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What we've achieved for our clients

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Troubleshoot sales performance

Sales teams and sales people can and do suffer from a drop off in performance, there are many factors that affect performance of front line teams. Our services are diagnostic and remedial in nature. We get to the heart of sales performance issues by studying a team or individuals performance historically and that of the wider market, from there we build working models of the market and an individuals performance at each stage of the sales cycle from initial qualification, through each step to winning the business and right onto customer repeat business and advocacy.

Our typical results are reduced cost of sales, improved conversion ratios, better targeting and improved qualification of opportunities and critically the interpretation of key events during the sales cycle. We equip individuals and teams with insight and knowledge and specific bid strategies that provide an improved response to competitive threats and challenges created through mismatching proposition to client requirements.

Typical engagements start with a diagnosis workshop and individual one to one sessions from which the as is state is captured and the major challenges felt by the team and sponsoring management are captured. From here we perform a diagnostic and create a series of training and coaching solutions that enable individuals and teams to take the right decisions at each stage along the sales cycle and to understand how much time and effort to invest.

A vital component of this approach is equipping the team and individuals to manage stakeholders expectations across their own business about the potential of their pipeline and specific prospects or not as the case may be. This results in better engagement of the right resources and dramatically improves understanding by all of the actual potential and approach being taken

We have successfully delivered these services to small software busines's, major systems integrators, hardware providers and a host of non technology sector related clients.

Market entry strategy - Security software

Taking a successful product set from overseas and entering the UK market was the challenge for this successful and well funded business. No exposure to UK markets previously coupled with an innovative product set that offered unique capabilities in what is destined to be a major market but currently at the early adopter stage required a market entry strategy that took these factors into account.

Our recommendations on how to position the product set, routes to market, sector priorities and critically the targeting of specific client organisations with a reputation and experience of being early adopters within those sectors demonstrated a rapid return on investment and the creation of a sustainable and cost effective go to market strategy.

We strengthened the product and service value proposition and exposed the core elements of that value in a language and form more understandable to the target markets and audiences in the UK and enabled clearer communication and higher conversion ratios in the early stage of the sales cycle.

We took their historical sales performance data from other markets and converted this into a series of sales cycle models for their target markets in the UK which exposed variances in sales and engagement methods and identified longer sales cycles and higher selling prices as two factors that would influence market potential. Now an operational business having one its first major client and forged some significant contacts and effective partnerships they are now established and delivering benefits both to the parent company and venture capital investors.

Social Networking - Start up

Brilliant concept, from an inspiring individual with a clear vision of how they see the future of social networking. Our role has been to help shape the concepts into an executable plan, advise the founder on key aspects of business planning and to enable the business to manage risk and opportunity effectively by making the right decisions around priorities, connections, timing and monetisation of the site. Now in its second round of funding with the launch of founders element complete we act as members of the advisory board to take the business forward

Content Management Vendor - Performance Improvement

Great product set, crowded market, high cost of sale, scale and dramatic growth just around the corner, sales pipeline poorly understood with many opportunities getting stalled halfway along the pipe for reasons not understood. These were the presenting conditions of one of our clients providing a content management solution. They had already had success in a number of verticals but had not been able to capitalise on this success.

We performed a diagnostic on their sales approach, captured the critical data surrounding the sales process and built some sales models that represented the typical approach to winning new business. From this we discovered and illuminated a massive drain on resources at a critical stage in the sales cycle that diverted key resources from later stages in the sales cycle which resulted in lack of attention to key deals during the final stages of bid campaigns.

We created a series of recommendations including

reducing the complexity of bid responses, and demonstrations so that they could be created and delivered quickly with little or no specialised or expert resources.
tightening of the value proposition and creating some specific vertical market messaging and case studies that improved conversion at key stages in the sales cycle and improved market awareness
alignment of the product roadmap to the marketing message and introduction of improved configuration capabilities that enabled rapid configuration for proof of concept and pilot stages of the sales cycle and dramatically reduced cost

Results are increased wins, higher market profile, reduce cost of sale, better sales with less bespoke extensions and more use of configuration features.

Developed a Multi-tenant hosting solution

Organisations seeking to embrace the on-line service provision to employees, partners and customer alike struggled to design, develop and support an infrastructure that could scale at a moments notice and provide levels of availability and response now being expected by all stakeholders. Commercially such solutions were largely out of the reach of most organisations or if affordable did not represent a return on investment in their early stages of deployment.

