A meaningful well thought out business plan is probably the most important process for any business to develop, large or small.
Whether you need help in all areas of strategy development or just a specific area, we can help you.
60% of new businesses fail within the first three years.
The common reasons for business failure1 Your business lacks potential customer awareness
2 Your business lacks leadership
3 Your business lacks financial management
Any issue in any category above will mean that your business is failing. |
 |
"I’ve met lots of budding entrepreneurs and business owners when delivering workshops and seminars who have said to me, “I don’t need a business plan, it’s all in my head.” This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Get it down on paper, show it to people you trust, garner opinion…you will be surprised how useful it can be. It doesn’t need to be a huge tome, short statements and bullets are fine.
A meaningful well thought out business plan is probably the most important process for any business to develop, large or small. When created with realism it will deliver the answers to the problems of a business start-up or growing a business.
This should not be underestimated.
If your business is established, you should re-assess the plan on a quarterly basis at least. This will address factors including:
Rob and the team at PVS can help you develop your winning ‘Business Strategy’. Whether you need help in all areas of strategy development or just a specific area, we can help you.
Rob and the team provide training in Sales, Marketing and Bid Management. Coaching provides an opportunity to deliver business training in a ‘hands-on’ way over a longer period of time. Mentoring provides long term guidance in business management.
Good content, either on the web, brochures or in proposals is crucial for the success of your business. Your business will be judged by the standard and quality of your written word. It can be the difference between success and failure. Let PVS help your create great content that will impress your potential customers.
Market AnalysisUnderstanding the market you operate in is crucial to the success of your business. PVS can help you to understand: The market size, competitor activity, competitor pricing, political and economic factors, market growth potential, customer loyalty trends, promotion methods and effectiveness, market segmentation to meet differing customer needs… |
"Be as diligent and realistic as possible…just because you think your idea is good, it may not be!"
|
Market PlanThis is the framework for strategy and all your individual marketing initiatives. We’ll help you devise your: mission statement, pricing, supporting documentation like brochures, website, mailers, promotional activities, advertising activities, performance tracking such as website visits |
"I can really help you get your message over to your target market. You will stand-out from the crowd!"
|
Sales PlanThis is a strategy document detailing how the revenue for the business will be generated, who is responsible and over what time period. We’ll help you: set your sales targets, set individual targets, set performance indicators. We can train your sales people so they can compete in real world competitive environments. |
"If you can’t compete against your competitors’ salespeople, you will fail. Let PVS train your sales team."
|
Financial PlanThis sets out how you will pay for your strategy initiatives. PVS will help you understand what funding is required to meet your business objectives. At start-up this is crucial. When trading, understanding and predicting revenue against costs is fundamental to business longevity. PVS can create the financial plan and management mechanisms needed. |
"The senior management team at PVS are finance experts with an impressive financial background."
|
Management PlanThe management plan sets out your organisational structure and responsibilities. A PVS management plan allows everyone in the organisation to understand their remit and position, who they report to and who reports to them. Defining roles also creates accountability for tracking errors and problems. Overtime, this will ‘fine tune’ your business processes making you more efficient and more profitable. |
"I can help with you develop a structure and personnel roles that will enable you to deliver your goals."
|
InnovationFor businesses to develop and grow, some form of innovation is always required. PVS will help you develop your business over time. Some form of ‘out of the box’ thinking is always required at some point as nothing stays the same. E.g., Markets change, the economic climate changes, legislation changes. These need to be addressed. Plus, you may wish to diversify or acquire. PVS can help you. |
"Keeping one step ahead of your competitors is crucial. I can help you develop innovative strategies."
|
Training, coaching, and mentoring are all tools to enhance the performance of the workforce. PVS Development specialises in enhancing the performance of those involved in promotional business activities. These individuals can be in any position within the company from the managing director down.
PVS Development has developed a number of training courses across several disciplines to enable organisations to improve their performance. The course advantages are:
The candidate’s company will be sent an overall assessment of the candidate’s performance. Recommendations will be made for further development if necessary. The video of role play will be provided.
Interactive tutorials are the basis of the courses and although the courses have a prescribed delivery, tutors expand the opinion and views delivered in response to delegate input. PVS knows that the ‘light bulb moment’ of realising an answer for yourself is the most powerful way to learn. ‘Role play’ sessions are often between the tutors before involving the delegates so that the delegate can see a professional scenario played out.
