the largest goals and break them down into quarterly, weekly and even daily activities. Ideal objectives will give you a regular ‘to-do’ list that will inevitably move you toward success.

Prioritize Your Objectives: once your objectives have been set, you need to identify which objectives will take priority to give you the maximum return on your investment of time. Make no mistake: bringing an enterprise to a profitable position is, by necessity, a time-limited proposition.

Create Your Plan: place your objectives into quarterly, monthly and weekly plans that involve regular reports and feedback from the key members of your management team. By following your plan, you gain an immediate reality check on your plan, goals and objectives.

Go to Step 3

Very few start-ups are profitable in their first two years. A well written business plan and a clear strategic plan are the machine that will make you successful. Money is the fuel to get things moving.

Calculate Burn Rate: by calculating how quickly a start-up business will use up its cash reserves, you can determine how much financing you need to get to a profitable financial position.

Develop a Financing Strategy: once you determine your requirements for financing your business to the point of profitability, you need to determine the mix of finacing: self-sourced, loans and venture capital. This mix is dependent upon the kind of business you are doing.

Develop an Equity Offer: Venture capitalists want to know what they are buying into and what percentage of return they will receive on their investment. Knowing how to make this offer attractive to venture capitalists is the key to financing success.

Here are my Letters of Reference

Green Party Letter of Reference

CCR Letter of Reference

Situation

In November 2002, Dominion Information Services Inc., undertook to change their suite of internet products to SuperPages.ca, the online directory service.  A report was required to track sales and individual product performance as well as to measure sales rep acceptance of this new product.

“The report not only enabled managers to identify their top sellers in each product category, they were able to tailor training to products that their reps were having difficulty with.”

Task

The report currently used to track internet sales was based entirely upon manual data entry and only provided single dollar amounts for sales reps and teams in Alberta.  The report took approximately 2 hours per week to complete and did not break down sales by product or provide any trending data.

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Situation

In February 2002, Dominon Information Services adopted a sales compensation package based upon a 5 pay period quota average to pay their sales reps and managers.  After the first 5 pay periods, it was necessary to provide an evaluation of their pay plan according to a desired standard for both directory and SuperPages.ca sales.

Task

It was my responsibility to take the 5 pay period data and perform an analysis which would show how each team performed against the desired standard.

Action

Once I received and proofed the data for errors, I used Microsoft Excel to classify each sales rep into the following 5 categories: below 50% of quota, between 51-75% of quota, between 76-125% of quota, between 126-150% of quota and exceeding 150% of quota.  I was then able to compare these counts to the desired quota curve:

Result

Upon reviewing the report, it was discovered that 3 of the 17 teams had high averages due to the efforts of one or two of their sales reps. In addition, analysis of SuperPages.ca  showed that over 50% of  sales reps failed to obtain over 75% of their quota, illustrating the need to provide additional sales force training for reps or the need to re-vamp the quota levels for SuperPages.ca.