At Accerion Partners, we have developed a proprietary process that transforms your structured strategic planning activities. The Market Highly Achievable Goal approach, or MHAG, ensures that you can effectively capture profit share vs. just market share. MHAG helps you focus on the “ Ideal Clients,” who can generate both the required gross revenue growth, and also generate higher than average profit margins.

When a company fails to scale, one of the first things many leaders do is increase their investment in sales and marketing. After many months of increased investment, the wished-for growth never materializes. They restructure the sales and marketing organization, try a new execution / sales method, and start the vicious cycle of restructure, re-staff, and reinvest in new marketing initiatives. All of which fails to yield the desired results.

Old habits and internal optimism are the enemy in this case. Leaders continue to chase a market without making the structural changes needed to be successful. Executing plans based on old growth goals, defined by past successes and an inward-focused view of the company’s product or service is the road to struggle and frustration.

We can help you get off this restructuring sales and marketing treadmill!

Accerion Partner’s MHAG methodology enables you to design a strategy that creates the best combination of your product differentiators and a real view of your market capacity. You’ll be able to move from “We hope this will happen” to “We know we can make it happen.”

Once you have confirmed market capacity, and validated your MHAG, our structured process next allows your leadership team to create a factory approach to sales. You can proactively make the changes needed to ensure your organization has the disciplined execution habits required to efficiently achieve your sales goals.

To learn more how the MHAG process can accelerate your growth, contact us at info@accerionpartners.com

Business leaders tend to make one critical mistake in implementing their Strategic
Plans. They build growth plans without understanding their Ideal Client.

Understanding that Ideal Client can be tough.

The Ideal Client has a dire need for your products and services, and you can deliver
exceptional results that resolve that dire need. In addition, the market size for that Ideal
Client has to be large enough to support your growth plan.

In other words, who depends – or could come to depend – on your products and
services? Can you repeatedly deliver exceptional results to that target group? And are
there enough of those clients to profitably grow?

If yes, you can create a market niche that gives you a competitive advantage, pricing
power and a path to growth. If not, your growth will stall, and your efforts will become
sub-optimized over time.

If your past growth rates or profitability have had significant swings, stalled, or worse
declined, chances are that you’ve become distracted by all customers, without
understanding or honing your focus and energies toward your Ideal Client.

Sales and Marketing resources should be focused to attract and retain Ideal Clients that
meet your target profile. You begin to say NO to revenue growth opportunities that don’t
lead to strategic profit growth. Continuing to focus on any customer who comes along
leads to business complexity, additional cost, lack of pricing power, lower profitability
and slower revenue growth – the exact opposite of your strategic goals.

Finding Ideal Clients creates a sustainable growth rate pattern and exceptional
profitability within uncontested market segments, and helps you stay strong in the face
of competition.

Click here to learn more about how to make your 2023 plan a building block
to your strong future!

Congratulations to the team at Clark Construction Company! Clark Construction Company leadership has made culture a priority that has created the foundation for a competitive advantage in the construction market place.

Clark Construction Company was recently named as one of the 2020 Cool Places to Work in Michigan, as recognized by Crain’s Detroit Business and Best Companies Group. Clark placed first among construction companies, fifth among medium-sized companies, and 16th place overall.

This statewide survey and awards program was designed to identify, recognize and honor the best places of employment in Michigan, benefiting the state’s economy, its workforce and businesses. The 2020 Cool Places to Work in Michigan list is made up of 100 companies in three size categories: small (15-49 U.S. employees), medium (50-249 U.S. employees) and large (250+ U.S. employees).

Companies from across the state entered the two-part process to determine the Cool Places to Work in Michigan. The first part consisted of evaluating each nominated company’s workplace policies, practices, and demographics. This part of the process was worth approximately 25% of the total evaluation. The second part consisted of an employee survey to measure the employee experience. This part of the process was worth approximately 75% of the total evaluation. The combined scores determined the top companies and the final rankings. Best Companies Group managed the overall registration and survey process in Michigan and also analyzed the data and used their expertise to determine the final rankings.

Clark Construction Company was recognized during an Aug. 14 virtual event produced by Crain’s Detroit Business that revealed the 100 companies; the company will also be recognized on August 17 in a special publication by Crain’s Detroit Business.

Craig Janusz one of our founding partners has been Clark Construction Company’s strategic planning coach for that last three years.

