Following ECI winning the PEI Operational Excellence Award for CPOMS last year, Duncan Ramsay recently joined the PEI Operating Partners Forum to discuss why CPOMS is such a great case study and how ECI supported the business during our investment.
Q: What was key to supporting CPOMS deliver on its potential?
I mean to start with, CPOMS was and is an absolutely fantastic business. It supports schools in one of their most important responsibilities: safeguarding. Through its software it can highlight patterns and enable intervention, in ways that wouldn’t be possible through traditional paper-based systems. So, it has an important role in protecting vulnerable children.
The most significant thing strategically was driving penetration of schools. They had a great product, it was more about how do we give more people access to it. That would mean better penetration of UK schools, but also increasing the size of the addressable market. To support those future aspirations, we knew they would also need more investment in the people and infrastructure in the business.
Q: How important was data and analytics to those three strategic aims you mentioned?
We knew that CPOMS wanted to better penetrate the UK market, so we leveraged our advanced analytics skillset to support that. We built an AI machine learning model that would help the business to understand which non-customers were most likely to convert to a customer within the near term. That meant building out characteristics of what was likely to make a school a CPOMS customer, using that to prioritise all non-customer schools, and mapping it into a dashboard to make the insight actionable for sales teams. The team successfully doubled its penetration of English schools while we were supporting them.
Q: How did CPOMS increase its addressable market during the investment period?
We always recognised that international markets could present a significant opportunity for CPOMS, and this was one of the ways the business increased its addressable market. At the start of the investment period. we prioritised from a long list of potential markets looking at things like safeguarding environment, procurement dynamics and competitive landscape. That led to detailed deep dives into Canada and the US, including a c.400 respondent survey, and c.30 telephone interviews with decision makers in each market. Brett Pentz in our New York office did a lot of work digging down into the characteristics of North American school districts, and doing outreach to decision makers, which led to demand from a number of schools. By exit, CPOMS grew to have >150 international schools spread across 30 countries, and it was clear that further international growth was going to be a big growth driver for the next phase of the business’ development. It is great to see that being delivered into with the business’ new owner, Raptor Technologies growing it into the US.
Q: In order to deliver that scale, what changed in the business?
We supported the team in investing in their platform to support that growth. There were improvements in the tech and operational processes, team structure was scaled, and new product capability was introduced. To support the management team, ECI introduced a chairman and a Finance Director. CPOMS is a fantastic Tech for Good business, and we helped them to articulate that (already strong) ESG story better. The business consistently delivered strong double-digit growth, so this was a case of making sure they had the platform to continue to do that during our investment and beyond.
Q: What was your favourite thing about working on the CPOMS investment?
I really enjoyed playing a part in their journey – and I know the rest of the ECI team feel the same way. CPOMS is just a great business. It is a fantastic team and just a great product that fundamentally changes people’s lives. Businesses like CPOMS are what makes my job so enjoyable; it is great to see a small UK family business go on a journey to become a global leader, creating jobs in its community, and value for shareholders, all while making the world a better place, through its focus on keeping children safe. I’m excited to continue to see them grow, and protect even more children, as part of Raptor, and have no doubt they will go on to every success.
Insights
24/05/2023
Read Time: Min
Q&A: Operational Excellence at CPOMS
In our latest episode of ECI's podcast, Building Successful Businesses., we chat with Colin Tenwick about turning around dot.com failure. StepStone and what it taught him about business transformation.
Listen to Episode 2.2:
Available on Apple Podcasts:
Transcript:
Fiona: Colin Tenwick took his first CEO role to turn around dot.com failure, StepStone. I ask him what that process of transformation taught him about business and how it impacts his approach to decision-making today.
Colin: If I go back to look at StepStone, you know, that was my first CEO gig. Probably no other person would've taken it on because reputationally the business was bankrupt, it was pretty much dead in the water. So for me, the decision to get involved in that was very much wanting to say, well, okay, what's the downside here? I spoke to a number of colleagues, I also spoke to a number of headhunters in the marketplace, and their view was, "Well, Colin, everybody thinks this business is dead. So, if you actually can turn it around, then it's going to be really quite remarkable.” And is it going to cause long-lasting… “No, it won't cause long-lasting damage." So, for me, reputation was important, and being able to forge a reputation in terms of turnaround.
