New Industries, New Challenges
It didn't take me long before I started to feel that I should be doing more than enjoying the sunshine and spending money. In fact, I lasted 2 weeks before I started to offer friends a hand with thier businesses and started to pitch in with the family business again. What I really needed though was a real challenge.
A role that would test me again.
ZEAG UK
Compared to the roles that I had held before, ZEAG was very different and could not have been a better fit with my needs.
-
It was in a totally different industry than I had previously been involved in.
-
ZEAG is an international engineering company with a focus on security and access control technologies.
-
It was owned by a venture capitalist group and led by a salaried MD in the UK and subject to directives from Head Office in Switzerland, as opposed to being owner-managed with direct lines of close communication to the ultimate stakeholders.
-
The client base was mostly public sector, facilities managers, landlords and construction.
-
The company was contracting at the time that I joined and continued to shrink throughout my time there, where I had enjoyed environments where there was fast expansion.
-
ZEAG was an engineering company, as opposed to the sales and marketing companies that I had grown accustomed to.
-
The requirement was for business to business sales with a the majority of business subject to a tender process, as opposed to the comsumer sales that I had been engaged in for the previous 6 years.
It really was the fresh start and learning curve that I was looking for.
There was still a lot of experience to draw upon.
-
Experience of complicated and drawn-out bid processes at Delphi Information.
-
Specification Sales as part of the Delphi sales process
-
Ability to read and interpret construction blueprints learned at Atlas and Best of Cyprus.
-
Consultative sales style developed at Atlas.
-
The ease of starting conversations with senior decision-makers.
-
The ability to find issues that are important to the person I am speaking to.
-
The drive to learn my subject inside and out right the way down to the core technical principles.
-
A highly developed sense of empathy required to engage stakeholders and ultimate decision-makers.
These enabled me to meet my daily targets for identifying new opportunities and securing appointments for the field sales team.
I later added more skills through the internal and external courses that ZEAG offered as part of their Sales Development Academy:
-
SPIN Selling
-
Key Account Management,
-
Account Strategy
-
Leadership Skills
-
Strategic Selling
-
Negotiation Skills
-
Bid and Tender Management
Making This New Role My Own
What Did I learn?
Local Authority Tenders
VC Ownership Structure
Engineering Based Business
Capital Projects
Capital Equipment Sales
Use of Business Intelligence
Public Sector Bids
Public Sector Contracts
Selling To Construction
Selling To Specifiers
Bid Formulation
Bid Presentation
Identifying Projects
Illiciting ITTs (Invitations To Tender)
SPIN
KAM (Key Account Management) Practices
Strategic Selling
TAS (Target Account Strategy)
TAA (Target Account Acquisition)
Civil Engineering
Security Technologies
CCTV
Access Control
Biometric Readers
ANPR
Security Barriers
Automated Bollards
Road Blockers
Vehicle Access Control
Product Research
Security Solution Design
Due to my success in developing new business leads, my targets were raised and was provided with access to an industry-leading intelligence source.
I could find the details of any construction project and solicit an invitation to tender or even bypass the tender process altogether.
The volume and quality of projects that I could access jumped and I started to create inroads with key specifiers and even influence the inclusion of our products into the specifications of the projects.
Using this influence, I could even offer to help to design the security solutions required in a variety of new construction projects including a new court building, corporate headquarters, schools, shopping centres and residential developments.
The average order values for our security division jumped from under £3,000, consisting of basic components to £120,000, utilising much more of our product range.
The highest project value was estimated at over £500,000 and required almost every type of security product that we could provide and was with one of the most prestigious architectural firms in the world who really wanted us to supply and install the solutions for their project.
I started to target specific organisations in order to build a portfolio of projects that would lead to larger contracts and sales on an ongoing basis. This strategy was designed to grow our reputation and volume of work from industry-leading contacts.
My standing with my colleagues was also rising...
The Sales Director and Product Manager would often request my assistance with Bid and Tender submissions and this became a regular part of my role, especially when deadlines were critical.
Around 3 months after starting this role, the Managing Director started to invite me to management strategy meetings where I was able to contribute to the direction of the company.
Bidding For London 2012
We celebrated the announcement of London as the winning city for the 2012 Olympics as this meant that we could start to proactively work on securing as much of the contracts as possible.
I developed my own version of a TAS (Target Account Strategy) for this very scenario.
What this meant is that I would start to find projects that the key commissioning organisations and contractors were already involved in and start get ourselves invited to contribute.
The idea behind this is that this short-term strategy delivers a body of work with each key organisation that puts us in strong position when the various Olympic contracts are released.