Nick’s business experience
I have always been a driven, commercial minded sales leader and has been the head of sales in the UK and further afield for a number blue chip international businesses within a diverse range of sectors. Starting my career over 25 years ago, I led teams from transactional relationships to strategic supplier positions, from technical long cycle sales processes and shorter FMCG sales cycles, across numerous sectors and markets. My mantra throughout my career has always been make your customer centric to your business and delivering stakeholder value is delivered through longer term, mutually beneficial commercial relationships. Not many commercial people will tell you they have lost deals in sales but they have, don’t fooled. I have learnt a lot from the deals I have lost, take the learning from the loss and turn it around, so it doesn’t happen again.
Five questions, five answers…
What has been your most pivotal moment in business?
The realisation that to make a step change in performance, it need only start with a very small change, it’s the compound effect of those small changes. To many businesses are stuck in a monotonous rut, of that’s the way it’s always been done, we can’t or don’t want to change. In this fast past world we live in, get onto your front foot, because if you don’t, somebody else will tread on it.
If you could send a text to yourself the day you started out in business what would it say?
Stop, sit down, take a moment or two, you have earned this.
Who has been your biggest inspiration and why?
My sports teacher Brian Ashley. I was never the best, never the first to be picked but never the last either. Brian, used to always say, you can pick the best players, fastest runners first if you want, but its still a team sport. 40 years on, it makes me laugh when you see football teams, chasing 1 player because they are best in the world or their position, but they represent only 9% of the team on the pitch. Its a team sport for a reason.
What book should all business owners read?
Its an old classic, very short, but gets the point across – Who moved my cheese.
What is your favourite quote?
Constant change is hear to stay’ the source is unknown, but it has stayed with me since my teens. The rate of change is only ever getting faster.