RHD Elevates Bednarz as McDonald Announces Retirement
R.H. Donnelley announced today that President and COO Peter McDonald, a 35-year industry veteran, will retire in September. The company also announced that George Bednarz, its current senior vice president for enterprise operations, will take on the new role of executive vice president of enterprise sales and operations. Essentially, as McDonald retires, Bednarz will assume the sales leadership role that McDonald has held.
McDonald is an industry giant whose long experience in running successful directory organizations in all kinds of economies and against all sorts of competitors will be greatly missed. We won’t be surprised to see McDonald back working in the industry before too much time has passed.
Nonetheless, TKG see the elevation of Bednarz as a strong move for RHD. Why? The nature of directional media sales is changing, and the way sales reps are recruited, trained, managed and supported is changing as well. To put it simply, sales is becoming more data driven and it will be only more so as each year goes by and advertisers demand more transparency. Having a background in strategy and information technology, as Bednarz does, is arguably now at least as important as sales experience.
Ya -Over the last 52 weeks their stock has gone from a high of 78.10 (a share) to a low of 3.74 (a share). Now I know the market has been bad for most industries, but that hurts, especially when this is a case of a broken company and not a broken market! Hopefully Bednarz will help keep this once powerful company from going under.
Well, I am not surprised. I just left the company in May, and was very successful during my time at RHD. When I left, it was due to mis-management and failed customer service. This company NEEDS a new strategy. Though, as an insider at one time, I feel that Peter McDonald was the ONLY corporate official who cared about RHD’s employees. I am not sure that anyone can pull this company around without a complete overhaul of middle management.