For more information on how to make your culture a strategic advantage, contact us at 616.377.4567 or email: info@accerionpartners.com

The month of July is the ideal time for companies to pause, refocus, reprioritize, and help your teams to reconnect on a personal, and even emotional level, to your company’s strategic plan for 2020. A lot has changed since most developed their 2020 plan. Most dominant of course is the black swan event of the COVID -19 virus, which has impacted nearly every aspect of your business, causing uncertainty and stress for business owners and their individual employees.

Understanding and focusing on values and purpose brings teams together. To refocus and reprioritize your strategic plan for 2020, begin by bringing your employees and teams back to focus in on your company’s core ideology -- your values, purpose, and long-range goals. Knowing what a company cares most about provides employees and team with a foundation of psychological safety. They can see the connections with their own values and purpose, and that connection helps them make better decisions that are aligned with the company’s longer-term goals.

When we lose sight of our company’s core ideology, and when we neglect to bring those ideas and values forward, individuals and teams slowly become disconnected. This is especially true in times of stress and uncertainty. As employees disengage, their decisions begin to lose a consistent thread and focus. They tend to lose sight of the big picture, and their connection to the company weakens.

When teams connect in personal ways to your company’s core ideology, collaboration and more creativity is the result. By reminding employees of your Values, Goals and Purpose, you allow your teams to connect on an emotional level to the goals of the company, and that helps them stay focused on the future even in times of great uncertainty.

As you begin this second half of a very challenging 2020, we at Accerion Partners will continue to provide insights that help you refocus and reignite your 2020 plan. Next week, we will focus on how you can rapidly capture profit share in uncertain times by deeply understanding your ideal client profile.

As we enter the second quarter in 2020, we are facing severe economic head winds caused by the impact of the CORVID-19. These economic disruptions will create challenges and opportunities for businesses to grow revenue and profits in the balance of 2020 and beyond. Businesses will need to reinvent, realign and restructure their business in order to survive and thrive in today’s new business reality.

To help you navigate the unknown during the remainder of 2020, we are offering you our Four Key Decisions assessment at no charge to identify and prioritize the constraints that you must address in your business to reinvent, realign and restructure your business. This quick survey will provide you with insights on the four key decisions – People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash -- that all companies must get right to continue to scale up their business in order unleash the full potential of your business in 2020 and beyond.

Visit our website https://www.accerionpartners.com and click on the link at the top of the page.

In 2019 our client, Fastco Industries, began utilizing a proprietary Accerion Partners methodology MHAG (Market Highly Achievable Goal), and identified speed-to-market as a critical element of their go-to-market strategy.

As a result, Fastco Industries, a manufacturer of specialty cold-headed fasteners in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has implemented a series of strategic initiatives that have emphasized speed and agility in the production of custom-designed fasteners. With its ability to design and manufacture its own tooling, Fastco can pivot with client needs--and complete approved samples in half the time required by comparable competitors in the industry.

As the automotive industry continues to demand higher quality product and compressed lead times, Fastco Industries’ structured strategic plan was developed with agility in mind. The detailed plan documented Fastco Industries’ responses to the four key decisions all organizations must make: Strategy, People, Execution and Cash. These plans have allowed Fastco Industries to correctly and quickly respond to rapidly changing market conditions.

In recent weeks, the coronavirus has created significant uncertainty in world-wide supply chains. Metal stampers and component makers fear that shortages of such key components as fasteners may prevent them from meeting their customer’s shipping schedules. No one knows how long the coronavirus will disrupt global supply chains. Moreover, many automotive suppliers are not clear about how to solve the problem of component shortages in the present.

With its ability to quickly tool and develop new jobs, Fastco Industries is uniquely positioned to provide assistance to consumers of special fasteners. Fastco has already provided assistance to many customers in the past years who were suffered from supply chain disruption. For instance, In December 2019, Fastco was contacted by a company that manufactured beds. The company needed a specific component, but its supplier was having equipment problems and was unable to provide an important part, thus jeopardizing the ability of this company to make and sell its product. Fastco was able to re-design, tool, and manufacture this part in less than two weeks from receipt of order.

Whether your company needs a complex rivet, a specialty swage bolt, a high nickel stainless exhaust flange bolt or other custom-made fasteners, Fastco may have the answer. If you face the challenge of an unpredictable supply chain or the shortage of critical components, your company can contact Fastco Industries to see if they can help.