Now, the thing that struck me was pace. You have got to move very, very quickly. You have to be very decisive, and you have to be in a situation where you're prepared to make a decision without having all the full information. When a business is bleeding that much and is literally on the verge of calling in the receivers, then you've got to move quickly. You have got to be able to have very quick support from a few people, financial backers, shareholders, or whatever. Very painfully that can be devastating and damaging for existing shareholders. But then what you realise, and this is the, I suppose one of the key things I take with me, is that you can do a hell of a lot in terms of restructuring a business without that business falling over. You can always do more, cut more, cut back more, and more aggressively earlier on.
Everybody says that they wish they'd done things deeper, sooner, etc. But the reality is you can actually do that to a business, and you can then start to rebuild. And the key thing then becomes do you have enough cash runway to start to execute the pivot of the restructuring. You know, we cut loose hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of employees, it was awful, I mean, absolutely awful. But it wasn't me or the shareholders' responsibility for that. It was the response of the prior owners, of prior management, who had got the business into that perspective. So you have got to have a bit of a thick skin. You've got to be clear in terms of demonstrating the vision, what you're trying to achieve, and being ultra-transparent with everybody. I think that's the other thing, people will put up with a hell of a lot if they believe that you are being open, fair, and transparent. As you know, we then built the business back, scaled the business and successfully sold it.
Fiona: It sounds like a bit of a baptism of fire as your first CEO role.
Colin: Oh, I mean, it really was. But, you know, when you look back on it, what we actually achieved there was pretty much an A to Z of restructuring and running a public company and keeping it public. But it was a classic dot.com situation. We could see, I think, you know, some parallels today with overvalued businesses, overscaled, too fat, not focused on the core things that are important, etc.
Fiona: In terms of that role as CEO, it sounds like, you know, setting vision, running at pace, very hands-on. How did you then find the transition when you went from CEO roles to chair? Because that's often very different. You're obviously one step removed. Have you developed effective strategies for becoming a good chair?
Colin: What's important, and somebody gave this a piece of advice, is if you want to be a good chairman or NED, it's absolutely critical that you've scratched the itch of being a CEO. There is nothing worse for a CEO than having a chairman that wants to be a CEO. And there's nothing worse for the board of having somebody that thinks they want to be a CEO. So, that was a very good piece of advice.
The second thing, I was very fortunate having a guy called Jan Stenberg as my chairman at StepStone. Jan was one of the most…sadly, he's no longer around, but he was one of the most experienced Scandinavian businessmen. He was CEO of SAS Airlines, he was a president of Ericsson, and a very experienced man. I worked with him for a number of years, and he was always fair, tough, and supportive to the point when he said, I wouldn't be supportive type of thing. So transparent, open, but a really, really good chairman for me to work with. I think, again, when you look back at your experiences, they are things you pick up. And then you figure out are they things I can work with? Does my personality allow me to do that? I'm not, but life is all about, I think observing and figuring out, are there techniques and things here that work for you and work for the businesses you're involved in.
Fiona: Colin Tenwick there, discussing the art of the possible when it comes to business transformation, as well as the strategies to being a good chair. In our next episode, we discuss taking tech companies overseas and how to build a successful digital marketplace.
Listen to the next episode here:
Podcast
17/05/2023
Fiona Moore
Read Time: Min
ECI podcast ‘Building Successful Businesses’ EP2 with Colin Tenwick, ex-CEO of StepStone and serial PE Chair
Mental wellness is high on the agenda for company leaders these days, thanks to a new culture of openness in discussing mental health. Ensuring all team members are supported, and fostering a culture to ensure happiness and wellbeing, can take up a lot of C-suite time and attention, and rightly so. But who looks after the leaders? With Mental Health Awareness Week from 15-21 May, we talked to some of our portfolio management teams to gain their tips on how C-Suite Execs can avoid burn out.
Joanna Swash is Group CEO of Moneypenny, a global leader in outsourced communications. Joanna had a meteoric rise since she was recruited as Moneypenny’s first salesperson in 2005, and today she manages a business that has grown to employ more than 1,200 people, and that has become a leader in telephone answering, live chat and outsourced communications across the UK and the US. Achieving this success has not been without some challenges for Joanna, who has also observed the pressures felt by leaders of many of Moneypenny’s 21,000 businesses clients in the UK and US, which range from large corporates and Magic Circle law firms to estate agents, vets and small businesses and everything in between.
