Second Stage Entrepreneurship: Ten Proven Strategies for Driving Aggressive Growth

205 Pages·2013·0.92 MB·English

by  Dan Weinfurter

SECOND STAGE
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Ten Proven Strategies for Driving
Aggressive Growth
DANIEL J. WEINFURTER
Dedication
To my Mom and Dad,
to Martha, Amy, and Andrea
and to my current and former colleagues
second stage entrepreneurship
Copyright © Daniel J. Weinfurter, 2013.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fift h Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-137-30258-8 ISBN 978-1-137-33714-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137337146
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weinfurter, Daniel J.
Second stage entrepreneurship : ten proven strategies for driving
aggressive growth / Daniel J. Weinfurter.
pages cm
ISBN 978–1–137–30258–8 (alk. paper)
1. Business planning. 2. Strategic planning. 3. Organizational change.
I. Title.
HD30.28.W3755 2013
658.4(cid:2)012—dc23 2013015912
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
List of fi gures v
Foreword
Gary Loveman, Chairman and CEO of Caesar’s
Entertainment vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Grow or Die 7
Chapter 2 New Capital Sources 19
Chapter 3 Install a Board of Directors 35
Chapter 4 Create, Don’t Compete 51
Chapter 5 Hiring Smart! 65
Chapter 6 The New Model for Selling 87
Chapter 7 Managing Beyond Metrics 105
Chapter 8 Growth Marketing 125
Chapter 9 The Total Customer Experience 141
Chapter 10 Culture Matters 157
iv CONTENTS
Chapter 11 The Keys to Effective Leadership 171
Appendix – Exit Strategy: Moving On 189
Notes 203
Index 207
FIGURES
6.1 Selling strategies hierarchy 99
6.2 Selling strategies approach summaries 100
10.1 Conscious culture development model 163
10.2 Example of completed culture model 165
FOREWORD
THE MATURATION OF A START-UP into what Weinfurter refers
to as a “second-stage” entrepreneurial business is a process fraught
with challenges. If the start-up has demonstrated a product or service
that is differentiated and value-added to its targeted customers, the
multifaceted next phase involves growing the enterprise into a stable
high-performing business. I have observed Dan lead such a matura-
tion process, first as a director of and investor in his start-up Parson
Group and then later, in a more limited incarnation, when Dan led an
entrepreneurial effort within my large, established company, Caesars
Entertainment.
Neither sheer smarts nor intuition are sufficient for any entrepre-
neur to move from starting a business to growing it into a significant
enterprise. The activities, resources, competencies, and rewards are
fundamentally different and require a much greater emphasis on pro-
cess integrity and delegated control. While access to capital and the
mechanisms through which capital is introduced into a new venture
are critical and worthy of considerable debate, capital is the necessary
condition for growth. The sufficient conditions include the key steps
Weinfurter details, including governance, staffing, positioning, and,
most interesting to me, selling.
viii FOREWORD
First-year students at Harvard Business School, for example, learn
a great deal about marketing. Indeed, marketing is properly seen as
a critical function in nearly every successful business. However, gen-
erating revenue almost always requires one step beyond marketing:
selling. Great sales and sales management, however, are not broadly
taught in business schools and are not very well developed disciplines
or practices. While good marketing conveys to the target a persuasive
case for purchase along with critical information, such as price and
availability, selling is a sustained, personal, and much more dynamic
effort to convince a skeptical consumer that a product or service
should be purchased. Take, for example, the case of philanthropy; a
case I find particularly impressive when it is executed well. A devel-
opment officer of a charity identifies you as a potential donor based
on public and private information that ranges from recent wealth
events to being a grateful patient or alumnus of an institution. The
development officer begins a process with an investment of time and
consideration that is not expected to bear fruit immediately, but is
rather premised on the idea that sustained persuasion, gratitude, and
high-touch contact will bring the donor to act.
Weinfurter grew up in sales at GE and knows the process better
than anyone I have met. Dan’s own entrepreneurial ventures have
been built largely around excellence in sales. His book teaches us how
to build an organization of sales people and sales management that
can consistently advance the position of our products and services by
hiring, training, measuring, and rewarding the right talent to execute
a well-articulated strategy for sales. In so doing, the sales function
becomes a key part of the firm’s differentiation rather than a neces-
sary or costly evil. His process includes matching the sales executive
to the target, monitoring and refining activity and pitch, relentlessly
managing performance, and constantly refilling and refining the sales
team to enhance effectiveness.
FOREWORD ix
Several years ago, I observed that my own company was very good
at marketing but not nearly so adept at selling. We did not hire, train,
or manage for sales proficiency and lacked the systems to do so. Dan
joined us as a consultant and quickly established the hiring, sales
management, and sales training systems that have blossomed into a
meaningful source of revenue generation for the company.
If you have made the considerable step forward to establish a busi-
ness and have demonstrated that it can meet a differentiated need in
the marketplace, you owe it to yourself and your investors to develop
the organizational capacity to carefully build a plan to mature the
start-up into a robust growth enterprise. Weinfurter has a rigorous,
straightforward method for doing so that can and should be executed
by entrepreneurs who are determined to overcome the frequent pit-
falls that accompany the transition from start-up to second stage.
While we all appreciate the differences and nuances of our own busi-
nesses, there are some fundamental principles that transcend these
distinctions. Dan presents these fundamental principles and then
concludes with his own reflections on shaping the customer experi-
ence, developing your culture, and maturing as an effective leader. I
have learned a great deal from watching Dan hone the ideas you will
find in his book, and I am confident you will too.
Gary Loveman
Chairman and CEO of
Caesar’s Entertainment
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK HAS BEEN A WORK in process for a number of years.
After receiving encouragement from a few people who I worked with
over the years and know well, I made the commitment to actually
dedicate my efforts to completing this book beginning in late 2011.
I owe many people my thanks and gratitude for making this book
possible.
First on this list are my parents, Betty and Joe Weinfurter. I am one
of eight children, all of us born and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin,
a middle-class suburb of Milwaukee. I have many things to thank my
parents for, certainly far too many to list here. However, a few things
they instilled in me stand out: the value of working hard, but not so
hard that there is no time for fun along the way, staying connected to
friends and family despite the passage of time and the constraints of
geography, and a lifelong passion for learning. My parents, currently
90 and 91, just celebrated their sixty-fourth anniversary. They still
each read nearly an entire book every day, live completely on their
own, and both still drive. I hope to age as gracefully as they have,
and aspire to be as good a role model to my kids as they have been
to me.
Since I started my career at GE right out of Marquette University, I
have had the good fortune to be part of a number of great organizations