Do you know how to save a sinking ship? Welcome to the Marketing Accelerator Podcast, featuring three insights in about three minutes. I'm Drew Dinkelacker and today I'm speaking with Keith Weigand. He's the president and COO of Pulse Health Solutions - that's a pharmacy benefit manager organization that solves the problems of out-of-control pharmacy costs. When Keith and I first started talking, he shared that he's led multiple organizations through the turnaround process.
Drew Dinkelacker: Keith, it's not unusual that new leadership walks into an organization, finds out it's not exactly as they were told. Sometimes it's a sinking Titanic situation. Where should they start?
Keith Weigand: The first thing you really need to do is look at all the different operations and find out where the breach is happening. Usually, it's one or two main key items that is really causing that issue, and once you get that fixed, those two major, one or two major things, you can start looking at other things to help support those two things. A lot of it is checking out personnel and making sure it's running efficiently, as well as who your partners are. It's very important to have really good partners that have your best interests in place.
Drew: Okay. So now the breach has been contained, but well, the ship's still taking on water, just not as much, it's not out of danger. What's next?
Keith: That's when you really fine-tune and look at who you're dealing with and who you're working with. A lot of times you can put the right procedures in place, but then you have partners that don't have your best interest, so if you really fine tune who you're working with and that have your best interest, it makes things move very smoothly.
Drew: Keith, can you give me a real life example of a Titanic turnaround situation that you've led?
Keith: Sure. I took over a physical therapy company several years ago, and I was told everything was going just fine, and when I got in there, I realized that they were not doing just fine, they were going to close the doors any day. So the first thing I do is really look at where are the major issues and why are they losing money. Once we figured out that the therapists weren't being efficient enough, we could get more throughput, we would increase productivity by 33%. And the other key thing was insurance. It's one thing that employers hate doing, it happens once a year, but it's so important 'cause it's probably your second largest spend as a company. If you can take care of that and get the right partners that will help you drive down cost and save money, it takes care of a majority of your issues.
Drew: Great turnaround, Keith. So, if you find yourself in a Titanic-sinking scenario, fix the breach first, then deal with the leaks that created the breach by addressing procedures, strategic direction, efficiency and costs, especially insurance. The Marketing Accelerator Podcast is a production of MarketingAccelerator.com, where business leaders gain confidence in their marketing efforts and marketers turn into high performance leaders. I'm Drew Dinkelacker.