What is the ROI of executive protection? It is not about bad guy shootouts, use of deadly force incidents, or my gun being bigger than yours.
If you take the total annual salary of a famous CEO like Elon Musk, which is in the multi-billions, you can break this down to understand what his hourly income should be: over $51 million. This is an astonishing amount, of course, but even with a more modest, high profile CEO making $10 million annually, their hourly rate would still come out to an hourly rate of about $3,000. With these statistics in mind, it is no wonder that time is money for these executives and that they need to be able to make full use of their working hours in order to capitalize on their income.
What To Consider When Looking for Executive Protection
When looking for executive protection, these executives do not care about what kind of gun you are carrying or what kind of martial arts you have trained in. What they care about is the speed at which you can get them to their business meetings. High-net worth individuals, CEOs, and billionaires look for executive protection services that can get them in and out of meetings and help with their time management. It is important that they get the maximum amount of time out of their day to be able to manage their companies, negotiate important business deals, and meet with their people and clients.
Time management is, therefore, the most important thing in their lives. It really is not about how big the gun is–no CEO is going to ask about what you carry or how big it is. All high-profile clients and executives really care about being able to get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible in order to manage their time and maximize their schedule.
In reality, it is very rare that you need to protect your client through physical force or by firing a weapon. While the protection detail must be highly trained in these capacities, they also need to be strategically engaged and understand how to truly add value to the client’s life on a daily basis. This is done through incredible advance work and choreographed plans.
Hypothetically, let’s imagine a CEO who does not have an executive protection team and is driving themselves to upwards of five meetings a day. This requires extensive planning, but also maneuvering traffic, finding parking, and getting into the building. If an executive protection team can get them into ten meetings a day, that is the return on investment (ROI) for the corporation and for the executive.
How do executive protection teams maximize time so effectively? Much of the work is done before the executive even gets into the car. This is through advance work. If, for example, the executive is going to the headquarters of a major client they want to work with. The protection agents will have already done extensive research through advance work.
They know the exact route they will travel to get to the headquarters, they know which gate they will enter through and where they will park the car, they know the entrance they will walk into; and they even know where the restrooms are located. They will also do work beforehand on emergency planning and prevention. This involves understanding where a safe room or quick exit is located so that the executive can swiftly be removed from harm’s way.
The protection team will also be aware of all the timings, down to the minute. For example, they will understand that if they enter through a certain set of doors, then it takes five minutes to get to the meeting room. Likewise, when exiting from the building, the car will already be staged so that the executive will literally leave the building, jump straight back into the vehicle, and immediately leave.
This is strategic, staged choreography so that there is no time wasted in terms of practicalities and logistics. If these things were left to chance or to the last minute, there would be constant delays at every turn, and the client would end up in the wrong building or meeting room or be left waiting outside the building for the car to come pick them up. All this wasted time is essentially wasting the money of the corporation and the client. A wasted hour for an executive can be worth thousands of dollars.
This is why no one cares how tough or large an executive protection agent is. What high-net worth individuals and executives want is a team that is so well organized and choreographed that they get the maximum return on investment for their company by managing the CEO’s time in a highly strategic way.
At World Protection Group, we understand that our clients’ schedules can sometimes change unpredictably and at short notice. This is an area where we excel.
To learn more about the specific return on investment in executive protection services, contact us today! The World Protection Group (WPG) creates an ROI for VIPs, CEOs and executives.
