Event: Are you making a living or changing the world?

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We held our November event last night at IndigoBlue’s wonderful offices in Little Portland Street. We’d like to say a big thank you to our host for an engaging and vibrant event in such a lovely setting.  Thanks also to all our guests.

Topic: Commercial viability.

After a year’s trading, the entrepreneur in our hot seat wanted to review their business. This complex topic involved a tension between a social mission and commercial viability in the future. The discussion was focused on three main themes: identifying your client base, exploring your motivation and re-articulating the remit of your business.

Questions raised by the group helped to clarify our hot seat’s thinking: Can a limited company also be a social enterprise? Is it better to stick to the market you know and understand when other markets might be more accessible? Do you want to make a living or do you want to change the world?

Key insights included:

- Identify the fear and value factors – what do clients stand to lose by not hiring you? What will they gain if they do?

- Consider broadening your remit and expanding your target market(s).

- Define what you want to achieve and why, at the most basic level, then build up from there.

- Work with what you have.

- You can’t do everything. Identify your target market and focus on that market – nothing else!

If you would like to take part in a similar discussion or have an issue you would like to talk about, please join us at a future event or volunteer to be in the hot seat yourself. Please leave a comment below if you have any insights into this month’s topic!

Next Event!

Our final event of the year will be at Devereux Chambers on 14th December. If you can’t make that date  our schedule for 2017 is already up on the website so take a look.

Please comment below with your ideas and advice for our entrepreneur. We always love to hear from you!

Event: Exit Strategies and Looking to the Future

We held our October event last night in TateHindle’s beautiful and unique headquarters in Smithfield Market. We’d like to say a big thank you to our host for a lovely event in such an inspiring setting and to all our guests.

Topic: Exiting a business.

Our hotseater was concerned with his planned departure from a business he established with a partner over twenty years ago. How should he manage that process? How can I be sure of leaving a business that will continue to thrive? The challenge for the exiting partners was to ensure an effective handover with the right people in place to take the business forward.

The discussion was wide ranging and passionate, covering everything from giving your people space to grow into larger roles, to how to delegate and manage working relationships so that your business continues to succeed after your departure.

Key insights included:

• People may learn better when you give them space to make mistakes – provide them with clear targets and guidance, rather than instruction.
• The ‘parent/child’ relationship needs to change. At the moment, the company is your baby. The aim should be to nurture ambition in those who are taking over so that you make it their baby.
• Create clear functional roles on the Executive Team so that they take responsibility for the future. And do it now!
• Identify the void you will leave and fill it before you go.

If you want to take part in a similar discussion or have an issue you would like to talk about, please join us at a future event or volunteer to be in the hotseat yourself. Please leave a comment below if you have any insights into this month’s topic!

Next Topic!

Join us at our next event, at Indigo Blue on 9th November, or sign up to our mailing list for more information. Our topic on 9th November will be 'Having established demand and support for our product what else should we do to ensure commercial viability?"

Our final event of the year will be at Devereux Chambers on 14th December. If you can’t make either of those dates our schedule for 2017 is already up on the website so take a look.

Event: Building Trust With Your Customers

This week was our first event of the Autumn term and was attended by a diverse range of London's business people from a multitude of different industries. We would like to thank Geri McAndrew and ButtleUK for hosting the event at their offices in Victoria.

This week's hotseat topic was building trust between a business and its customers in a unique way. For our hotseater, who runs his own, one-man financial consultancy, the core issue was whether there were different and more innovative ways with which to build trust with his customers.

Questions

In the exploratory section of the event (where the group asks questions in order to clarify the question and explore the issue) the questions included;

• How do you know when you have won a client’s trust?
• What is the profile of a typical client?
• What do you understand by the term 'trust'?
• Why do you do what you do?
• What separates you out from other financial advisers?

Ideas

Our attendees then discussed the issue and offered advice. Some of the highlights were:

• Identify your unique selling point – if you don't know what it is, then your clients won't be able to see it either.
• Your clients need to know that you care about them, that you understand their situation and that they come first.
• Genuinely listening to your clients is an essential tool to create trust.
• Get some really good feedback – what do clients think of you?
• Aim to show, not tell – this is what will ultimately drive trust between yourself and your customers.
• People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Conclusions

Our hotseater then reflected back to the group. His main conclusions were that he needed to focus on learning how to listen well and tell great stories in order to relate better to his clients.

The main takeaway from the event was that business is always about putting people first, no matter what industry you're in and that it is too easy to lose sight of that fact. When trying to build trust, it's important to be able to engage with your customers on a human level, to demonstrate that you can relate to and are interested in their unique circumstances.

An interesting outcome was that, in a discussion which looked like being about the ‘hard sell’ the group settled on the importance of selling the person, rather than the product. As one participant remarked “we succeed when we show who we are”.

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Our next event will be at TateHindle on 12th October. We hope to see you there!