Each course has a maximum of only 10 delegates* per day as this enables high levels of interactivity between the tutors and the delegate. It is this high level of individual attention that enables the delegate to benefit significantly from these courses.
*Essential Skills in Proposal Writing & Bid Management has a maximum of five delegates.
Each delegate will be individually assessed by the tutors. Assessment mechanisms have been ‘built in’ to the course to allow the tutors to attribute points to elements of the courses. A delegate will accrue points and a final score will be given.
Professional selling skills are the key to successful businesses. Regardless of how good your products/services are or how good your marketing is, if your sales team cannot compete in the commercial arena your business will underperform.
For example, common responses from procurement people include scepticism, indifference, and avoidance, as well as practised negotiating skills. How would you or your team react if you were met with scepticism? Could you recognise the signs, and if you did, could you respond accordingly?
This course has been developed to teach salespeople selling skills in order for them to be prepared for life in a commercial environment and confident in any contact situation. It is a two-day course covering topics such as:
"Our sales team received two separate PVS sales courses. The first was the Essential Selling Skills course which brought all the team to the same level. Although an introductory course even the seasoned professionals found the second day challenging.
Later in the year, the team were put on the Advanced Selling Skills programme. The course is enjoyable, fast paced and really lets you see how the unique techniques can be applied in everyday scenarios, with excellent, fun role play.
Rob is an engaging and knowledgeable trainer, and we would have no hesitation in recommending both Rob and the two courses."
Technological developments are now dramatically changing our way of life with an increasing dependence upon technology. Data is now king and the acquisition and use of data is now the raw material for growth. This data hunger is driven by the new demographic group managing these procurement processes and therefore the way corporations view the world and judge what is beneficial for their organisation.
As salespeople, it is important to recognise these changes and work with methods that align with the way these people operate.
‘Cache Mapping’ is an IT term and refers to stored data being accessed quickly upon a request. A cache hit occurs when the requested data can be found in a cache, while a cache miss occurs when it cannot. Cache hits are served by reading data from the cache.
‘Cache Mapping in Selling’ is a process developed by Rob Rudd in 2017 that enables a salesperson to interact with a modern buyer in a manner that is suitable to this new procurement approach. It is a diagnostic approach in line with the way the modern buyer wants to operate.
In general terms, so called modern selling techniques, such as ‘SPIN,’ SNAP,’ ‘Challenger’ et cetera, are now redundant and do not work because they all involve the attempted manipulation of the buyer. The modern buyer is too aware for these techniques to be universally effective. These ‘sympathy/empathy’ type approaches are at best, condescending and at their worst, patronising.
‘Cache Mapping in Selling’ is the most relevant sales tool available today
The course in brief:
"Rob was brought in to deliver sales training to our development team. Although some members of the team were very experienced and had received training from other organisations in the past, everyone agreed that this course was different. The role play sessions were realistic with many team members feeling the pressure – even though this was role play.
As the managing director, the course results gave me a valuable insight regarding an individual’s ability. Rob’s written assessment of each delegate was very useful.
If you want to ensure your team can do the job, ask Rob to run the course."
This one-day course is designed to help individuals who have a marketing function but maybe fairly new to the business environment and how the individual marketing disciplines integrate within the whole business.
Marketing is a profit initiative. It is this simple statement that is misunderstood, even by large organisations. Organisations maybe viable and growing but an effective marketing plan can significantly increase profitability, which is the ethos of the PVS Group and PVS Development.
This course will help marketers with learning how to conduct thorough market research and identify new trends or ideas that grow sales or enhance product distribution. Marketers learn to communicate clearly and directly, in disciplines such as Product Planning, Sales & Brand Management, Advertising, and Consumer Behaviour.
The key course outcomes include;
"Having worked with Rob, I understand the rationale behind the courses he has created. Rob strives to provide ‘real’ help to organisations in terms of the way they present themselves; and he combines this with proven commercial development skills. The end result is impactful and ultimately successful."
This two-day course focuses on developing the document writing skills of any individual in any department. The course covers the essential elements of impactful and effective writing and will have an immediate effect on your proposal success rate.
The course includes assessment of an existing proposal so that the tutor can tailor the tuition accurately, addressing the actual needs of the delegate. Documentation will be required in advance of the course and although this is not compulsory, it is recommended.
The course is limited to five delegates per course to enable individual assessment and tutoring.
