CMR concentrates on helping smaller to medium-sized companies, who usually share the twin handicaps of being both under-capitalised and under-managed, often at the same time! These smaller companies can be very innovative, and capable of producing much higher growth rates, providing they are given the right combination of financial input and management support. This is the unique combination that CMR brings to bear - the input of very experienced management together with the financial support needed to allow for rapid and controlled growth.

CMR has a wide range of services: Although many of client companies initially approach CMR for funding input, in many cases this is not necessarily the appropriate or best way forward for the company, and a particular strength of CMR is the ability to help such companies through the wide range of other CMR services and facilities provided through its regional structure.

CMR operates globally with the ability to provide very senior executive management expertise in most world countries and across most industries and professional disciplines.

CMR does not sell its services: CMR members are not required to sell. CMR undertakes marketing and awareness-building activities through PR and direct contact with local professional firms, banks, etc., who refer clients to CMR. Additionally CMR has close links with UK business research universities and major UK professional firms, enabling CMR to identify those clients most likely to benefit from our services.

CMR Revenue Sources: For many CMR executive members, it is their involvement with the project and proposition flow through CMR that will be most important. Each proposition (and there are many being processed at any one time) represents an opportunity to help that company, and through building the right relationship with them, can lead into a much wider business potential.

The opportunities arising from CMR’s Interim Management Programme can also be important - each CMR member is continuously ‘presented’ on the world wide web to prospective employers.

CMR Training Programme helps to convert client contact to revenue: The real skill needed to be a successful consultant is the ability to turn an initial contact with a client into an on-going relationship that can generate income for years to come. CMR provides specific training to help its executives to acquire, or brush-up on, this essential ability to handle client relationships effectively.

CMR Performance Fees: CMR’s fees to its clients are often performance based, with a proportion of the fee being deferred onto a successful outcome. Operating in this way, allows CMR to align itself motivationally with its clients, and to obtain a greater eventual reward than would otherwise be possible. Sometimes CMR will take equity as part of its remuneration

CMR is structured to be of maximum value to those executives of high ability who want to be pro-active in developing their business and career potential, either as an integral member of the CMR team or in a private capacity, or both. CMR provides total flexibility for its members, and whilst we hope that all will want to be proactive, CMR membership itself places no specific time commitments on the member

All CMR members have full access to all the organisation’s facilities and resources. Specifically, CMR executives benefit:

• From being part of a global executive team, helping to deal with the stream of small to medium-sized businesses approaching CMR for help. Each part of CMR also develops business directly with SME client companies in conjunction with the many professional firms that work with us.
• From being part of a CMR Affinity Group - these are multi-disciplined teams comprising CMR members sharing a common expertise and experience in particular industries. By networking and combining with others having a similar background, great strength is achieved and many opportunities arise. CMR Affinity Groups cover over 60 separate industries and functional groupings.
• From being part of a CMR Special Business Group - we have specialist teams handling Company Sales, Mergers and Acquisitions, International Technology Licensing, Corporate Recovery.
• From being part of CMR’s Executive Network, which is an extremely powerful resource, and which generates many revenue opportunities for members directly. Access to the network is provided through CMR’s Website and regional/affinity group meetings.
• From being continuously presented through CMR’s Internet Website to companies wanting to recruit interim or permanent executives, or consultants. CMR’s affiliated major professional firms also access the CMR executive database to seek the consultant help they require.
• From the training facilities provided which help all CMR members to be more effective. Special courses are also held in conjunction with our affiliated professional partners covering subjects such as corporate recovery, intellectual property & licensing, etc.
• From the CMR membership discount scheme, which allows CMR members to save more than the total cost of CMR membership!
• From being part of a highly supportive organisation, which truly helps its members to realise their potential, whilst respecting individuality and personal independence.

Corporate Finance - equity and/or loan capital for development funding, working capital, turnarounds, mergers & acquisitions
Corporate Recovery, company doctoring to help troubled businesses.
Consultancy and management support to help companies achieve successful growth.
International Technology Licensing to help companies and universities with innovative products.
Mergers & Acquisitions to help companies to acquire or form beneficial linkages with others.
Progressive Company Sale Programme to provide SME owners with a MBI exit route.
Interim Management to allow temporary employment of CMR members by clients
Non-Executive Directorships to help SMEs obtain the mature experience they need

The main requirements for CMR membership:

1. You must be an experienced executive and be able to show that you have already achieved success in your own field of business activity.
2. You should have entrepreneurial skills, and be able to bring enthusiasm and initiative to bear on the projects you handle.
3. You must be prepared to operate within CMR’s ethical guidelines and standards of practice.

