Selling to companies in a turnaround

A company in a turnaround buys less, buys faster, and buys only what pays back. If you can live with those terms, it's one of the best places to sell.

Turnarounds carry an urgency healthy companies don't have. Leadership has months, not years. Every decision is measured against cash. And there's often a new team in charge with a mandate to change how things work.

Who's in charge

Turnarounds usually start with a leadership change. A new CEO, a new CFO, sometimes a chief restructuring officer brought in by the board or the lenders. These people arrive with a short clock and a clear brief.

The CFO is often the most important buyer. They own the cash forecast, the lender relationships and the cost plan. Any spend that doesn't free cash or protect revenue goes through them, and most of it doesn't get through.

The COO owns the operating fixes. Closing sites, cutting SKUs, reworking the supply chain, renegotiating vendors. They need execution capacity, and the existing team is usually thin.

And the board matters more than usual. In a turnaround, directors are closer to the work, and some of them may be your best path in.

What they'll fund

Anything with a fast, clear payback. Vendor consolidation that shows savings in a quarter. Automation that cuts hiring needs. Pricing work that lifts margin. Working capital programs that free up cash.

They'll fund focused help on the critical path of the plan. If the turnaround depends on exiting a business line, there's money for the carve-out. If it depends on rescuing a broken ERP rollout, there's money for that too.

What they won't fund is anything that sounds like a long transformation. A three-year modernization program is not a turnaround project. Neither is a strategy study.

Signals that matter here

Leadership change is the biggest one. A new CEO or CFO at a struggling company is the clearest buying moment you'll see. The first 90 days is when they choose which firms they trust.

Business pressure in the filings is next. Going concern language, covenant amendments, restructuring charges, impairments. These tell you how deep the problem is and what the plan targets.

Then funding and deals. A refinancing, a rescue investment or an asset sale gives the company runway, and runway gets spent on the plan. Margin pressure is a buying signal shows how to read the softer versions of this.

The note that works

Keep it short, factual and cash-shaped. Turnaround leaders have no patience for long notes.

Say a specialty retailer named a new CFO and announced it will close underperforming stores and cut inventory.

You joined as CFO the same quarter the company announced store closures and an inventory reduction plan. I'd guess the hardest part of the first 90 days is getting a clean view of inventory by location fast enough to make the closure calls with confidence. Is that close, or is the cash pressure coming from somewhere else first?

It names the moment. It ties it to the CFO's first 90 days. It guesses a narrow, specific problem tied to cash. And it's easy to correct.

How to sell once you're in

Price for the moment. Fixed fees, short phases, clear deliverables. A turnaround buyer wants to know exactly what they'll get and when.

Show up with people who've done it. The new leadership team doesn't have time to train your juniors, and they'll notice in the first meeting.

Be honest about what you can't fix. Turnaround leaders hear a lot of confident promises from vendors. The firm that says "that part isn't us" earns more trust than the one that says yes to everything.

And don't overstay. Finish the scoped work, hand it off cleanly, and leave. Turnaround leaders move on to their next company, and they remember who helped without dragging it out. That's where your next engagement comes from.