With proven experience of growing businesses through strategic sales and marketing activity, I have a wide breadth of knowledge to draw on whilst helping you to find creative solutions to develop and grow your business.
Business planning
A detailed business plan is one of the key success factors in achieving mid to long term growth and will be required when looking to source investment for scaling up.
Documenting a clear purpose of business objectives and how you aim to achieve them over a set period of time, the plan should align sales, marketing, operational and financial activity. Whilst creating the plan is an investment of time, its a great feeling to refer back and tick off achievements.
I will work with you to write a clear plan for scaling up your business which can evolve as new opportunities are identified.
Strategic Marketing
As a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, I have extensive experience of creating and implementing strategic marketing plans to deliver growth.
We will focus on developing competitive advantage by refreshing the insights into your competitors and the general market in which you operate. These insights combined with understanding the motivation and needs of your customer, will give a fresh perspective on your brand positioning, allowing us to match your capabilities with what customers value the most from your products or services.
The outcome will be the development of an actionable marketing plan to help you achieve tangible results from your activity.
Sales process review
Are you struggling to convert marketing leads into sales and get a return on your investment? Are your competitors winning business from you?
By reviewing the current sales process, I will identify areas for improved efficiency in the sales funnel, looking for opportunities to use automation to free up the sales team to build client relationships. I will explore how leads are qualified, pipelines managed, objections handled and reasons why leads are lost or won. Aligning these insights in the sales process, together with the marketing plan will give you a strong foundation from which to grow.
Product or service innovation
Staying ahead of your competition and giving customers a unique reason to buy is key to achieving sustainable growth.
Product or service innovation doesn’t have to mean high levels of investment, I will help you to achieve competitive advantage by being better at giving customers solutions not available from others in the market. I will do this by understanding the problems your customers need you to solve, in order to build greater differentiation and ideally barriers to stop others copying you.
Much of this information will already be available within your company and by collating this with new customer insights, I can create a sustainable innovation plan for growth.
Project support
The exciting thing about growing your business, is there are always new projects on the go, often stretching across a number of business areas.
It can be tempting to jump in and start working on these, but the old adage of “Fail to prepare : Prepare to fail” is very relevant in these scenarios and taking time to plan the project is important.
Having managed a variety of projects related to digital transformation, cultural change or business process improvement, I am well placed to support you in taking a step back to clarify the scope, structure the task list, whilst looking at the what if’s and creating a time and resource plan, aimed to deliver the project on time and within budget.
Whether you have a large project you need support with, whilst you manage the day to day business, or simply could do with an experienced view point on your plans to grow, I’d welcome the opportunity to assist.