• About
• Our Story
• Our Advantage
• Our People
• Peter Vessenes
• Katherine Vessenes
• Benjamin Lewis
• Richard Shorma
• Erin Williams

The Vestment Advantage

“Bumper-To-Bumper” know-how is what sets Vestment Advisors apart from the competition.

We look through many lenses at all the aspects of your business to help determine what your company needs. It’s never just one thing! We look behind the symptoms and determine the cause. Once the underlying cause is identified, we help you focus on a specific plan to accomplish the results you are seeking.

Our diverse experience with small, medium and Fortune 200 companies in combining these critical business areas IS what makes us different:

• Sales and marketing strategies
• Fiscal and asset management
• Ethics and compliance issues
• Personnel assessment and development
• And everything in between

Our plans, built on these foundations, advance corporate morale, build client loyalty, improve the bottom line, and increase valuation. Vestment works in these five primary areas and delivers a workable path that helps you reach your dreams:

Bottom Line: You get a business that can flourish and prosper.

Turnarounds

Webster’s Dictionary defines “turnaround” as simply “a change for the better.” A successful business turnaround looks different to everyone, but the results are the same: Growth, stability, increased valuation, improved morale, and more.

Sometimes a company’s products and services are right for the market, but the company’s performance is not what it should be. It might be a flaw in management strategy, other times it is faulty assumptions in marketing tactics; and in some situations, it is just the result of corporate bureaucracy’s impact.

Two vital points to understand:

• Turnarounds require an executive management team that is committed to the changes needed - without worrying about bruised egos.

• The objective of a turnaround is not to find fault, but to re-direct the resources and assets of the company.

After meetings with key employees, satisfied and past customers, and reviewing the sales and marketing strategies, Vestment Advisors prepare a Prosperity Analysis™. This report becomes the road map for the turn around:

• Identifies the key strengths, opportunities, threats and weaknesses of the company.
• Reviews new directions (and the risk/opportunities) associated with them.
• Provides tactical steps necessary to redirect the organization.
• Details the steps and tasks to realize cash flow and bottom line in a calendared action plan.

Bottom Line: You get peace of mind, clear direction and a plan that works.

To read a success story of one of our turnaround clients, click here.

Recoveries

In racing, a car can be hit from behind by another competitor forcing the car out of the race. The driver can lose control of car after coming across oil and wreckage from other cars. And you never know about flaws in the engine which cause the car to cease operating at all.

The important thing is you quickly recognize these problems and act with haste in addressing them before they knock you out of the race. This is where the pit crew comes into play.

In business, Vestment Advisors is that pit crew. We diagnose the problems, identify a prudent course of action for addressing the problems, then act on them for you. This is a recovery.

How does recovery happen?

The business is looked at from several important aspects, the parts that make up the whole:

Step 1: Meet with decision makers and stakeholders for their view of the problems.
Step 2: Determine how to manage cash flow and capital requirements, including where to find the money you need to proceed.
Step 3: Review sales strategies and tactics, including product or service positioning.
Step 4: Conduct in-depth marketing review and develop a plan to handle PR during the recovery.
Step 5: Review organizational structures for inefficiencies.
Step 6: Provide a competitive analysis to address gaps.??From this we prepare a Prosperity Analysis™ report that becomes the road map or prescription for the recovery.

This thorough Prosperity Analysis™ diagnoses underlying causes of the company’s symptoms. It also identifies key strengths and opportunities, and provides a gap analysis, addressing weaknesses and dangers.

Recovery strategies focus on eliminating underlying causes of the problem, while creating an action plan to reduce or eliminate the affect of the downturn. Vestment Advisors focus on strategies for getting the business to the next level, once the recovery begins.

Bottom Line: You have a company that is profitable and healthy.

To read a success story of one of our recovery clients, click here.

Transitions

Many factors can contribute to an ineffective company, but the fact is: the direction your business has taken for many years no longer works. Situational changes have forced the company to take a new direction.

What can Vestment Advisors do for your company?

Step 1: Meet with key decision makers to clarify what they want to accomplish. Then conduct a formal review of key employees, sales and operational systems, and do a competitive market review.

Step 2: From this we prepare a Prosperity Analysis™ that identifies how to leverage the company’s key strengths and opportunities towards a new, more prosperous destination.

Step 3: Prepare a gap analysis, addressing capital needs, resources, talent, and strategic marketing changes.

Step 4: Develop an action plan detailing a quarter-by-quarter roadmap of the tactics and projects that must be fulfilled for the enterprise to succeed.

