Service Offerings
Interim Executive
Leadership
Interim executive services allows you to:
- Make progress even while your search is ongoing
- Gain insights into what is required for success in the role
- Take your time finding the right permanent executive
- Give your eventual placement a head start
Specialization in general management, product management, marketing, strategy, commercial, business development, and innovation roles.
Strategy
Development
Strategy is the foundation of a successful business. Mark’s approach to strategy development is rooted in developing a fundamental understanding of the value proposition to customers. He takes a quantitative approach whenever practical, and leverages years of experience and context across multiple industries.
Strategy isn’t stagnant. Mark can help develop the right processes for your organization to ensure your strategy stays relevant and to make refinements and course corrections when necessary.
Rapid
Innovation
Increasingly, the ability to rapidly develop new products, services, technology, manufacturing methods, and business processes is key to delivering a superior value proposition to customers/end-users.
Mark takes a practical approach to ensure your business is agile and responsive. Part process, part decision rights, part culture, part performance management,: It takes a wholistic approach to achieve world class innovation capabilities.
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Price Optimization
Investing in price optimization is one of the most significant levers business can utilize for near term bottom line gains … but it takes a comprehensive approach. Companies with effective pricing programs deliver 23% more profit than their piers and usually gaining at least 300 basis points of EBIT.
Mark has extensive experiencing in developing price optimization programs, including:
- Customer pricing segmentation
- Pricing / elasticity modeling for making the tradeoff between volume and price
- Promotion pilots to test programs
- Migrating from cost+ to value selling
- Pricing process and governance
- Sales incentive program development
- Performance measurement for pricing
Capital Allocation & Investment Thesis
The odds are stacked against you:
- 75% of venture-funded business fail
- 70 to 90% of new product launches fail
- 70 to 90% of acquisitions fail to achieve their strategic and financial objective
Mark can provide an unbiased, third-party perspective on existing and potential companies, product/business lines, and technology. Years of experience in multiple industries provide unique context. As an outsider, Mark often asks questions that are often assumed as “given”, providing provocative insights.
Make sure your investments and capitol allocation beat the odds!
Executive Coaching
Mark can work with your company’s executives to help you achieve superior results. He is a trusted partner, holding candid conversations, and acting as a sounding board. Our incentives are aligned – the executive’s success is paramount.
Mark specializes in assisting executives in their first roles, executives who are over-extended, and with executives transitioning from “running the business” to “changing the business”:.
About the Principal
Mark Schweizer
Mark is the founder and Principal of Cogent Link. Mark is a highly accomplished business executive with a proven track record of driving growth, improving operating performance, accelerating innovation, and increasing shareholder value across a broad range of leadership roles. He has held complete P&L owner up to $200M in highly complex businesses with global operations and customers serving a multitude of markets. Additionally, he has been the primary owner of shared P&L in matrixed organizations up to $550M. Mark has broad company profile experience: sizes from startup to Global 100; ownership by private equity, venture capital, foreign business unit, and public companies. He is an expert in strategy development, operational execution, portfolio management, and delivering profitable growth through commercial excellence, new product innovation, price optimization, and market-back strategies. Mark has deep experience in leading large-scale restructurings, business turnarounds, and M&A/integration. He is known for being an authentic leader who excels at developing people and building winning cultures.
Prior Executive Roles
- President, Diamond Innovations (now Hyperion Materials Tech.)
- President, Sunpower, Inc., (now part of Ametek)
- President Nanostatics
- VP, Marketing & Strategy, Northwest Hardwoods
- VP, Global Product Management and Market, Sandvik Hyperion
- Principal, Booz Allen & Hamilton (now Strategy&, part of PwC)
Education
- BSEE, University of Cincinnati
- MSEE, Massachusettes Institute of Technology
Prior Boards Positions
- Nanostatics, Executive Director/Chairperson
- Diamond Innovations, Executive Director
- Global Cooling, External Director
- Microgen Engine Corp., External Director
- Sunpower, Inc. Executive Director