My Favourite part of being an Interim

During this series of blogs we’ve looked at the differences between using an Interim Manager and a Management Consultant.  We’ve seen that an Interim Manager has the benefit that they work with your team. As a directly employed person with accountability to you or your management team.

Whereas a Management Consultant is employed externally and you tend to use a lot of control throughout the reporting process.  They also don’t tend to work with your employees. As a result they bring in additional external resources if they needed in order to complete tasks.

Evaluate, Recommend and IMPLEMENT

Now we take a look at my favourite part of being an Interim Manager, the execution of recommendations.  Put very simply as an Interim I will go through a process of Evaluation and Recommendation with you. Actually, this is very similar to that which a Management Consultant will do.

A Management Consultant however will complete their assignment when they have completed the recommendation stage. By contrast an Interim Manager will stay with your business to help Implement the recommendations.

It’s a significant difference as you don’t find yourself in a position whereby you have recommendations but need help to implement.  Here’s an example of how that works.

An Example of how an Interim Works

I was asked by a local SME to help with sales. They couldn’t afford to employ a full time sales person but knew that they were weak in this area.  The end game was for them to be able to justify the cost associated with bringing on board a high quality professional permanently.  The process of evaluation set out where the business was currently in terms of sales.

During the recommendation process we were able to build a Sales and Marketing plan. As we knew what was being brought and by whom, we were able to specifically target relevant companies. The aim was to create a Sales Funnel which would help kick start the growth and offer the long term gain.

It was then up to me to do the implementation, nobody else just me. That meant driving the marketing content, empowering staff to start creating content and making the customer key to all their thoughts.  Finally, and most importantly it was up to me to develop new business. Very simply I picked up the phone and started generating sales.

With the unique sales process for this company in place, marketing assisting and generating opportunities I was able to help recruit the right sales person. I mentored them for a short period and hand over the reigns for them to continue the growth.

This is a very simplistic example from a SME, there are plenty of other ways in which an Interim Sales Manager can help your business.  Some of which you can find here.  However, in conclusion an Interim has the experience and ability to help you really drive your business forward, ultimately they are there as if they were one of your employees and this makes their dedication to your cause exceptional.