We provided a number of organsations with commercial, architectural and technical advice and guidance on how to design, implement and market such service offerings to address this growing demand for what is now being called multi-tenant hosting propositions. The commercial models in many cases proved to be the most challenging to create as organisations struggle to decouple their thinking from traditional service provision or product supply and support models.

Our architectural approach took into account and introduced these service providers to the notion of availability, maintainability, serviceability, upgradeability, scalability and flexibility especially in configuration and resource assignment. This included improved security at, virtualisation, automation, load balancing and efficient provisioning services.

Our full scope approach enabled marketing, sales, development, service operations, support services and commercial and financial teams to work in partnership to create a new approach that provided a disruptive innovation in infrastructure and application service provision which is now being emulated across a whole range of business and infrastructure application sets.

Effective Partnerships with systems integrators

An increasing amount of spend on products and services is being channelled through the service provider community such as business process outsourcers, managed service providers and systems integrators. These are complex organisations with many touch points and multiple agendas and challenges to address. Navigating them is complex, time consuming and fraught with blind alleys, yet to develop and execute and effective partnership with such organisations is to open the door to extensive opportunities, revenue and profit potential for any organisations with products and services that can either be embedded in the service provider offering or be used by them to reduce their operating costs and improve effeciency internally in their own execution

We provide a series of workshops and tools to aid organisations in understanding this complex channel to market, its culture, how it operates, what drives it and how to manage approaches and align them to the different audiences within the organisation. We deliver these courses inhouse for specific client teams or via a public course run and operated by Kable.

Accelerate Sales Performance

A range of workshops designed to improve qualification, sales pipeline modelling and management, coupled with some practical tools and techniques for prioritisation and planning. This course enables people to rapidly understand and improve their sales performance in any market and deliver sustainable success through planned and effective campaigns that get to the key elements of winning business. Benefits experienced business professionals as much as new sales personnel, puts the science behind the art of selling in clear terms that anyone can understand and apply

Mentoring New Executives

Moving into a general management role, especially from sales or service delivery is a challenging and potentially rewarding experience for many talented individuals. The challenge of making the transition however well supported internally by professional development programmes can often leave the new appointee feeling isolated and out of their comfort zone. Typically the skills and abilities that helped them succeed in their previous role are either in need of reconfiguring to work in their new role or may no longer serve them well. Whatever reasons for their promotion, it serves no one any benefit for them to fail.

We have provided a range of mentoring, advisory and coaching services on a personal one to one basis for new general managers / directors in a range of settings. These can take the form of face to face sessions, observation in situ with feedback later and real-time support by phone, instant messaging and email to deliver the right support just when it is needed. Typically these engagements last for three to six months and can average at about a day a month over the period.

Our objective is to aid them in adjusting quickly and effectively to their new environment, we offer a plain speaking, but supportive and totally confidential service. Our success is measured by their ability to take on the new role and succeed in their own eyes and those of their manager.

Acquisition commercial due diligence

Acquisition is a viable route to achieving growth and access to new intellectual property assets and customers. The challenge is always one of understanding what you are buying, how valuable it is and what issues may lie behind the prospectus presented to you by the vendor or agent.

We provide a range of due diligence services that get under the skin of an organisations sales cycle, their current sales pipeline, their products and services, current capabilities and customer base and deliver an insightful assessment of how realistic their projections area, whether the resources in place are of the right skills and ability to deliver what is forecast and what the market potential is for their portfolio of products and services. Typically we uncover hidden gems that improve the value of the acquisition to our client the potential purchaser, but critically we expose risks and issues that will affect the valuation of the business and ultimately enables an organisation to negotiate from a position of knowledge with realistic expectations about the challenges that lay ahead in realising the potential and where required integrating the newly acquired business.

We use a series of structured interviews, backed up by research work driven off the back of extensive back of due diligence questions matrices and checklists that provide a multi-dimensional review of an organisations stated positions and potential.

Our clients value this work being undertaken by a third party as it creates the space needed for detailed investigations without compromising future relationships between acquirer and acquired management teams. The result is better acquisitions at the right price or avoidance of acquisitions that do not meet the criteria set out by the prospective purchaser

Corporate Strategy and Branding

Most organisations have the core elements of a strategy and brand in place even if it grew organically without any formal process. In these increasingly competitive times we help clients expose their strategy and brand as it is today, enable them to review it and benchmark it against the market, their competitors and those of comparable organisations.

