When Winshaw started trading in 2013, we wanted to bring a new energy and approach to business growth. Sales teams were blaming marketing for not delivering enough leads, and marketing teams were accusing their counterparts in sales of being lethargic and complacent.
Company leaders and owners were constantly frustrated with the internal bottlenecks that were hindering commercial teams from working effectively. And even when these companies brought in marketing agencies or sales consultants, they often failed to convert expensive strategy ideas into revenue.
The challenge was always the same – slow growth; disappointing sales. Despite long lists of external factors and excuses, almost every single growth challenge we saw could have been solved with a change to internal working practices. The systems were broken – they might have the right people but poorly constructed processes and an unwillingness to evaluate the real issues.
Our prior experience prompted us to start a consultancy that could help businesses address the underlying reasons why growth was so elusive. We were convinced that by working with the right partner, companies could outperform their competitors and deliver sustainable growth. And so, Winshaw was born to help ambitious companies build effective growth engines that weren’t shackled by legacy systems and operating models.
Why aren’t companies making the most of their growth potential?
Imagine you have spotted a new commercial opportunity. Where do you start, and who do you trust to ride shotgun? Rather than adopting a scattergun approach, how do you cut to the chase, converting your strategy into tactics that will kickstart long-term sustainable profit growth?
At Winshaw, we make this happen. We help execute killer growth strategies, fast. Whether that be through exploiting export markets, targeting a new sector, or simply repositioning your current offer within an existing territory or sector.
In a competitive world, growth is always difficult. Good sales teams and effective marketers are like gold dust, and creating an environment in which they can work together and excel is even rarer.
But why is growth so hard? Over the years, we noticed a pattern. We kept seeing two recurring problems, that if fixed, could be a gamechanger for unlocking growth.
Problem 1: Commercial teams are not aligned with corporate strategy
Many of the commercial teams we’ve worked with were underperforming because there wasn’t a true understanding of the company’s vision, and therefore a lack of commitment to realising it.
Not every employee is going to buy into a business, a strategy or a product completely. For many, it’s about the monthly pay to do their job and go home. And that’s normal. But sales and marketing teams need to understand the product and find a way of communicating its value to the market at every touchpoint. They need to live and breathe it.
And that’s where we wanted to be different. We knew that by becoming a consultancy that was on the hook for revenue, clients could trust us to get the job done. Since we predominantly only eat what we kill, our clients’ successes are just as important to us as they are to them.
Problem 2: Most companies try the same old solutions to growth problems
The symptoms of slow growth usually manifest as a low win-rate, a stagnant pipeline and weak margins on new business. Lots of companies try to treat those symptoms by doing more of the same. More calls, more emails, more content, more events, more proposals. And more hope. But hope is not a strategy.
We knew that the real problems were always deeper. We knew we needed to assess the state of play first, to look under the bonnet to find the root cause.
In our experience, it’s almost always a mix of broken processes, a disconnect between the product and the market, and a breakdown in trust between sales and marketing teams.
So what?
With the prevalence of these two problems, you would have thought the “growth services market” would have found a way of fixing them by now. Although not for want of trying, there remains a massive gap in the market. We feel this is caused by two structural design flaws in the traditional way growth challenges are addressed.
Design Flaw 1: Marketing agencies aren’t accountable for revenue
Marketing teams are typically only ever incentivised on outputs, rather than outcomes. And as a result, they want to spend their budget and hope to get more of it next year. But marketing output does not equal revenue.
We found that most marketing agencies promised growth but would only guarantee the number of calls they made, emails they sent, or articles and social posts they produced. With no commitment to pipeline growth or sales.
Like Levitt said: “people don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole.” Businesses don’t need marketing outputs; they need profit. And to generate profit, they need quality deals with good margins.
We knew that to be worth something to our clients, we needed to be accountable for outcomes. We needed to produce work good enough to bring in revenue. Profitable revenue.
Design Flaw 2: Consultants aren’t incentivised by value creation
Another solution to flagging growth is to bring in consultants. Now these could be management consultants, training consultants, IT consultants, and so on. Some of these are good, some exceptionally good.
But, the design flaw with almost every consultant is that they get paid on inputs (e.g. days worked) rather than outcomes. There is a time and a place for these arrangements, but growth is different. We think growth consultants should be incentivised by value creation and profit.