There are several different categories of people for whom membership of CMR will bring many practical benefits:

1. Executives wishing to develop a long-term independent career as part of a major consultancy group.
2. Existing independent consultants, who wish to broaden their scope of activity.
3. Executives wishing to work for themselves, but with the support of a major organisation behind them.
4. Partially retired executives who prefer not to fully retire just yet, and would welcome the opportunity to become involved either on a full-time or part-time basis.
5. Executives who prefer to work under contract with employers, either on an interim or permanent basis, but would benefit from the personal marketing undertaken for them through CMR’s Website, plus the contact and networking opportunities provided through CMR

CMR should be viewed primarily as an opportunity generator.

CMR membership is ideally suited to those executives of real ability, who are motivated and ambitious to develop business activity, either as part of a fast-growing entrepreneurial group, or as an independent consultant, or both!

To continue its growth, CMR needs to attract executives of ability, who are interested in becoming part of our success and in helping us to maintain our position of being the number one organisation for SMEs.

CMR’s organisational structure has attracted much favourable comment for the innovative way it blends the skills and aspirations of its members into a flexible but highly supportive operation allowing each to develop their career progression in whichever way is best for the individual. One UK university sees CMR’s operational concept as the blueprint for business organisation in the future - where business works not through the old system of employer/ employee, but through the association of free people combining for mutual purpose. We think they are right!

Please make sure you read the candid review of CMR at www.cmrworld.com/cmrcandid.asp

All CMR Executive Members are notified by email of all new prospective clients and business coming into CMR - with a request to contact CMR Centre (or a nominated CMR Region) if they have specific skills, experience or connections that could be useful in handling that client's business - and that they would like to be involved.

By handling things in this way, CMR is usually able to assemble a team of real experts in that particular business area or industry.  Those participating CMR Members can be based anywhere in the world, but still be part of that team.  Usually one CMR Member will be appointed to lead the project - this will often be a CMR Member who is geographically near to the client, but that is not necessarily the case in all circumstances.  Once our team of experts is assembled, we will often ask the team to work-out themselves how best to handle the client & project - and who should lead the team - CMR Centre will adjudicate if there is any disagreement (but that is rarely necessary).  

The system works well - it enables us to leverage the immense skills and experience base of CMR - to give the client the very best expertise to handle their situation.  It also gives CMR Executive Members the opportunity to be integrally involved with projects that could be the other side of the world.  Often clients will express amazement at the incredible knowledge and skills resource base they now have through coming to CMR.

CMR has a continuous inflow of new clients from all over the world - so there are many opportunities for all CMR Executive Members to be involved.  We do however ask our members to only apply for involvement if they have a special input to make - it is not for those with just a general interest.  It is because our teams comprise real experts, that we can give this amazing service level to our clientele.

MEMBERSHIP SUBSCRIPTIONS

CMR’s primary objective is to make money for all concerned from servicing clients well, not from charging very high joining or membership fees, as some organisations seem to do. CMR’s philosophy is to at least partially cover the basic infrastructure costs of providing the facilities, support and network capabilities through a minimal membership subscription, which entitles full involvement with CMR’s activities, plus a small deduction on fees earned through CMR.  The cost of CMR membership which varies according to membership category and country, will be noted on our response to the receipt of a membership application or inquiry.  In all cases, the total annual cost of CMR Membership is significantly below one day's consulting income.

CMR TRAINING:

The primary training resource is through the very comprehensive CMR Operations Manual, which is given to all CMR Executive Members as they join us.  It not only gives a detailed description and modus operandi for all the services provided by CMR, but also much advice on how to be an effective consultant - and importantly how to handle clients, in particular; how to convert prospective clients into actual fee-paying clients.

In addition, there is much help available throughout CMR - from CMR itself, Regional Directors and the extensive range of colleagues you will have.

FEE COMMISSIONS:

A deduction is made from fees earned by CMR members from CMR projects. No deductions are due to CMR on private projects undertaken.

• Payable to CMR:

  A charge is made in respect of project revenue accruing to CMR members as follows:

  ON CMR PROJECTS: 25%

  NB: Of this 25%, 10% is passed to the CMR member or unit introducing the business, 2½% is passed to the relevant CMR Region, and 7½% is retained by CMR Centre and 5% is for CMR marketing costs. Payments to members will normally be made when the client has paid.

  For CMR Special Business Groups (SBG) and Affinity Groups (AG) - where the Group is both generating and managing its operations - the SBG/AG will retain 90% of revenues generated.

  ON PRIVATE PROJECTS: NIL

  (On work obtained directly by the member without using any CMR resources, including CMR business cards and other marketing materials and not put through CMR’s system)

  If a member wishes to involve other CMR members on a private project, a commission of 10% is payable on those members’ fees charged. .

  For further clarification regarding definition of CMR Projects and Private Projects click here

   

• Payable to CMR Members:

  Commission payable to CMR members: 10% (for projects introduced into CMR, as percentage of gross fee invoiced to client.)