Please contact Andrew Ike at 616-453-5428 #157 or email aIke@fastcoind.com for an assessment of your requirements. Fastco Industries: Fasteners Fast: www.fastcoind.com.

For more information on a structured approach to Scaling Up and the Accerion Partners MHAG methodology, contact Accerion Partners at 616-377-4567 or email info@accerionpartners.com

Accerion Partners www.accerionpartners.com.

With the coronavirus outbreak impacting the world, and thus affecting global markets, now is the time to make your company’s strategic planning process more dynamic. The Scaling Up Strategic Planning Process, as developed by Verne Harnish, is an agile strategic planning process that can help you rapidly adjust your organization’s strategic plan in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty. This process helps you focus on the four key areas all organization must get right to avoid stalling their growth. With it, you will be able to sustain your organization in turbulent times and, at the same time, set yourself up for long term growth.

Are your current strategic planning process execution habits capable of allowing you to adjust your strategic plan on a timely basis? How would your organization answer the following questions and make the necessary adjustments with minimum disruption to your organization?

· What would happen to your organization if your suppliers could not deliver materials to your organization?

· What will happen if your customers stop buying from you because of the impact of the coronavirus?

· Do you have enough cash on hand to sustain your organization through this challenging time?

· What would happen if one of your associates become ill with the coronavirus?

· Do you have a policy that allows sick people to work from home?

The foundation of a dynamic strategic planning process is the execution tactics that tap into the collective intelligence of the organization to help make needed adjustments that keep the focus on sustainable profitable long-term growth. From these routine meeting rhythms, organizations can quickly adjust to changing market conditions with information collected daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly.

The key to making your strategic planning process dynamic is unleashing your collective organizational intelligence by gathering information and reacting accordingly. A well thought out meeting rhythm, focused on executing your strategic plan gets rid of the crystal ball approach to strategic planning and makes it based on real-time information that can help you position your organization for long-term, sustainable growth.

For more information on how to utilize the Scaling Up Process contact us info@accerionpartners.com

Most organizations will take the last quarter of 2019 to develop a Strategic Plan for 2020 and beyond that will focus on growing revenue and profits. From our firsthand experiences, companies fail to execute their Strategic Plan, because they do not integrate their Strategic Planning into a process that weaves daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly activities with strategic action. The process must focus their employees on the key tasks that move the company forward. Companies need to treat their Strategic Plan as a “process” that is dynamic and not a static “event”. Once the Strategic Plan is developed, it’s the beginning of an organizational journey that should inspire, motivate and drive alignment. Creating actions towards operational excellence.

To transform your Strategic Plan into a “process” companies need to build their Strategic Planning process around the continuous improvement process of “plan, do, check, act”. As you implement this continuous process, you are updating the plan on what is working and making the necessary adjustments for internal and external constraints. A lacking of understanding the constraints could derail the success of your strategic plan. It starts with sharing with all employees the top priorities required to move the Strategic Plan forward. Breaking these priorities into department and individual priorities that can be woven into the daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly fabric of the organization ensures success.

Once the priorities are set, the next step is establishing the metrics or measurements that will determine if the priorities are moving in the right directions. Visual Scoreboards should be built for all key organizational and department priorities. By displaying the metrics on the Visual Scoreboard, it will keep focus on these priorities.

The last step in transforming a Strategic Plan into a “process” is to develop the right meeting rhythm to keep the organization focused on the organization priorities. Organization need to establish meeting rhythms that set aside a structured time daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly that allows individuals and teams to focus on the priorities required to move the Strategic Plan.

The daily meeting should be very short, less than fifteen minutes that allow individuals and teams to share relevant information and ask for help outside of the meeting to move the company forward. The weekly meeting is thirty minutes to an hour meeting to discuss progress on timelines for quarterly priorities and identify constraints that need to be addressed. The monthly meeting is one to two-hour long meeting to review key metrics to the plan and discussing the quarterly priorities to ensure they are on track. The quarterly meeting is a four to eight-hour leadership meeting that the leadership teams review the company performance against the plan and establish the new quarterly key priorities against the key initiatives to meet that yearly.

Now, it’s your turn to evaluate if your Strategic Plan is going to be “event” or a “process” that moves your organization forward in 2020. Start by asking yourself these questions. Did all your employees know the top 3 to 5 key priorities that your organization needed to achieve to make your 2019 successful year? Where the priorities broken down into team priorities that had visual scoreboards, so everyone was aligned and knew the progress of your organization priorities? Did your organization structure the meeting rhythms that allowed employees to focus on your priorities in your plan in 2019?