Joanna comments: "Everyone expects business leaders to be invincible, and in this country, there can still be the belief that if you are in charge, you need to maintain a stiff upper lip and get on with it and that stress is surely part of the deal? However, we all need to remember that business leaders can also suffer from the same anxieties experienced across all levels, if not more so, as they carry a weight of responsibility. And this is on top of the usual business worries about making a profit, hitting growth targets, managing headcounts and more, so I think business leaders also need to take the time to think about their own mental wellbeing and to nurture it like looking after a plant – watering little and often."
Naz Dossa, CEO of Peoplesafe, the world’s largest provider of personal safety technology, started his career in banking and has held numerous leadership positions across the Telecoms and IT sectors. He comments: "As the saying goes, ‘it can be lonely at the top’, so when faced with the pressures of the role, there isn’t always someone to share those experiences with. That’s why it’s essential to have a good Chair and senior team around you, where you can have open conversations about the challenges facing the business. Connecting with the team beyond work is also important, as it makes it easier to be open and recognise in each other the symptoms of burnout and talk openly about that. As well as this, one of the main tips is to make sure that there is always time in the week to fully switch off and be away from work. For me, having a hobby or two that helps to destress has been key to that."
Here are a series of tips from the leaders ECI spoke to on managing stress and avoiding burnout:
- If I were to write a letter to my 20-something self I would say: ‘Be bold and be kind to yourself. Remember that if you work at Ferrari pace, then you should also have Ferrari brakes - know when to stop and when to have some fun.'
- Admit when you need help. No one is perfect, and no one knows everything. It is not a weakness it is a strength to be able to admit this. There is no space for the ego leader and your mental wellbeing will suffer if you try to be one.
- Don’t be ‘always on’. We talk a lot about availability and making sure businesses are open when clients need them, but when you think of senior leaders, there is value in being unavailable too. You need to ring-fence time for quiet head down working that is so important to productivity and to achieving a feeling of accomplishment and control. Also, it’s a good idea to simply ‘switch off’ devices for 15 minutes each day.
- No individual is an island. Self-belief is a choice, and with it, anything is possible. Believe and trust yourself. People generally want you to succeed. Be realistic but optimistic, surround yourself with a great team and lean on them when you need to.
- Create your own path. Burnout happens when you feel you are out of control, with no choices available to change things. There are always choices, and it can help to share decisions when you feel you can’t see the wood for the trees.
- Independent support can be hugely helpful too, so pour out your worries to a friend or a non-exec you can trust, over a pint or a glass of wine in the pub, or during a dog walk. They are bound to have a different, and even an unexpected, perspective on things.
- Take a break. On a day-to-day level I’m a big advocate of the power of walking – just a 10-minute walk outside in the fresh air gives me renewed energy to come back and face a difficult brief or something tricky.
- Bury your pride. It’s really important to keep talking and not internalise problems, as this is the key to managing mental health. Try to spot any problems and deal with them before they escalate, and don’t be afraid to seek professional help if you need it.
David Ewing, Managing Partner at ECI Partners, comments: “When you’re operating in a fast-paced environment, as so many C-suite are, it can be very easy to put your mental health on the backburner while you tackle the day-to-day. Investing in your well-being is valuable time spent, whether it’s talking openly about stress with those around you or ensuring you have something which helps you to switch off. As your business evolves, you will need to develop new tactics as it scales to ensure you not only grow with your business, but that you enjoy the journey and take your colleagues with you.”
Insights
12/05/2023
David Ewing
Read Time: Min
Top tips for C-Suite execs on managing burnout
Succession planning is a crucial aspect of any business, yet more than half (55%) of business leaders in the UK do not have a succession plan in place, according to ECI’s research. As the British royal family prepares for the coronation of King Charles this weekend, we take a look at our top tips to plan for future leadership:
1. Start planning early
While from birth may be a little too early for most businesses, it’s important not to wait until your CEO is about to leave before thinking about succession. Having a plan in place well in advance will ensure a smooth transition and give you time to identify the right successor and ensure they are embedded in the values of your business.
2. Plan for leadership progression
To retain the best talent, create a clear path for leadership progression. Identify potential candidates early and help to coach them in management, vision-setting and, if needed, cutting ribbons - so they are fully equipped for when the time comes.
