Business Development

A growth mindset is essential to any business as is the importance of retaining profitable customers. Building customer commitment from existing customers and acquiring new ones has equal importance when delivering a consistent and sustainable company performance. Regular reviews of customer strategies, resources and the skills required to support that mindset are required. Is a business growth mindset part of your culture and constantly invested in ?

Procurement & Supply Chain Management

It’s very easy to cut costs but far harder to deliver value and have sustainable relationships with your supply chain. Some companies have mature processes in place, whilst others who are either quite young or consider themselves too small may not. Growing businesses become even more successful when they complement their client acquisition strategy with an appropriate procurement and supply chain management strategy. When was the last time you reviewed this area or have you yet to put a strategy in place ?

Leadership & Change Management

Leadership is more than just getting things done. It’s about agreeing a vision and engaging with
people to deliver the results.
A new set of skills is needed to build trust in teams. Knowing how to give autonomy in the way that
tasks are undertaken and adapting to measure performance based on output rather than
presenteeism.

Business Transformation

Usually, business transformation is spoken about in terms of major projects or significant changes to the way things are done. These could lead to major disruption and resistance to change. Conversely, business transformation can be a series of small steps and changes to behaviours and processes that deliver significant results. The importance of engagement and delivery throughout the entire organisation is one of the keys to success. What parts of your business need evolution?

Digital Marketing

The fact is, the basis for any digital campaign needs to be a game plan that makes sense for your business. We will make sure that you are reaching the people you want to reach and ensure that they take the actions required to do business with you and earn you a good return in terms of sales and profit. This will ensure the right digital strategy before embarking on expensive and time consuming digital marketing campaigns.

Cultural Awareness

One of my many learnings from my time at American Express Travel and Virgin Atlantic was how to deal with both clients and colleagues in overseas markets. I never used to think past the language barrier. If they could speak English then I assumed that it was business as usual. But then I started to wonder why in certain cases I couldn’t get my point across or progress seemed so slow, or members of my team didn’t action what we had agreed. Then I came across Chris Smit of CultureMatters.com and Chris started to explain to me the importance of understanding how different cultures are ‘wired’, how they think, behave and what’s important to them when doing business. I invited him along to my first and it turned out last global sales meetings that included people from every continent. Whilst it was an excellent relationship building event, the points I was trying to make were completely lost. Chris explained to me why and which markets we could group together and which ones to deal with in isolation. Once I understood I put everyone of my team through that training so that they could adjust their approach, planning and communication to suit the colleague or client in the other market. Without this knowledge you’re chances of success dealing overseas is limited.

Public Speaking

I have been very fortunate that during my career it was essential that I engaged in a variety of public speaking opportunities. This was especially the case as General Manager Sales of Virgin Atlantic and CEO of the GTMC (Guild of Travel Management Companies) These may have been industry conferences or company sales conferences and meetings as either a speaker or a guest on a panel, giving opinion pieces, insights and stories on a range of different travel-related topics How we implemented a change management programme to professionalise sales at Virgin Atlantic just happens to be my favourites. The same can be said about a number of my colleagues all of whom have a variety of different experiences to share, whether that be the importance of understanding cultural thinking when doing business overseas or the need for business transformation and innovation as a continual process. One theme remains constant though and that involves people, customers and business growth

International Trade and Stakeholder Engagement

With the UK Government agreeing on trade deals around the world, it is an opportune time for SME’s to consider the possibility of business expansion for either export or import purposes. One of the most common obstacles is knowing how to start and who to contact, especially overseas. Our expertise and contact base makes the beginning of the journey achievable

RedApple 7 Airlines

My experience at Virgin Atlantic demonstrated the need for a multi-channel distribution strategy and the need for the sales force to be able to generate additional revenue by selling the differences and advantages to the customer of the product and service and by building customer commitment.

Whether you are an existing airline looking to rebuild or instil and implement a sales performance culture or a new entrant to the UK market needing to establish new successful relationships and revenue opportunities, we can provide a bespoke sales solution either by enhancing the effectiveness and performance of your existing team as demand returns or create a professional selling sales team from recruitment to handover. Another alternative is the complete outsourcing of your sales function.