Accerion Partners is a boutique consulting and coaching firm.

Providing access to unique senior executive skills and experience to mid-market privately held / family owned companies allowing them to form and execute detailed value enhancement strategies to accelerate their growth

To find out, attend the Towerline Software LLC Cyber Security and Internal Controls Workshop at the Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island MI, August 14th and 15th, 2019!

[Holland, MI, July 12, 2019 ]The daily news has heighted our awareness of the vulnerabilities of a Cyber Attack on the Grid. One of our Accerion Partners Clients is the industry leader in Compliance, Cyber Security and Internal Controls and has created a comprehensive workshop to prepare your organization for such an event.

The Cyber Security & Internal Controls Workshop discounted room rates end Monday July 15th, registration ends July 31st.

This is a thought provoking hands on workshop exploring the use of Internal Controls for strengthening your company's cyber security. Participants will participate in a targeted “cyber security breach” simulation and hear from legal experts, intrusion detection experts, cyber forensics experts and insurance personnel on how their decisions effect their company’s policies and security.

Attendees will learn professional ways to create the internal controls necessary to ensure compliance with NERC standards and their incident response plans.

Other topics include: intrusion detection, a utility's responsibility for third party contractors (case study), backup and data recovery, hands on internal control workshop, and hands on incident response plan workshop

Towerline Software delivers a world-class NERC Compliance Solution to the Electric Utility Industry. They provide a dedicated focus upon NERC Standards and Requirements, program implementation and usability, compliance sustainability and service quality.With over 40 years of experience their roots are in the electric utility business both as employees and as consultants. They understand how regulated electric utilities operate and how their employees are now expected do many different jobs with less money. Towerline delivers a cost effective and efficient Compliance and Cyber Security Software Solution.

Towerline Software was created as a natural effort between Tom Adams of Epoch Technical Solutions, a utility services and consulting company, and Tim Pearl of Agate Software, a nationally recognized software development company. The combined efforts of Tom and Tim serve to organize difficult processes into easy-to-use and easy-to-understand applications. “We believe the combination of our extensive utility expertise and software development experience has enabled Towerline Software to develop the world class NERC compliance solution utilities seek”, said Tom Adams, CEO of Towerline.

If you would like more information about this event, please call Pete Schneider at 517.669.8888 ext. 143 or email:events@te-inc.com

Accerion Partners is a boutique consulting and coaching firm. Accerion Partners provides access to unique senior executive skills and experience to mid-market, nonprofit and privately held / family-owned companies, allowing them to form and execute detailed value enhancement strategies.

If you would like more information about this topic, please call Accerion Partners at 616.377.4567 or email: info@accerionpartners.com

Our Client, Elite Baseball and Softball, has the answer!

[Holland, MI, June 2019] At Accerion Partners, our clients always ask us “from a business perspective how can our company take it to the next level?” It is very exciting to work with a client whose specialty and expertise is taking performance to the next level on the baseball field. Accerion Partners is helping Elite Baseball and Softball change their business model and continue to scale rapidly. Elite, based in Wyoming, Michigan, is a world-class, full-service baseball and softball training facility. The 49,000 square ft state of the art indoor facility is a hidden gem in the Grand Rapids area.

The Elite team, founded by Bryan Baar in 1994, has developed the facilities, process and methods to train athletes to an elite level. With the addition of Mike Paul, Michelle Brander, and Jim Abbott, Elite has created a unique culture of discipline and understanding that provides individual skills and core strength training to over one thousand athletes from ages 5-22 every year. Using the experiences and skills the team developed by playing with the Dodgers, Twins, the Netherlands Olympic team, and scouting for the Chicago Cubs, they are able to assist athletes of all abilities to Scale Up to the next level.

Who did these pros call when they wanted to take their business to the next level? Accerion Partners! It has been really exciting to work with the Elite Team as they continue to Scale Up.

Come in and see the Elite facility during the West Michigan Baseball and Softball expo September 7 2019. The expo will highlight info on college recruiting, nutrition for athletes, strength training and sports psychology. Also check out their website elitebaseballandsoftball.com and their facebook page for more expo-related details.

If you would like more information about this topic, please call Accerion Partnersat 616.377.4567 or email: info@accerionpartners.com