Pros Elite Group Developing the Elite Executive Pros Elite Group partners with Strategic Business Associates to Educate Dealer Principals and Company Executives One of the old axioms that apply to almost any business is that Knowledge is Power! This axiom has more applications to the Independent Dealer and the office products industry today than it ever has to any other industry at any other time in history. Confronted with a still weakened economy, ever decreasing selling prices and margins in equipment and the aftermarket, and dwindling lines of credit available to its customers and itself; what’s a Dealer to do? Jerry Newberry Many years ago, the word transformation became a part of the prescription to cure the ills of any organization whose performance had gone astray. Transformation is a necessary long term process and a philosophical culture of all growing organizations. Many copier dealers have gone through the transforming process of becoming more focused on MPS. Others have taken transformation to Managed Network Services and still others have gone to market with full service offerings based on MFP, MPS, Professional Services, MNS and telephony all bundled in one neatly packaged contract. The one thing all of these Transforming organizations had going for them is Knowledge. They had the knowledge to enter and succeed in MPS or MNS. They had the financial resources driven by productive and profitable aftermarket organizations that exceeded the industry benchmarks. It was only natural then that these organizations had strong P&Ls and a great balance sheet to make the necessary investments. They knew how to organize their sales and marketing effort and unceasingly measured and tweaked their programs all based on Knowledge. So where does a Dealer Principal, Company President or General Manager go to get this knowledge to Transform?                                                                            Steve Rolla For those of you who have 10 years of your career that you can spare, go to work for one of the big boys. Many of us came from the big companies. If they did nothing else right, they had great training programs. Those of us who spent time in big company environments know the value of the training we received. Jeff Kelly Don’t have 10 years and a career sidetrack to invest? Then invest one week of your time for your Transformation and become an Elite Executive. The Pros Elite Group has partnered with Strategic Business Associates (John Hanson and John Hey) to deliver the Office Product’s Industry’s first training program designed for Dealer Principals, Company Presidents and General Managers. The Independent Dealer Executive Academy (IDEA) has been designed by former executives of Global Imaging Systems, IKON, Xerox and large Independent Dealers to teach executives how to insure that all functions of their business, Sales, Service, Finance and Administration, execute to the 100+ benchmarks in the Industry Model. IDEA also prepares dealer executives how to execute to new paradigms such as Managed Network Services and the 4th phase of MPS. These are the same skills that are applied every day in the Elite Office Products organizations. The Instructors in this 5 day training session will be Jerry Newberry, Jeff Kelly and Steve Rolla from the Pros Elite Group, Todd Johnson, the former Vice President of Acquisitions for Global Imaging Systems, and current associate of Strategic Business Associates, Jeff Way from Digital Gateway and Mitch Morgan from Growth Achievement Partners. “Jerry Newberry and I gave a seminar at a Dealer conference held by one of the major manufacturers. During our presentation about executing to 5 benchmarks, I noticed a number of dealer executives taking pictures of the power-point slides with their phone cameras. This happened at every seminar we gave over the two days. It became apparent that one of the major benefits Jerry and I had from working for larger organizations was the training we were both exposed to that the average dealer principal has not,” said Steve Rolla, a senior partner at the Pros Elite Group(PEG). “It was there that we decided we could really help the Independent Dealer community by putting together a world class training program designed to give Dealer Principals, Company Presidents, CFOs, General Managers and senior executive staff exposure to the tools they need to better lead all functions of their organizations.” “Todd Johnson and I worked at Global together for over 10 years,” said Newberry. “In addition to Todd’s acquisition responsibilities, he and I worked on putting together the Global Leadership Institute. The Global Leadership Institute was designed to further enhance the skills of the average Global President. In addition to the Company Presidents, we sent candidates who were identified as promotable to senior staff position through this training. Steve and I met with Todd to discuss our thoughts on the need for Independent Dealer Executive education.” Todd Johnson                                                                                                                                                                                      Jeff Way Todd bounced the IDEA off of John Hey and John Hanson at Strategic Partners and they whole heartedly agreed with the need for such training and commissioned Todd to move forward with the Pros Elite Team. “We met with Todd in the spring of 2010 and outlined a powerful curriculum designed to respond to the challenges dealers face today,” said Jeff Kelly. “The first draft of the program told us we were on to something special that required us to reach out to the industry for some very special talent.” We contacted Jim Phillips, the President of Digital Gateway, and told him what we were doing. Jim, like the Pros executive team, is obsessively committed to improving the Independent Office Products Dealership. He offered us the use of Jeff Way, one of the industry’s foremost ERP experts to support us in our Instructor pool. Jeff will assist Todd in the Administrative and finance portions of the seminar providing the insights to using the dealers ERP at an executive level to manage these important areas of the business. “In our discussions with Todd, we identified the need to direct this IDEA training to where the Independent Dealer needs to go in the future if they are to continue