Story

It was 10pm or so on a weeknight, still grinding at the office.

​CEO stuck his head through my office door and asked, "How do you know when you've been successful?"

I chuckled as I looked up from my screen and responded "I've worked with you long enough to know - you've got a specific answer. What is it?"

CEO said this: "You know you've been successful when we can have a meeting like we had this morning, and as the leader of this company, I can make transformative decisions in less than 10 minutes. All because of the work you did beforehand that gave me everything I needed to make those decisions and the multiple times you've done so in the past that allows me to trust in your work."

Context

In December 2008, I was working for a Tier I automotive supplier. A victim of the Great Recession, our company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As a result, one of the Detroit 3 OEMs (a significant customer) pulled 100% of their business.

​We survived the bankruptcy process, emerging some months later with a new owner.

And I had a new mandate: partner with the assigned account executive and win back that business.

Over the course of several weeks, I developed intricate cost models inclusive of the most granular details, including operational variables like cycle time, scrap, set-up, tooling amortization, labor, overhead allocation, depreciation, etc.

I used those models to negotiate with the OEM customer as to what each SKU should cost (bottoms up) and how much margin they would allow to determine pricing. They had negotiated advantageous pricing with the conquest supplier plus had to buy new dies, tooling, gauges, etc. to support the resourcing activity without making us aware. I had a significant mountain to overcome.

The meeting referenced above was to review my work and decide if we had a deal.

Leveraging the detail oriented diligence that supported the analytics of the cost models, negotiations successfully resulted in the return of all the business at pricing margins that were both acceptable and instrumental to the financial improvement of the company.