New Marketing Ideas

Modern companies need modern thinking. Having spent the last ten years advising commercial and non-commercial organizations helping them strengthen their position in marketplace, my experience could help you prepare for growth when the business up-turn arrives. Success can only be achieved through a combination of management structure, improved internal and external communications and an agreement on long-term strategy.

Small organizations expand in stages. First, the founder grows the company using their specialist skills. Business comes in, usually by working hands-on all hours. It is not difficult to grow and cope, for a while.

Then stage two sets in. This is when eight out of ten companies show signs of failing.
It is a difficult period. Management skills are stretched and we see the first signs of tension. With growing pressure on time, new clients and customers demand more attention. They start saying, “I don’t see you as much as I did”. This is when serious decisions are needed for the future. Unfortunately it is a time when any shortfalls in management experience start to show.

Just when the head of the company should be concentrating on the long term, time pressures man only short-term decisions are taken and the rudder falls off the ship.

So many companies hit a ceiling at that time and either grow no further, or they attempt to expand with the wrong management structure.

This is the point when someone who has been through it all before, working alongside the owner/manager, can take the strain.

Time to call in a company adviser. Fortunately I know most of the answers from my own experience:

• As a former CEO of Burson Marsteller London, one of the largest communications and marketing consultants in the UK, I founded The Watts Group plc, I sold it and recently as a non-executive director of many smaller companies my experience has grown, especially now as we face a period of economic change.