to succeed. To this end, we added components to the Sales functional executive training that will prepare the Dealer for the fourth phase of MPS and its involvement with Managed Network Services,” said Newberry. “Steve suggested we involve Mitch Morgan. Steve had met Mitch Morgan in the mid 1990s when they were both executives at IKON.” “Mitch was so far ahead of his time for copier guys in the 1990s,” said Rolla. “He spoke a whole new language and none of us had the vocabulary book. We did not completely understand him then, but for sure we knew he was one smart guy and way ahead of us in technology. I ran into Mitch about 18 months ago while I was visiting one of our mutual clients, M/T Office Technologies. It was there that we reunited and spent some time catching up and talking about potential synergies for our combined efforts. I called Mitch and told him about IDEA and he too jumped into the Instructor Core.” Mitch Morgan “Plain and simple we have the best Finance, Administrative, Service, M&A, Technology and Sales Leadership instructors available,” said Kelly. We then spent the better part of the next 6 months assembling all of the materials that our clients told us they would like to see in a training program of this scope. Our collective dealer bases represent some of the best run companies in the United States. Their input to our curriculum was invaluable.” The Instructor team is committed to offering a minimum of two IDEA sessions over the next 12 months. The partial snapshot of the curriculum details the aggressive learning experience planned for the five days. Day 1 A recap of critical issues facing the Independent Dealer will be followed by a review of the new 2011 SBA/Pros Elite Group Benchmark Model for MFP & MPS. The model will then be broken out to review MFP Profitability, MPS Profitability and culminating with the Blended MFP/ MPS benchmarking model. Todd Johnson will then lead a discussion on Accounting as the language of business, focusing on the understanding of key balance sheet ratios and the cash flow benefits derived from managing them well. In the afternoon of Day 1 Newberry and Kelly will lead the discussion on the primary drivers of Service financial and operational performance and the must dos that a Service Executive should be responsible for. Day 2 Newberry and Kelly will go through the execution skills to achieve the Service benchmarks and the inspection processes the Dealer Principal can employ to ensure they are being focused on. This session will conclude with discussion on tactics used to achieve MPS Service benchmarks, utilizing the New MPS/MFP blended Service productivity and financial model as well as using an effective MPS cost calculator. Johnson, Rolla and Way will then lead the discussion on Cash considerations / Payables best practices, Achieving Receivables portfolio Management benchmarks, Complete order processing, Order verification that leads to incremental sales and faultless Install, Inventory Management / Best Practices, and Accounting for Obsolescence. Day 3 The majority of day 3 will be led by Rolla and Morgan on becoming competent in the execution of a Sales organizational playbook that insures quality staffing, development, organization, tracking, growth and expansion. This section will focus on the Executives role in the traditional MFP organization and the benchmarks associated with it. The session will then evolve into the sales activity and benchmarking of MPS and conclude with an introduction to the transformation from the traditional MFP/MPS dealership to a dealership that is involved in Managed Network Services. Dealerships without a defined and documented Sales Management process will receive that entire framework to utilize when they return to their dealership. Day 4 This day will be spent with Johnson and Rolla on demonstrating and articulating the leadership skills of an executive in an office products space. Specific guidance will be given to the selection of future leaders of a dealership. This session will culminate with a roadmap of leadership activities for the Dealer Principal that will have the highest payback. The afternoon will be spent on developing a strategic plan that has linkage between the financial and subjective activities of the organization. Every Dealer executive will walk out with the tools necessary to guide their organization’s growth process, utilizing the best of breed planning practices Day 5 Johnson and Rolla will spend the morning session going over acquisition considerations. Independent Dealers are rapidly consolidating within their own markets. The discussion on this day will focus on the steps involved in a thorough acquisition process, Identification of a quality candidate, Analysis required to establish credibility and initial value, establishing what to pay and the Negotiations involved in the acquisition process. “This new Elite Executive training has so many potential facets to improve a Dealer Principal’s or Company President’s performance,” said Steve Rolla. Equally important, IDEA will prepare Senior Dealer Executives for larger roles in their organization. “My primary focus is on the Pros Elite 100 dealer group; however, I spend a significant amount of time supporting dealers who are not part of the Pros Elite 100 group. As a former President and CEO of three different dealerships in the United States, I have had the benefit of tremendous training programs to guide and develop me as an Executive. The average Independent Dealer Principal does not have the training resources at his or her disposal to ask the appropriate detailed operational questions they should be asking their direct reports regarding execution for Sales, Service, and Administrative, Financial, and I.T. benchmarks. Great Executives ask Great questions. Elite Executives ask Elite Questions. All of the Instructors have put their heart and soul into the development of their packages to provide a Dealer Principal, a Company President or a General Manager the tools they will need to make them measurably more effective in the future, perhaps even Elite.” For further information or to register for this training please contact: Jerry.newberry@proselitegroup.com  1-813-713-3592 Steve.rolla@proselitegroup.com  1-410-446-3032 Jeff.kelly@proselitegroup.com  1-757-435-3752 Todd.johnson@strategicbusinessassoc.com  1-813-943-7280