Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (4)

Proudfoot had a standardised training programme for selling skills of which I got the manual. We had to adapt it to the client’s needs and that took us ages. We realised that the Proudfoot manual was far too elaborate for the client. So we did lots of work to tweak it and transform it into a “tailor-made” one. Well, no need to reinvent the wheel, but here we really had to sort of reinvent it.

I must say, our training programme which we finally got together was absolutely fabulous and extremely specific to the client’s needs. The role plays were all about selling salad, the language was adapted to their business, and everything was salad!

This was a very skills project. And please refer to an earlier entry where I explained skills programmes. I implemented exactly one of those. We had TTTs, TTEs, TTCs and CTCs. Anyway, something like that anyway. ;-)

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (3)

We also needed to implement daily/weekly review meetings with the sales force. The 4 area sales managers of Germany needed a single system for managing their sales force and we implemented that. We created agendas of what to talk about, how to link sales to the weekly figures and reports, etc.

We even got rankings of who were the best sellers with the highest margins for the company. One of the area managers was our task force, Uwe Kossatz, who was responsible for the east German market. Another task force was Michael Gebauer, a Hamburg based marketing manager. The 4 of us were an extremely good team and we were pretty efficient with the programme.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (2)

Unfortunately, I have lost all documentation about that project and in fact, about most projects, so I must rely on my brains for details. I remember we did a brown paper session and figured out their main problems in their processes. But apart from those process inefficiencies, which were actually a missing management system for the company, we were tasked with the training programme regarding selling skills. On the picture is my colleague Emmanuel Quentin.

Management system was easy. The client did not have an idea about their margins of their products, just a rough one which were money makers and which were not. The most selling product was “krautsalat”, which is very German and means something like cabbage salad. They sold tons of that stuff, but hardly got any money back. On the other, products like crab salad, which was hardly sold, delivered a very high margin. So, we needed to create a management information system which first highlighted high margin products per area and which second reported on single sales efforts of sales staff so that high margin selling was manageable.

Salmon, Shrimps and Krautsalad (1)

After the Christmas holidays 2000/2001 I got a phone call that there was a project for me which I would have to manage. The project was a little extension of an existing one. The latter was a manufacturing project in Osnabrück and mine would be an extension towards their sales department and that was in Hamburg, also in Germany.

The client produced delicatessen salads and sold them mainly to department stores and gourmet palaces. Their sales force needed “selling techniques” and a common approach to sell salad. I was excited. But as said, it was a very small project, only 24 manweeks, which means 2 people for 12 weeks. The project started mid January till mid April.

I must admit I have forgotten the savings commitment we had with the client. Bearing in mind that the project cost around 300,000 euros, I would expect the savings to be around 900,000 but I don’t know anymore.

Deauville

Deauville was fabulous. It was probably the poshest Christmas company party I have ever attended. Our present was a Hermes tie. Okay, it was an extremely ugly one, but still, I still have it and even wear it once in a while.

Proudfoot did not do very well in those days but they had lots of cash from which they bought IMR. In fact, it was management at Proudfoot which was rather weak; after that company meeting Proudfoot was mainly managed by IMR directors.

What I found very interesting, IMR was a young company with only a few older people working there. Proudfoot on the other was the exact opposite. Proudfoot was a truly international company though. They had strongholds in the US, Australia, and South Africa.

Oh yes, and as one can see from the picture above, we did have lots to drink that evening...

The Merger

One morning after we arrived at the job, the project manager (from that Telekom project) and I downloaded our e-mails. And there it was, the CEO of Proudfoot Consulting sent all of IMR a message that our company was taken over by them. We were now working for Proudfoot, the epitomisation of evil in the consulting industry. Well, at least with IMPAC we were brainwashed that way.

It was December 2000 and there was the company Christmas meeting in Deauville (Normandy, northern France, extremely posh seaside spa) coming up at which we would celebrate "our marriage".

One thing I have not told yet on here. Before I started with IMR I worked for Proudfoot for 2 weeks, did not like it, and left the company again since I got the offer from Paris which I much preferred.

IMR

IMR, the company I worked for, was a pretty small niche consultancy based in France with a few main markets for which they had regional offices and consultants. There was obviously the Parisian Headquarters, but there were also offices in Manchester, Frankfurt and Madrid.

The company belonged to 2 owners in the US, but the US part of the business was very small and neglectable. There were 4 German project managers working for them, lots of French ones (as this was the core market), and a handful of Brits, plus some Spaniards.

It was then that I decided to step up as project manager and ask the European Head of Operations what his thoughts on my ideas were. I did not have to sell myself a lot, he only replied "Yes, of course. The next available project will be yours..."

I did not have to wait for a long time.