Career planning - Valenco Case study #13 - Ron - Grow in niche services or sell scale

During his college years, Ron was an active sportsperson and a member of a trekking group which would be on rugged trails at least once a quarter.

Bills, though, had to be paid, and on completing an undergrad degree, he joined a bank as a branch executive.

His daily routine was to follow up on enquiries for retail loans, meet with applicants and get paperwork completed.

Clocking the highest number of meetings and applications consistently, he made employee of the month 6 times in the first two years.

A promotion followed, the first of many, and a few years later he was the regional leader for retail loan origination.

Change

A schoolmate asked if Ron would want to work with one of the top names in IT services. The company was looking to elevate conversations with its clients and talk business processes and process improvement. For this, it was seeking people who had worked in sectors like banking and understood how banks functioned.

Ron was interviewed and selected for the domain consulting group in banking.

In the next three years, Ron met with banks from Australia to Canada to talk offerings for process improvement and technology refresh. He travelled over 150,000 miles and made gold elite with a global airline every year.

The high point was a large win to migrate an emerging bank in the USA to a contemporary package platform. It was a multi-year program.

The client insisted that Ron be engaged through the lifecycle of the program.

The payroll switched to US $’s and Ron found himself in the Garden State of New Jersey.

And then

Growing in his role, Ron went on to lead new business pursuits for domain consulting services with the banking sector across USA.

He was on track to visibility with the company and a bright future.

Having done it for some years though, he started to get restless, feeling that he was falling into a routine and climbing the same trail repeatedly.

The lure of new trails beckoned. He started to talk around to investigate alternative roles.

Journey 2.0

In recent years, analytics has become a fast-growing area of work. New platforms and service providers emerged, attracted by the lure of this sunrise sector.

Looking to accelerate its new business growth, an analytics services company tapped Ron, and he signed on to lead sales for them.

The company did well and brought in an investor to raise funds for growth. Some management changes followed and Ron took an exit package.

Within a few months he was recruited by another analytics company which was looking to emulate the growth of Ron’s previous employer.

Today

Ron’s employer is among the fastest growing companies among pure play providers of analytics and insight.

Ron and his team have seeded and won numerous pilot projects for analytics and data management.

Post pilot, most clients have tended to award the bigger rollout of data restructuring and management to large multi service IT services companies, most often to ones already incumbent.

Ron has discussed this with his CEO, recommending that the company expand its service offerings in order to get a share of the expanded scope post pilot. To his disappointment, there is a lack of appetite to make the investments needed to expand the lines of services.

This is starting to bother Ron. He sees that ideas and roadmaps are being crafted by his company but it’s getting only a small bite of the apple.

He is also concerned on how he will be able to drive growth of business if the wins get limited to pilot and proof of concept work.

Crossroads

Climbing a gentle slope in Hillsboro, Ron shared this dilemma with his trekking group.

A couple of co-climbers are advocating that he stays with his current employer. He is doing well, there is growth and it’s a pre-IPO company with a good financial upside for Ron 

Another view is that Ron should move to the analytics group with a multi services company. Then, he can seed deals for analytics and also work with other service lines to win downstream work. The one adjustment which he will have to make is that the client relationship will be owned by the vertical sector salespersons, and he will be in one of the service lines supporting them.

One of Ron’s mentors is an advisor to IT services companies. He has asked Ron if he would want to come in as a sales leader in a small multi services company. He can pitch for more than just analytics and will be the face to all business pursuits.

Ron has also started to think if he should go back into a senior sales role with a large company, selling to the banking sector. He understands the industry. and in that role, he will not only have client ownership but also the opportunity to sell a range of services. He has sponsors in the large firm he worked for who he is still connected with.

Counsel

Cooling down after the trek, he looked at you. Knowing that you had also spent years in the industry he values your input.

In your view should he

1.       Continue to grow business with the analytics company for the financial upside.

2.       Move to the small multi-services company as the sales head

3.       Explore a role to grow business for analytics for a large multi-services company.

4.       Aim to go back to his roots in a senior sale role, selling to the banking sector

The recommendations he received

There was unanimity that Ron should move out of selling niche services.

By a 2-1 margin, the recommendation was that he get into a senior role selling into the banking sector with taking the sales leader role with the small multi services firm as the other option.

What has Ron decided

Ron recognizes that he understands the banking domain really well. He knows the processes, where there is scope for improvement and the application of emerging technologies like AI.

Consulting in these themes has been the hallmark of his career. Many of his recommendations led to large downstream implementations.

A sales leader role with niche or small firm gives him wider responsibility of business expansion but limited range and scale he can sell and the impact it has on his client's business.

Ron has been approached by his previous employer. It wants him to grow a couple of marque clients in the banking sector - top 10 financial institutions. Ron sees this as an opportunity to participate in their journey towards banking in the age of AI.

The recommendations he received also favor this. At the time of writing, he is in late stages of discussions and if the financial offer is competitive, he is heading this way.