Cornerstone Advisors Announces New Product Lines

Scottsdale, Ariz. – Gotta keep changing, GonzoBankers. No Kafkaesque metamorphosis going on here at GonzoBanker, no sir, but some revising and improvising to keep up with the Joneses never hurt a consulting firm, you know? The vendors have to keep developing products to deliver multi-channel customer touchpoint consistency. Bankers have to conjure up new ways to make a 1.35% CD sexy. (Free Pyrex, toasters and tickets to the local theater troupe’s rendition of Les Mis just don’t cut it long term.) And so, too, must consultants change with the times. Gotta stay real and give our peeps what they want….or should want.

So today I’m going to shamelessly use this column to announce several new consulting and product lines to be offered by Cornerstone Advisors, Gonzo’s mother ship. It’s crass, disturbing and heavy-handed to use this forum for marketing purposes, so the understanding brain trust here at Gonzo Central is willing to refund to you this month’s subscription fee if this marketing message in any way offends you.

New Product Lines from GonzoBanker:

Non-Contract Negotiation – This product is offered to vendors to convince Cornerstone to stop negotiating contracts on behalf of our bank and credit union clients. The cost is $2 million per year per vendor, a skeletonous sliver of what our brutal negotiation skills cost most vendors each year. Call Carl “The Terminator” Faulkner for details.

End-User Evaluation – Just as Cornerstone is hired by many CEOs to assess the technology direction, efficiency and competence of their IT shops, so too can CIOs now hire us to evaluate the skills and savvy of their user bases in the business lines. The pre-written evaluation, available for $20,000, will document the abhorrent vendor training available to the client’s rank and file, business line heads’ utter disregard for technical standards, ugly accounts of wanton politicking to end-around the project approval process, and the complete lack of any attempt to master or utilize the systems in place. This gold-leafed report will even describe the horrific problems caused by the rogue databases maintained in the Finance and Marketing departments. References to end-users as “toads,” “worms,” “hacks” or “rubes” are available for $500 apiece.

Hotel Rating Service – Spending between eight and twenty nights per month in temporary domiciles of widely varying luxury and livability, the consultants at GonzoBanker have seen it all when it comes to hotels. We have thousands of road weary vendors and traveling bankers on our humble subscription list, so we thought it only fitting to give them the low-down on the swankiest and scariest hotel, motels and inns across this great land of ours. At only $999 per city reviewed, our Hotel Rating Service can hone you in on the exact type of joint you what to call home for a night or two – saving banks and credit unions alike at least 3 FTE in HR or Travel Services personnel. For each hotel in each city visited, we aggregate our collective wisdom and experience (stored on a beefy EMC box) into our own proprietary database to give you the skinny in the following categories:

• Flooring – Is it safe, repulsive or somewhere in between to walk barefoot on the carpet? From a rating of 1 Retch (Take off the socks and relax) to 5 Retches (Instant fungal or bacterial infection), we’ll let you know what you’re in for.
• Bathrooms – The bathroom is clearly the area of a hotel room that causes the most anxiety. Serious demerits are given to any establishment near a hunting ground with signage in the bathroom admonishing: “Please do NOT clean game in the bath tub.” (I seriously have seen that very sign in La Grange, Texas.)
• Give-Aways – We will provide you with an objective evaluation of the free toiletry and other removable items in the room. Are you looking at high-end Aveda products with a shoe shine cloth and sewing kit, or a sliver of Jergins mini-soap and shampoo out of a pump attached to the shower wall?
• Mini-bar – We’ll comment on the ease in which in-room liquor stocks can be consumed and replaced with water for an undetected (and free) bender during your stay.
• Lobby Bar – We’ll rate the clientele and night life at the hotel saloon. Is it chock-full-o’ buzzed locals trolling the Avon conventioneers at the karaoke machine? We’ll let you know. Or maybe it’s a smoke machine and neon bar called Revelations with middle aged baldies, grimacing to the beat and sweating with false hope, dancing The Forbidden Dance with their early-twenties subordinates. We’ll fill you in so you can Plan, bubba.
• Movies – There are really only two things to consider here: 1) is the soft core porn accessible with just the turn of a screwdriver and the rerouting of a wire or two? 2) How liberal is the hotel in expunging the $9.99 from your bill when at checkout you explain, “There’s obviously been some sort of mistake here. I was working all night…”

Vendor Demo Training – We have the pleasure of attending countless vendor demonstrations each month. It’s a great way for us to stay informed and to help our clients keep the demos productive, informative and well-paced. Well, we’ve picked up a thing or two along the way and now offer our becufflinked cousins at the vendors a three-day course in presenting their products in a way that is sure to wow their prospects and close deals at breakneck pace. A sneak peek at just a couple of the forum’s break-out sessions follows:

• “Absolutely!” The Catch Phrase To Make You Rich – This session explores ways to convey that your product will or will not perform the function in question simply by using different inflections in the canned response, “Absolutely!” Your product definitely can do the job in question? “AbsoLUTEly!” Unsure? “absolutely…?” No idea what the question means? (Quickly): “Absolutely. Next question.”
• PowerPoint Subterfuge – In this widely attended class, our training professionals will show presenters how to camouflage DOS programs that have not yet been upgraded and other unfinished or unsightly products with the strategic utilization of a PowerPoint presentation. You are not born with the ability to gracefully describe what a product can do without actually showing its grubby underbelly; this is a learned skill.

Self-Regulation – Limited enrollment. This is a training course for the .05% of bankers out there who have not yet learned that a little self-regulation right now can prevent a whole lot of federal regulation down the road. This $15,000 class, taught by reformed red-liners and usurers, will coach the very few banks out there who are abusing “legal” practices and on the verge of ruining things for the honest 99.95% of banks out there. Sub-topics include:

• Sub-prime Lending – How abusing the uninformed and underprivileged is not a viable long-term strategy
• ACORN: Bearded dudes who like nothing more than making you look like a fascist
• Overdraft Courtesy and the Future Perils of a Beefed-up Reg Z (By the way, did you see EPG’s reaction to the Fed’s call for public comment on overdraft privilege programs? Self serving – shmelf shmerving! It’s artful spin that makes the Iraqi Information Minister seem like a tongue-tied, irresolute schoolgirl!)

We at Cornerstone sincerely hope that you are as excited as we are over this brand new array of products and services available from your favorite dirty fingernails advice depot. Please contact me if I can help you help yourself.

Relax, GonzoMongers. We have wars and nose-diving economies and SARS outbreaks and the upcoming WNBA season to worry about. Wanted to keep this one light and short enough to finish in the average trip to the Executive Loo. Something meatier next time
-smh