3. Have open and honest conversations
Communication is key when it comes to succession planning. Be transparent with your leadership team and involve them in the process. Discuss potential successors and any ideas for future involvement in the business, for example as a Non-Exec. Succession isn’t a dirty word, and the more involvement from key stakeholders the more buy-in there will be if and when it happens.
4. Consider culture
A change in leadership can impact company culture. How will a new head of a company view relationships with customers, and how will they involve and empower the senior team? Just as the ‘The Firm’ will be impacted by Charles’ vision of a new ‘slimmed down’ monarchy, so will any company be impacted by the vision of a new leader. You have the opportunity to choose a successor, so ensure that they are compatible with your existing values and culture but can use the transition as an opportunity to evolve the culture to meet a changing world and new demographics.
5. Put the plan in succession planning
Don’t underestimate the importance of a defined plan for succession. The last century showed us that events that could rock the royal family, such as death or abdication, don’t cause significant disruption due to meticulous planning for all eventualities. Having a proper succession plan in place ensures the stability and future success of your business beyond the current CEO. Don't forget about it amidst other planning for your business.
Insights
04/05/2023
Read Time: Min
Top five tips for effective succession
As part of our ECI Unlocked programme, Chris Ginnelly, ECI’s Growth Specialist for Sales & Marketing, recently shared his top secrets for driving growth in existing accounts. Tracy Ellison, Chief Customer Officer, also shared her experience of effectively transitioning to cross-sell at Ciphr.
Why is existing account growth so hard? Most companies serve and service customers well, but often it is the Account Managers, whose primary role is client service, that are now taking on the role of upsell and cross-sell. Companies can find it hard to manage Net Promotor Score, deliver great service and take on the additional selling responsibility. AMs are also often managing the account with a different contact person to the original buyer, so cross-sell means getting out of operational delivery, finding a new buying point and building a compelling proposition for them.
Often companies have sound goals but don’t know the right tactics to achieve them. If AMs aren’t taught the same processes and behaviours as new business teams, they’re put at a disadvantage. Here are five ingredients that Chris believes can help companies to deliver on those goals:
1. Conversational pain-based value propositions
If you were to ask AMs to demonstrate how they open up a conversation with a customer about a product or service they’re responsible for, what would you get? Would it be consistent, and would they know what to say?
There are some things we would hope to hear. The first is that they don’t start pitching, but instead open a conversation and test for common pains and challenges. Finding the pain point gives you an opportunity to understand if it makes sense to talk about the product at all. It also starts the discussion by focussing on addressing their challenges, making the conversation about them and not you.
People buy emotionally, they justify intellectually. That’s why a pitch shouldn’t be about your product or company. It’s also why it’s different for each customer, as they will have different reasons to buy.
Sometimes AMs can worry about pressuring people into buying products they don’t want. But if they’re testing for issues and just helping to solve them, a new sale should always be pressure-free.
2. Culture of accountability
Your team should be clear on their cross-sell and up-sell goals at an individual level and understand the weekly behaviours needed to achieve them. Often people have the goals, but not the input behaviours that lead to the outputs.
The way to achieve this is to back-cast, not just forecast. From the goal, look at what was achieved to get there. If you need x many deals, how many proposals do you need, and how many conversations drive that? This gives people digestible goals directly related to targets. And to make this work you also need a sales management process to hold people to account for achieving them.
3. Coaching competence
How much time do line managers spend coaching people as a percentage of their working week? The feedback from the group in the Unlocked session was clear: not enough. Top performing leaders spend c.40% of their time, but that’s very rare, despite it being one of their most important tasks. This is reflected in the fact that only 43% of sales managers say they have effective training prior to taking up the role. [1]
Coaching isn’t the same as training or pipeline conversations. It’s dedicated time to helping individuals improve their pitch. Account reviews should be observed, and line managers should feel comfortable demonstrating how to open conversations in front of salespeople and help them lift their performance. Call recording tools like Gong provide a great methodology for observing sales interactions systematically and helping AMs get better at winning business.
Jack Welch at General Electric ensured his approach was all about follow-ups. He believed that one of the key reasons his teams delivered high performance was because everyone knew that he would follow up and confirm that what had been changed or implemented had been done and achieved the desired outcome. Just as you do with customers, once you have a coaching session, put in a follow-up to understand how it’s gone, what’s worked and what might need some more time.
4. Right people, right seats
Job descriptions should constantly evolve, but they tend to stay static after the point of hiring. If people have been moved into cross-sell, or you are expecting more cross-sell from your AMs, the skills and competencies you now need may need to be reassessed. For example, do you need more resilience? More initiative, more desire, better questioning?
