To be authentic, your business' vision should start with what you believe (values) and why you exist (purpose).   It should also be aiming at a 10-20 year objective (Big Hairy Audacious Goal or BHAG)  which can be easily communicated and measured (vivid description).

There are different ways you can move towards your BHAG depending on your various strengths, competencies, values, etc. This is the strategy.  

There will be leaders throughout your business; from the shopfloor to the board room.  In the SME environment, people tend to grow into leadership roles with no formal training in the subject.

Identifying your leadership style, understanding the role of leadership in establishing the vision, engaging staff, making decisions, and connecting with others is a key part in becoming a successful leader.

Good governance is an often overlooked part of the SME business world.  It is critical not only for the efficient running of day-to-day operations, but also when it comes to maximising the value of your company.

Regular board meetings with an agenda that covers governance issues (like risk registers, H&S), reporting (backwards looking), and strategy (forwards looking) can help ensure you stay on track to deliver the vision.

Building an amazing team means recruiting the right people.  We have designed a process that incorporates 70-100 hours of work per role to help maximise the chances of finding the right person.

We can help define the role, advertise, screen candidates, produce online questionnaires, undertake Zoom interviews, design bespoke assessment centres, and manage the offer/counter-offer process.

Building an amazing team requires more than just getting the right people on the bus.  You need to keep them on it.

ASPIRE (Attract, Select, Prepare, Inspire, Retain, Exit) is a framework we have developed to give businesses full visibility of the employee life-cycle.

A happy worker may well be a productive worker but an engaged worker is so much more. Various studies have suggested that only 20%-30% of employees are engaged (i.e. willing to go the extra mile) with their company.

Employee engagement is multi-faceted but touches on every area of your business from how the phone is answered to winning your next contract.  Ensuring that employees are aligned with the vision and values is key to driving growth.

There are different approaches to generating new leads.  It could be through finding new customers in your market, selling something different to existing customers, or finding new markets.

Creating a lead generation formula that is sustainable and that can be scaled is critical to business growth.  By turning lead generation into a process you can add value to your business by not making it reliant upon a super-salesperson (which is usually you!). 

The fundamentals of inbound marketing consist primarily of organising your contacts (normally in a customer relationship database or CRM). 

You can then segment your customers based on common characteristics and behaviours known as a buyer persona.  Additionally, knowing what stage a lead is at within the "buyer's journey" can help you to ensure that your marketing resonates with how a prospect is thinking.

Yyou have your contacts organised, understand how your solution solves your customers goals/obstacles, and the journey they take to become customers.  Now you got to create some content that adds value to your potential customers (the old coffee break test).

Finally, you need to make sure you set goals to align marketing activity with business objectives.

With some many marketing channels to cover such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, just to name a few, staying on top of activity and results is challenging.

Measure all your marketing to get ROI data, automate marketing workflows, and manage all you PPC and social media channels in one place.

With modern marketing software such as HubSpot, SME businesses now have the opportunity to super-charge their marketing efforts and make data driven decisions.