
PE Value Drivers Series: An Interview with a Private Equity Operating Partner Experienced in Value Creation
Apr 15, 2021 3:29:41 PM | Posted by Slade Kobran
Mar 25, 2021 3:56:02 PM — If sales and marketing teams are misaligned, a portfolio company’s growth could be crippled. Here’s how buyout firms can verify that these teams are on the same page, and how to nurture that collaboration if they aren’t. The very phrase “sales and marketing” is so ubiquitous it’s implied these two disciplines are naturally joined at the hip, when the truth is that partnership requires focus and effort to cultivate and maintain. And for private equity investors, assuming that a portfolio company’s sales and marketing teams are simpatico can jeopardize their best laid plans.
Mar 19, 2021 12:01:18 PM — This episode features an interview with Everett Hill, Managing Director at ICV Partners. Mr. Hill had an extensive operating career at Coca-Cola Enterprises, where he honed his functional expertise in field sales, inside sales, and distribution, and led technology-enabled corporate transformations. His largest P&L was $250 million. Mr. Hill began his sales career carrying a bag in Rohm and Haas spinoff companies. He is on the board of the Georgia Center for Nonprofits and has a BSE in chemical engineering from Princeton University and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School. Below are key takeaways from our conversation. Be sure to view the whole conversation for more details and insights.
Feb 11, 2021 11:22:33 AM — Industrial enterprises have tended to give marketing the short shrift, but for private equity firms looking to take such businesses to the next level, it’s time to make “true” marketing a priority of their value creation efforts. It’s only natural for industrial companies to have certain misconceptions about marketing. Like a lot of B2B businesses, they’ve been spared that full brunt of digital disruption that’s revolutionized retail over the last twenty years. But that grace period has come to an end, and not just because COVID-19 forced everyone on to Zoom for the last year.
Feb 2, 2021 4:38:33 PM — For B2B companies, COVID-19 has only accelerated the trends towards online sales, which means it’s time to perform a comprehensive review of their digital strategy, and that includes taking a good, hard look at what the competition is doing. Last year, McKinsey & Co. published a survey on B2B buyer preference, reporting that every phase of the buyer’s journey is migrating online, and in particular, self-service options. In the research phase alone, over the last three years, there was an 85% jump in preference to conduct it online. That might not be so shocking, but during that same time, buyers preference for online resources for the evaluation phase leapt by 238%.