You can define these skills and competencies to assess the team, and understand what’s missing and needs training. It may mean some people aren’t right for the ‘new’ role and change is needed. Some AMs may be good at delivery but less interested in finding new buying opportunities. Getting an honest assessment of those skills and attitudes is key.
Tracy Ellison, Chief Customer Officer at Ciphr, transitioned their customer service team to support upsell. She was delighted by the enthusiasm she saw, her role was to re-think the org design for the right roles and profiles. They used psychometric profiles to understand the skills they had in the existing team and allocated accordingly and coached people to fill in the missing skills gaps.
5. Sales skills
It’s important to have a gated sales process with the key steps needed to open, qualify, develop and close. Sales is a performance role. Whereas other performance roles, like actors, practice constantly, it’s rare to find a sales team with a strong practice culture. Chris saw that working with Ciphr, the phrases, questions and talk tracks he used were practiced and picked up by the team. Practicing is a great way to embed conversational tools, integrating the new approach with their personal styles to ensure that everyone retains their authenticity.
Some AMs worry about the ethics of selling, as they don’t see themselves as salespeople. If they understand pain-based value propositions and know how to use them, they will see that all selling should be ethical. It should open conversations and make people more comfortable and confident in how they sell. Tracy at Ciphr said that a real builder of confidence was ensuring the team had the right toolkit to answer and respond to questions in a way that uncovered the truth behind the question and reduced the temptation to jump in enthusiastically but too early, or defend and justify before truly understanding the issues. Fear of not knowing the right answer or how to answer can hold people back.
Understanding the sales process and the buying process can also help you to map the skills your team needs. By simply observing your team and exploring through practice and discussion; skill gaps can be identified and therefore form the foundation of your training and coaching programme.
Driving cross-sell and up-sell is an important source of growth for many companies, getting a systematic process in place and treating AMs a little more like you might new business winners is definitely a big part of the answer.
[1] Survey done by the Sandler Research Centre
Insights
03/05/2023
Chris Ginnelly
Read Time: Min
5 ingredients for driving growth in existing accounts
CSL, the leading European provider of critical IoT connectivity, has been selected to work alongside Vodafone to deliver managed IoT services that will underpin the rollout of connectivity for the fourth National Lottery Licence. The new 10-year licence was awarded to Allwyn UK and will become effective from February 2024.
The initial 12-month period will see CSL deploying both fixed and mobile-managed IoT connectivity services to provide retailers with the solutions they need to grow their own businesses and support Allwyn UK to reinvigorate the UK National Lottery so that it can continue to raise funds for good causes.
CSL manages c.3 million IoT endpoints for business and mission critical applications across Europe and has over 25 years of experience in providing reliable and secure connectivity solutions. Its dedicated project team will work alongside Vodafone throughout the planning, delivery, and in-life phases, throughout the full term of this nationwide project.
News
27/04/2023
Read Time: Min
CSL is selected by Vodafone as UK National Lottery Partner
In our latest episode of ECI's podcast, Building Successful Businesses., we chat with Colin Tenwick ex-CEO of Stepstone and Bookatable, to discuss what he learned working through different eras of tech, and the importance of not recruiting a board in your own image.
Listen to Episode 2.1:
Available on Apple Podcasts:
Transcript:
Fiona: Welcome to ECI's podcast, Building Successful Businesses where we chat to business leaders about the building blocks of their success, and the lessons they've learned on the way. I'm Fiona Moore, and today I'm welcomed by Colin Tenwick, a prolific chair, and non-exec, notably working with ECI at Auction Technology Group, which followed a career including CEO roles at the likes of StepStone and Bookatable. Colin, welcome! There are so many more companies I could have named, but I think it would've taken the whole podcast.
Colin: Well thanks for that, hopefully not, but yes, thanks for that. When you've had as many years in tech as I have, at the end of the day, I suppose, you're going to have a few companies under your belt.
Fiona: If we go right back to the start of that career, prior to your CEO roles, what was your first ever job, and what did you learn from it?
Colin: My first ever job, I was with IBM as a graduate. I joined IBM down in Havant in Portsmouth, where they manufactured mainframes. I was working with them in engineering procurement. I did a degree in business, but I was in engineering procurement as a graduate trainee, and very, very rapidly realised that I wanted to go into the more commercial side.
