The Opportunity

This audit firm, which serves multinational Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies in their trading with the major supermarket chains in the UK, saw growth via existing clients stagnating in the wake of a protracted management buyout.

My Role

  • Following a referral, engaged firm’s new leadership with proposal for strategy development to:

    • Drive customer acquisition & generate new revenues (in the millions of £s)

    • Allocate marketing resources in a controlled, systematic & coherent manner

  • Conducted interviews with firm’s customers (CFOs & CCOs), Directors & advisors to assess current offering / future needs & discover new opportunities to grasp competitive advantage by transforming how firm nurtures impactful interactions with enterprise

  • Reviewed market intelligence to identify thematic drivers influencing provision of its audit services to FMCG companies as well as other sectors offering paths to growth

  • Drafted stakeholder map of clients, prospects, trade bodies, regulators, media & other intermediaries

  • Analysed competitors & alternative providers focused on supply chain optimisation

  • Explored product innovation to emphasise data & tech-related capabilities (e.g. audit opportunities arising from AI & Blockchain analytics tools that enterprise customers are applying to automate payments & verify traceability / sustainability)

Results

  • Set out sales & marketing strategy for FY 2024/25 codifying: objectives; target audiences; messaging; KPIs; plus process / workflows for delivery of integrated activities designed to cultivate new relationships, additional revenues & enhance firm’s reputation

  • Shaped brief, to which several digital / communications agencies responded, guiding process through which company is contractually engaging external marketing suppliers as it invests its most significant spend to date to enhance & implement its strategy to drive sales

  • Deeper & more meaningful segmentation & targeting of firm’s addressable market now enabling it to reach hundreds of new, and more engaged, prospects, faster

  • Firm now better positioned to more effectively:

    • Build insight-led relationships with prospect companies’ finance, sales & legal / compliance teams

    • Leverage social, digital & traditional channels

    • Track & measure performance of all sales engagement activities

    • Improve client experience in order not just to retain existing customers but also develop multi-engagement relationships

    • Establish partnerships with trade bodies to help nurture new relationships