The Turnaround Twins Story
Turnaround Twins was created by Frank Wanderski and Phil Drake to fix the issues that prevent companies from achieving the growth they want and turn them into high performers.
Two paths towards the same destination
Both men started their careers in marketing, helping increase sales for the companies that employed them.
Frank Wanderski
Frank went to work for larger companies like Coca-Cola Enterprises, National Convenience Stores, Houston Lighting and Power/Reliant Energy and Sempra Energy, using marketing research and analysis to increase efficiencies and drive bottom line results.
Being a numbers guy, Frank uses data to drive business decisions. He was able to use his talent and insight to uncover patterns in the data that could be used to improve the performance of all their marketing efforts.
Phil Drake
Phil went a different route, starting out working for smaller companies. This required him to learn how to squeeze the most value from a limited budget.
He used his creative skills to develop and execute strategic marketing plans—creating content and brand messaging that boosted lead generation. In addition, he optimized the conversion funnels to maximize the return on every dollar spent.
As he moved to mid-size companies, he managed, and often built, internal marketing departments. Phil continued his vengeance for squeezing the highest performance possible from the larger budgets.
A meeting of the minds
The two met in 2005, when Commonwealth Energy was being taken public and being rebranded as Commerce Energy. Frank was the Chief Marketing Officer, and Phil was a Senior Consultant from Skipping Stone.
They soon realized that their individual skill sets dovetailed nicely to create a strong team that was even more effective than they were separately.
Together, they exploded sales by 389% by executing a number of highly targeted campaigns, exploiting the new brand.
The next step
Frank was hired by First Choice Power (FCP) in Dallas in 2006 as Director of Marketing. FCP was the competitive retail side that was split off from Texas-New Mexico Power (TNMP)—one of the four incumbent utilities before deregulation. Frank brought Phil with him from Commerce.
When they arrived, FCP was bleeding customers as other retail electric providers were taking their market share.
Together, they grew the customer count 37%, increasing revenue by $43 million.
They reversed the company’s attrition rate and drove FCP to their first year of net customer growth since deregulation by arresting customer churn and increasing acquisition by expanding marketing channels, delivering a cohesive message across all media and optimizing the company website.
They also implemented the first minority outreach program in the company’s history to make FCP the provider of choice for the African American and other minority markets.
Frank’s leadership and Phil’s marketing expertise caused FCP to be one of only two mid-size or larger retail electric providers to add net customers in 2007.
After they left FCP, the customer count once again began a downward slide, losing 26% the following year.
The story continues
Phil formed an advertising consulting agency, providing a full array of marketing services to a variety of companies in the energy sector and related industries.
His specialty was elevating customer growth by revamping their website and driving high quality traffic through SEO, pay-per-click and other digital strategies then optimizing conversion rates to capture more sales for the same budget.
Frank served as the President, CEO or CMO at several companies, either in or associated with the energy market. He found most of them were suffering from high customer turnover and plagued with stagnant or low growth.
Through his leadership at each role, he was able to implement strategies to stop the attrition, boost revenue and greatly expand profits.
During this time, Frank often called on Phil’s marketing expertise by bringing him in as a consultant to help get the business moving in the right direction.
One day at lunch…
Frank and Phil were catching up over lunch one day.
During the conversation, they recognized that, while every company or client they had worked with was unique, there were a few clear areas causing most of the problems.
In addition, they realized how successful they have been in developing and implementing their strategies to drive each of these companies forward in up markets, down markets and sideways markets. They looked at how much marketing had changed through the years and how they were able to adapt their tactics to continue to realize gains in the face of those changes.
Turnaround Twins arrives
What would be the best way for Frank and Phil to make the widest impact with their expertise?
They would partner to form a consulting group to deliver the growth their clients were having trouble accomplishing on their own.
Before the lunch was over, they had put together the framework that would become the Turnaround Twins.
Could you use some help?
Are you having a problem with high attrition?
Are you having trouble moving the needle on your customer growth?
Are you experiencing issues with employee morale?
Email info@turnaroundtwins.com or call 214.414.9014 to set up a free, no -obligation, one-hour call to discuss what’s going on and how we may be able to help you change the trajectory of your company.