When we were creating our offer, we knew that people were frustrated with consultancies that would make big promises only for them to never be fulfilled. We knew we had to build a strategic growth consultancy that delivered. One that could understand and buy into a clients’ strategy and then plug in and work behind the scenes on tactical campaigns to support the ultimate goal.
For many companies, the fees charged by consultancies don’t make financial sense, especially when high monthly costs mean making a return on investment is so hard. We think there is a gap in the market for a partner to deliver targeted quick wins along a commercial transformation journey, executing corporate strategies without overhauling an entire organisation.
So that is why we exist, neither marketing agency nor management consultant; we are Winshaw. We exist as a lean, mean strategic growth machine, operating in the shadows on behalf of companies targeting accelerated, international growth.
And we never get complacent, we know the way we fix these problems has to keep evolving. So now we spend all day, every day looking at commercial systems to understand when they are producing growth, and working out how to fix them if they don’t. On this front, the more time spent talking to the market, the better.
Our strategy for building one of the best growth consultancies
So with the problems identified, we had the basis of a strategy to offer a service we could be proud of. It was just a matter of tailoring our solutions to plug the gap in the market. And so this is the service we built:
1. Listening: How we understand our clients’ challenges
We don’t write large strategy documents and hand them over. We prefer to get to know our clients’ current corporate strategy and find areas where we can boost growth.
As outside help, we offer an objective, dispassionate assessment of our clients’ products, processes and strategies.
So that’s why we start with a thought-provoking conversation to build out a growth roadmap. A preliminary consultation where we understand the vision and timelines, pinpoint where current operations are holding it back, and see whether we are the right team for the job.
We don’t charge for this consultation because we know that it’s hard for a commercial leader to invest in something up front that might not work for them. So it’s in our interest to make the first conversation as constructive as possible.
Plus we actually like talking to commercial leaders about their operations, learning how things work in their businesses, and thinking about how to solve their problems.
If that sounds helpful to you, get in touch to schedule an initial consultation and we can arrange a convenient time and place to meet or have a call.
2. Quick wins: Tactical campaigns and projects
With one-off projects, we focus on executing single elements of a growth strategy. They could involve support on a bid or a tender, an event or marketing campaign, an accelerated demand generation campaign or product launch for instance.
These tactical campaigns usually help marketing or sales managers boost growth and often act as the starting point for them to develop new growth systems.
For example, we helped Adare SEC build enough value for them to exit through acquisition within 12 months. This included a brand refresh, new website with inbound marketing and lead generation engine as well as an enhanced online presence through systematised digital demand generation programmes.
We typically define quick wins as those that have demonstrable results within 3 to 12 months, although after successful pilots, we often get asked to deliver more.
3. Thinking big: How we dig deeper with transformation projects
Some growth problems need bigger solutions. Depending on the diagnosis, we’ve helped clients drive sustainable value creation through digitisation, internationalisation and M&A.
As outsourced help, we are not held back by internal loyalties and politics. Our only loyalty is to getting the job done. As such, we are able to hold a mirror up to the reality of our clients’ operations. We look for bottlenecks by asking: Is the commercial strategy working? Is the right team in place? Which markets will deliver the biggest return on investment?
We have a ruthless focus on execution. For example, we helped RPB Index enter a completely new market, brokering renewables as their agent, whilst creating a new brand and mobile app so that they can become known as the predominant renewables broker in EMEA.
Transformation projects are in-depth and last upwards of 12 months. We work in the background, playing second fiddle to our clients and only bringing in specialists as and when they are required.
With an employee or other agency you buy the input, with us you buy the outcome.
4. Beyond the hype: Sustaining growth with our ongoing managed service
If a client wants to maintain the growth ethos after a tactical campaign or a transformation project, we offer an ongoing service where we embed the early wins, and continue to scan the horizon for future growth opportunities. These arrangements typically take the form of a strategic partnership, and although less common than our project work, can succeed with the right relationship, commercial terms and personnel.
And finally, we should say we occasionally part ways with our clients, but usually when their company gets acquired!
Do you want to find out more about how we work?
If our story resonates with you, and you recognise the same struggles regarding growth that we have articulated, you can read more details about our service on our How We Work page.
Or you can book us for a free consultation to discuss your strategy and how we can help you to execute it.