The key elements of the course;
"We received training and coaching from Rob Rudd on effective bid-writing techniques, including how to make sense of pre-qualification questionnaires (PQQ), and invitations to tender (ITT) - not an easy task! Rob was patient and had a thorough process which enabled us to easily understand the requirements and improve our bid-writing and hence success rate. Thoroughly recommend Rob's services."
Marcus Puddy answers some questions on the Coaching and Mentoring delivered by PVS Development…
“The short answer is a trusted counsellor or guide”.
“After many years in corporate life I have had experience of many coaches and mentors. Mentoring normally involves a long-term relationship where the mentor helps you to develop your own business acumen by teaching, offering wisdom through experience, and helping you look at and resolve problems in a different way.
“Coaching is normally delivered over a finite period and specifically targets a trait or lack of skill or experience in a particular business area. It enables you to develop new skills and better your performance in your discipline”
“Firstly, the courage to try something new. Businesses stagnate or even fail due to the key stakeholders’ inability to step out of their comfort zone. PVS will guide you through challenges that seem insurmountable, through discussion, understanding, thought leadership, and helping you develop the pathway to success”
“We are experts in certain business fields. Some mentors set themselves up as all-seeing gurus in every aspect of business. At PVS, we recognise we have certain areas of expertise. Let us know what your problem is, and we will tell you honestly if we can help. We respect your desire to succeed, and we will not jeopardise that yearning.”
“Lastly, we are really good listeners and will enter discussions with no pre-conceived ideas. The dynamics of every problem are different, and we will work hard to ensure a full understanding before entering into any discussion.”
If you think that maybe a mentor or coach can help you, then just drop us an email or give us a call. Let’s have an initial discussion and we’ll take it from there.
The submission of a proposal to a targeted, potential customer can happen at any point during the sales cycle. Usually, your business will have already had several meetings and submitted supporting collateral to drive the sale forward. There is a point however, when a formal proposal is necessary to secure the deal. This is where you need to make sure that it is professional, impactful and encompasses all the information you need to deliver to finalise the contract.
Sounds easy? It is not!
The PVS Development team are experts in all aspects of business and understand the value chain and its intricacies. This is combined with a highly effective knowledge of sales techniques to ensure your proposal stands out from the crowd.
"I had the pleasure of working with Rob on two separate large tender responses. I found Rob easy to work with, but more importantly, his level of knowledge concerning proposal writing is impressive. I wholeheartedly endorse Rob and the PVS Group."
Companies providing bid management services will often say that good bid management is all about understanding your market, your customers, and their needs.
It is not enough!
Successful bid management is about scoring more highly than your competitors on the tender process and that requires a unique skill set.
Rob Rudd is a successful bid manager with countless successes to his name across a range of markets.
If you want to start winning bids, then give Rob a call.
"Over the last couple of years, we have frequently utilised Rob’s bid management expertise to ensure we maximise the market opportunities that we work hard to identify. We all like to think that our proposals are strong, and it is only when you work with Rob do you realise the difference that he can make. Rob and PVS are extremely helpful and easy to work with and integrated well with the Sopp & Sopp team. There is no doubt that our proposals are much stronger leading to a higher success rate so I would not hesitate to recommend Rob and PVS for any bid writing or proposal task."
At PVS Development, we provide high level, impactful content creation in three specific areas:
Writing website copy is totally different to writing proposals or any other type of copy. The web is fast paced and needs to be able to deliver relevant information quickly. It needs to grab the reader whilst delivering your value proposition. ‘Selling in print’ is probably the best way to describe good website copy.
Take look at www.mediafleet.co.uk
PVS Development can help you with your website copy…call Rob for an initial discussion.
The first thing to note about articles and blogs is that they aren’t easy to write. They are research intensive and need to be impactful. That’s why 68% of B2B businesses choose to outsource their content creation.
Talk to PVS Development about outsourcing your content marketing agenda and collateral.
If you’ve got something interesting to say, or an opinion you need to get out there…talk to Rob about the next steps.
Brochures are important. These are the bits of paper or card that sit on desks and act as a reminder of your company and services. They are nice to hold and should be pleasing to the eye. They need to grab your attention and deliver your proposition clearly delivering features, advantages, and benefits. All this whilst being clear and impactful…and don’t forget the ‘call to action.’ They are not old fashioned; they are relevant and can act as a salesperson when you’re not there. Let’s get it right.
Talk to Rob about your brochure copy and we have designers we work with that can help with design and graphics.
01278 550270 |
|
PVS Ltd Office Unit 11i Mill Batch Farm East Brent Highbridge Somerset TA9 4JN |
