Working with new Private Equity owners

 

When an Australian Private Equity investor bought a very successful and profitable company with operations in the UK, I was appointed by the new owners to explore both the consumer and commercial markets for their hero product. This assignment required close integration with the UK senior management team and a mentoring role to help drive individual and sales team performance towards a new investment-led focus. An overhaul of digital campaigns and data management has vastly improved channel clarity.

 

• Created sales and marketing processes to improve return on investment measurement

• Identified and addressed short-term market opportunities for immediate growth

• Established longer-term brand positioning to create a unique proposition in b2b and b2c

 

The company has a new and robust channel to market in the consumer space and is recognized as the aspirational brand in its field. Business users too now understand clearly the energy-saving benefits offered and there are new brand initiatives in place to expand globally.

 

 

Digital deep dive

 

Reporting to the UK Managing Director as a member of the Leadership Team, and a functional reporting line to the globally renowned parent, this role covered marketing strategy for the £250m B2B market and included full P&L responsibility for the visciously competitive £100m retail market.

 

• Restructured the marketing team and improved operational communications and campaigns

• Recruited specialist Retail and B2B marketing teams

• Designed, and implemented an ambitious retail and on-line strategy for 490 centres

• Improved customer engagement, initiated customer segmentation, and upgraded competitor activity intelligence and market trends through improved data manipulation

• Created and implemented a precision-targeted B2B on-line contact strategy for 40,000 trade customers

• Led the development of the fully-transactional Pan-European retail website

 

This senior position proved to be one of the greatest challenges of my career with an increasing focus on winning retail market share in a fast-moving market, whilst enhancing brand position across B2B.

 

 

Managing a large team

 

At a national education body, I redefined customer engagement to drive closer relationships with customers and created a results oriented sales team. Reporting to the CEO as leader of the 120-strong Sales & Marketing department, I introduced commercial rigour to the Leadership Team, whilst working collaboratively to bridge departmental relationships at all levels.

 

• Restructured the business development team to be more accountable

• Brought strategic direction to product development

• Redirected digital and traditional communications to reflect the customer journey

• Introduced measurement processes to assess ROI

• Absorbed the Customer Support Directorate

• Led the team to reconstruct the digital strategy, defined procurement requirements and implemented agile project techniques

• Introduced new CRM technology to bring deep customer data insight and strategic acquisition

 

This not-for-profit organisation now has a greatly improved, focused communications activity, a clear brand strategy and a digital strategy to secure on-line presence. In a radical reconstruction of support services, costs were reduced and a new revenue stream was created for schools.