  Commission payable for introducing a new investor - the CMR Member introducing an investor will receive 10% of the success fees resulting from that investor.  This 10% comes 'off-the-top' of those success fees - which means that all following CMR fee shares are based on the remaining 90% level.

CMR is a co-operative organisation that provides many resources enabling its executive members to greatly widen their scope and to develop income streams that simply would not be possible for a standalone consultant to achieve.  Those resources cost money to provide.  Most active CMR members will find that the modest costs of membership (annual subs = less than a day’s consultancy fees) are quickly recovered – sometimes spectacularly so. 

CMR’s relationship with its own executive members is on a not-for-profit basis – CMR’s primary return comes from a small (7.5%) share of client revenues generated.  CMR’s members can also use CMR’s resources to help develop their own private business.

There is no definitive answer to this - it will largely depend on how motivated and how good you are.  Those that make the effort and are good (an important combination!) will do well.  The highest earning members earn over GBP400,000 pa from CMR activities - in addition many members also have private consultancy/ business income on top.

We will sometimes take share equity in a client - which gives our members a long-term and hopefully increasing revenue and share value in the client's future prosperity.

Again, the answer is dependent on how motivated and able you are.  There are no delays inherent in CMR membership - you can be successfully earning good money shortly after joining.  The record so far is one member for whom we invoiced GBP55,000 within their first month.

We operate a mentoring scheme in each CMR Region where a senior, experienced member will directly help a new member to rapidly become effective in handling clients.  There is a small cost involved (usually GBP250 per month) but there is often a rapid payback in helping the new member to obtain a good income in a much shorter timescale. 

Business comes to CMR from many different directions, giving us a very wide and diverse range of clients and services required.

Some Business comes to CMR 'automatically' - by that we mean that clients seek us out, perhaps because they have been recommended to us, or because they have seen our website (we use google ads) or seen us in a website or directory (we are listed in very many places).  Or perhaps they have seen newspaper/ magazine articles or advertisements.

Some business comes to us because we/ our members have proactively marketed ourselves.  This can be through CMR regional members networking within their local business community.  Building relationships with local professional firms, banks, etc. are an important part of this.

CMR also has important alliances with other professional organisations which generate a continuous inflow of new clients and projects.

Finally, we have CMR's Business Referral Scheme, which gives outsiders and CMR members a significant incentive to introduce new clients and investors to us.

The CMR business model puts its senior executive members in touch with many new clients, who can absorb (and pay) for our executive's time, so that eventually (and often quite quickly) our existing executives become fully busy in dealing with their portfolio of clients and other activities and do not have the time (or perhaps the interest or need) to follow-up new clients as they come to us.  We have a continuous stream of new potential clients coming to us from all over the world and must have the ability to handle that client flow efficiently and professionally.

This is one of the most important benefits of CMR membership.  Because we have real experts in every area of business we are always able to assemble the perfect team for any client's circumstances.  It means that every CMR member can handle every client, whatever their needs.

You merely stop paying the monthly subs (but please tell us too!) - there is no minimum contractual period involved.  Often, if a CMR Consultant Director obtains a full time employed job that they want to take, they prefer to stay with CMR but on the lower cost basis of dropping down to Affiliate Membership - this keeps contact with CMR (but not active membership of a CMR Region, etc.) and allows Full Membership to be resumed at anytime. 

CMR works on a cash received basis.  Invoices will be raised by CMR on clients - when the client has paid, the team involved are email-notified and they will email their invoice to CMR.  On the 8th working day (to allow for bank clearance) the members are paid.

The net receipt to CMR (after any external and investor commissions and expenses) are split:

75% to the Consultant Director(s) working on the project

10% to whoever introduced the business

7.5% to the CMR Divisional Director and Regional Director involved, plus to the marketing fund.

7.5% to CMR to pay for central admin, accounting, insurances (including PI insurance) and general marketing/PR

The same split applies to equity shares we may take in clients

No! 

Several years ago, we used to ask some of our more successful members if they would mind acting as a reference point for aspiring new members.  Unfortunately we found they were being bothered all hours of the day or night by often quite long-winded telephone calls from people who found it difficult to make up their minds and were looking for comfort/reassurance that they would be successful if they joined.  Those of our members we asked were by definition also the busiest, and as we did not pay them to respond to reference phone calls, we had to terminate the facility.  Sometimes we even get asked if an aspiring member can talk to some of our clients.  The answer is absolutely 'no' - for what we hope are readily understood reasons.

Any aspiring member who has doubts over whether to join, should read our candid letter on the subject - see  www.cmrworld.com/cmrcandid.asp .  CMR membership will not be successful for everyone, and if serious doubts persist, then you should not join.  You do need to feel reasonably confident in your abilities to interface with and service clients - although we do provide new members with training and mentoring to help.