Bottom Line: You get a company that is effective, profitable and has increased valuation.

To read a success story of one of our transition clients, click here.

Growth

Stagnation is not an option. All companies must grow. Just like that race team, if new ways of doing things that will help you win that race are not addressed, the business becomes ineffective and ceases growing.

Experience has shown growth strategies require a competitive analysis that identifies market differentiation, as well as image and value, and establishes brand awareness through a calculated marketing campaign.

To help bring growth to your company, Vestment Advisors:

• Meets with decision makers to clarify what they want to accomplish.
• Learns where opportunities lie.
• Critiques sales strategies and marketing efforts.
• Reviews management/organizational development issues.
• Evaluates the company’s step-by-step workflow.

Bottom Line: We take the stress out of growth.

To read a success story of one of our growth clients, click here.

Our Impact

Our “bumper-to-bumper” approach to consulting and coaching has had a positive impact on businesses across the country and throughout the world.

Clients

This is a partial client list.

Success Stories

Success Story Number 1: Turnaround and Growth

A Large Regional Planning Firm

Situation: A large southeast regional financial planning organization had hit a ceiling, as growth had pushed the company’s size beyond the owner’s management skills. They were in a lot of pain.
When Vestment was asked to help improve corporate morale, build solid compliance foundations and increase their valuation, we:

• Restructured accounting and fiscal management so that the principals could monitor their finances in less than one hour per month.
• Designed a more-effective organizational structure that focused on having employees working in positions that suited their talents and doing work they enjoyed.
• Utilized the Kolbe™ system for restructuring teams and reporting structures to improve efficiencies and morale.
• Created a new business entity that quickly generated 26% of total company revenue.
• Launched a system for top producers that increased new client referrals from 11% to 44%.
• Reduced dependency on single-source leads from 87% to 57%.
• Tightened compliance procedures to reduce lawsuits.

Results:

• Revenue grew 35% in the first year, and
• Corporate valuation rose 243% over the same period. (Documented in a valuation by a national accounting firm that specializes in financial planning firms.)

Success Story Number 2: Recovery and Growth

Top Financial Planner

Situation: The top-producing financial planning firm in an independent broker/dealer network had been stuck at the same level of production for over ten years. After a five-day on-site analysis, this planner saw our value. We worked with the organization for the next 12 months.

During the first three months, we:

• Increased his profits by $250,000.
• Put an extra $100,000 in the owner’s pocket.
• More than paid for our services for the rest of the year.
• Dramatically improved office morale.

During the first 12 months, we:

• Restructured their chart of accounts and built a tool that allowed them to analyze their monthly financial performance in 35 minutes.
• Reorganized employee responsibilities to match their individual skills and motivations while identifying existing inefficiencies in operations.
• Created the first-ever employee incentive program that dramatically improved the culture while tripling profits in 6 months.
• Built a strategic plan that resulted in their broker/dealer commenting, “Your strategic plan is better than any we have created for ourselves,” resulting in significant concessions from the broker/dealer.
• Positioned and located a new banking relationship, including an unsecured, below-prime million dollar loan.
• Saved the company about $500,000 in tax fines by restructuring employment guidelines.

Results: A 444% increase in production in 3 years.

Success Story Number 3: Transition, Turnaround, Recovery and Growth

A Fortune 200 Company

Situation: A Fortune 200 corporation had acquired a national brokerage company during the peak of the market and had been unable to effectively transition the organization during the two years since the acquisition.

At the request of the new division president, we:

• Designed a strategy to migrate the division from discount transactional brokerage to financial planning.
• Created the framework and body content of the division’s three-year strategic plan.
• Defined the strategic advantage of the company’s financial planning services.
• Wrote the sales strategy and talking points for assisting clients and turning prospects into clients.
• Created the specific methodology for cross-selling existing corporate clients.
• Wrote and helped implement the strategic marketing plan.
• Trained the division’s financial analysts on how to build effective multivariable cash flow and rate of return models.
• Fulfilled the due-diligence and report on a comprehensive national CRM software and thin client financial planning tools. Assisted in the contractual negotiation with the software vendor/integrator.
• Mentored several of the top executives in the division.
• Designed the training methodologies necessary to effect the change in both field sales and back-office support.

Results: Rollout of the changes reached full divisional action in less than 14 months! Sales offices that were individually trained by Vestment prior to full rollout showed 20% or higher performance increases over similar untrained offices.