Exposing the strategy and brand is a critical first step in determining the future, the review that follows may recommend some changes or enhancements along with a practical step by step approach to implementing those changes. A critical component of this is the communication plan to all key stakeholders internally and externally. Most people enjoy clarity but when change occurs in their perception of any given situation be it strategy, priority or focus it can create discontent and confusion as easily as it can create inspiration and excitement.

Our approach to strategy exposure, review and creation takes into account the challenges faced in realising any strategy and the impact it has on all stakeholders. Through the use effective planning and analysis tools covering all elements of the strategy and stakeholders we can quickly identify hotspots and opportunities that can be addressed or leveraged.

The results we deliver are clarity, priority, focus and a plan that can be implemented, understood and embraced by all stakeholders.

Developed compelling CRM strategies and execution plans

Organisations large and small, commercial, public sector and not for profit have recognised the need for an effective relationship with their customers, clients, partners, stakeholders and employees.

We have helped our clients develop great relationships by ensuring they recruit and retain the right customers and deliver the right products and services through articulation of clear value propositions. The results are accelerated performance and increased satisfaction internally and externally. Our clients are measure performance in many forms from increased revenue and profit, increased retention, faster more effective acquisition of ideal customers, higher brand recognition and referral rates and overall business valuation.

We provide a series of thought provoking and practical workshops supported by methods and tools that get to the heart of what customer relationship management is, what it can mean to your business and the customers it serves and delivers the means and manner of creating a compelling strategy that can be implemented effectively and measured for results.

Software as a service - Proposition development

Software as a Service or SaaS is a logical evolution of service provision which has been forecast since the sixties, many attempts have been made to provide service to clients starting with bureau based services, to hosted services with dedicated network connections to the latest iterations of cloud based services delivered over the internet. Hidden behind the evolution of delivery models has been a fundamental shift in the architecture of applications and the economics of software development and delivery to customers.

Many successful independent software vendors focusing an infrastructure or line of business applications and existing service providers struggle to make the adjustment to the new operating models of multi-tenant architectures, monthly service charges, service level agreements and always on service provision.

We provide a series of advisory services that enable organisations seeking to offer SaaS a practical roadmap to achieve ths without losing traction on their existing business and delivering an incremental shift both in commercial, architecture and service offerings.

SaaS will not be going away and it will represent an increasingly important channel to market which requires its own cost model for marketing, sales, operation and development. We can help get you there with the minimum amount of pain and disruption. It is after all evolution not revolution.

Internal innovation fund creation

Venture capital and investment in the future is a key component of any organisations strategy for the future. Harnessing the potential from an organisations funds and resources in developing new business opportunities that will deliver the future growth and success of the business is a challenging element of the any management teams agenda. The conflict and pressures from tactical and operational drivers frequently means any strategic initiatives that do not deliver short term results are starved of attention or sidelined and under resourced whilst still burning cash.

We have created a series of easy to implement internal venturing models and tools that enable an organisation to harness the potential of innovation within their business and create a framework for processing ideas through to completion and delivering value. Our model embraces the concepts of stage-gate, portfolio management and can balance internal and external development opportunities within the same portfolio.

Our clients have not only identified huge overlap and wastage already occurring within their business but have been able to through our approach converge, combine and harness work already underway and give it new focus and priority through delivery of a common language and framework all members of the management team and organisations can understand and embrace.

Helping organisations understand the level of competitive advantage, likely returns, strategic importance, and complimentary nature of any potential investment is pivotal in shaping the future programme. We equip our clients to do this in a consistent and repeatable way.

Created teams of solutions architects

Successful infrastructure services provider turning over in excess of £2billion a year, sought to raise itself up the value chain from product supply and services around the box to deliver more complicated end to end infrastructure solutions in a repeatable and consistent manner.

The challenge was to take a handpicked group of high calibre technical consultants and develop them into solutions architects who could provide the combination of business and technical consultancy to clients that would either take a clients business objectives and strategy and translate that into a working infrastructure solution or assist them in developing the strategy ahead of implementation.

Through a series of workshops and one to one coaching sessions each person was profiled and their specific strengths and areas for development were analysed across 12 key competency areas. They were trained in business consulting, specific analysis and writing techniques, interpersonal communications skills and stakeholder management. A best practice framework was created around their consulting services that leveraged industry best practice such as TOGAF, ITIL, CMM and COBiT.

The results were the creation of a differentiated service that clients were happy to pay a premium to access and securing of increased product and service revenue at higher margin from more and more complex solutions sold and delivered to clients new and existing. These individuals went on the become seen as the most valuable consultancy resources across the business due to the product and service multiplier capability they represented and the value placed on their involvement by clients.