About Business Development

A challenging role as part of a management team, structured to establish strategy to refocus a business that had been trading on a set of legacy products and providing unique services around those products that were in limited supply, and so was able to charge a premium in a small, uncompetitive, shrinking marketplace.

The business needed to adapt, or fold.

Significant losses were being made and it was clear that new management was needed to drive the business forward with a new strategy, using as much of the existing skill base as possible.

It was clear that a range of valuable skills were available within the business, although unfortunately the head count had to be reduced through redundancy of some of those skills which did not support the future business strategy.

Like many businesses, it had got in to the habit of ‘inertia selling’. That is, trying to recover from poor financial performance by shedding sales and marketing staff, the very people that were responsible for creating and winning opportunities, leaving the business selling only to an existing client base. Inevitably, this led to a decline in both turnover and profitability with no clear strategy for growth.

The new strategy refocused the company on path associated with its legacy products, but still used its history to demonstrate credibility. It was more proactive, developing web content to demonstrate the capabilities of its staff, the successes it had achieved. I developed a cost-per-click marketing campaign to drive visitors ‘in a buying mood’ to the site and matched their search terms exactly to the content with which they were presented.

An audience was created and a communication strategy developed, with a regular messages that spoke to the audience about relevant topics, about relevant projects, about relevant technology. It developed the relationship between the audience and the company.

In short, we demonstrated capability and exuded credibility to an audience that wanted to participate and was ready to buy.

The business returned to profitability in just 12 short months. A testament to strategy and a common, marketed message.