That wasn't going to happen with IBM. They really did want me to stay with them. So, I moved to a bureau, one of the very first computer bureaus in the City of London in Berkeley Square, servicing the advertising industry. Really, you know, what we've seen with today's SaaS environments is that almost the whole thing has come full circle. In those days, however, all the expense in IT was the hardware, and you gave the software away, and now it's the other way around. So, it’s interesting.
Fiona: And what did that background teach you about tech?
Colin: I've been very fortunate to have worked through many, many different phases of technology, very much the leading edge throughout the last 25-30 years. There are some key things. Some of the key things you see are, you know, the customer is absolutely critical. Having really, really smart people around you and being able to dream the possible and sometimes deliver it. But back in those early days, again, very bright, smart, can-do international-focused people who were really at the forefront of bringing some technology to the UK at that time. It was a US company that was then coming to the UK.
Fiona: That sense of the customer being absolutely critical, it's something we hear a lot from experienced CEOs. That's something they've definitely taken to heart and is normally why their businesses are so successful. When you think about your journey from that role to then becoming a CEO, was that something you already knew? Did you find the transition very easy, or was that something you had to learn?
Colin: I think there was increasingly for me a recognition that I had a number of senior roles with US-based software businesses, which were very fast growth, very aggressive, very ambitious, running European operations, opening up new markets. But at the end of the day, you were a glorified sales and marketing director. So, whatever the title was, General Manager Europe or whatever, the reality is a lot of the things that you do as a CEO, which is actually all parts of the journey, including product, finance, HR, etc. All those other key parts really were missing in those roles. So, I reached the position where it was a case of, if you want to make the step to being a CEO, you've actually got to step off this particular train, which was incredibly successful, and from a job satisfaction perspective, incredibly interesting. And instead, start putting into practice a lot of the things that perhaps you thought you wanted to do if you had influence over, and the ability to look at the much broader sense that the CEO should do.
Fiona: And was that an easy transition, I suppose, when you know what you're doing, and you've got quite a clear remit to suddenly then sort of like you say, having ownership over products, but also people. Was that something you found quite straightforward?
Colin: I think the thing I found straightforward was that you know, don't think that you can be the expert in everything because you're not. So, then it comes down to how do you encourage, work with, attract the very, very best talent, you know, the best finance director, the best chief people officer, the best head of technology that you possibly can. And your job increasingly becomes then the orchestrator, the conductor. How can you bring value to these people? So, and the other thing which I see too many times actually now as I've been chairman now for another year, don't be afraid to recruit people who are vastly different to yourself. Because the reality is not everybody can be in the same image, have the same skillsets, or indeed the same sort of habits that you do. In fact, the last thing you want is a bench where everybody's exactly the same. So, what you've got to do is you've really got to be quite open to recognising that the job here is about attracting the best skillsets for those individuals, and they will have different motivations and different requirements
Fiona: It can be quite a difficult process there because I think lots of people recognise the importance of that diversity of thought, especially around the board table. But our natural inclination is if someone sounds like us, they've got a similar way of approaching business to us, we go, that's great. They seem fantastic. Is that something that you've had to deliberately switch in your mind to try and actually not find people who work and operate just like you?
Colin: I think initially that was the case. I don't think now, but it is definitely an issue that I think first-time CEOs, and senior execs in roles, need to be very, very conscious of. And actually, the worst people are the sales and marketing people because they always seem to recruit in their image. So, it's quite interesting that you do, I think, have to make sure that you understand what is that you're trying to do. Understand what the skillsets that you need are. Don't lose that intuitive feel because that intuitive feel is absolutely critical, but you should also have the checks and balances in place.
Fiona: I wonder why you think sales and marketing people are more likely to hire in their own image?
Colin: I've always found salespeople just love being sold to.
Fiona: Yeah.
Colin: They don't have a great sort of cynical view in them in which they should do. So, yeah, it's an interesting one.
Fiona: And obviously starting out in sales, quite a lot of I guess a big part of the growth in tech businesses is that sales side. Do you think that's changing? Do you think life's getting harder or easier for tech businesses now when it comes to selling?
Colin: I think the routes to market today are vastly different to the ones which were in place let's say 30-35 years ago. In those days it was pretty much Route 101. You know, you recruited salespeople, they carried a bag, they carried a quota, and if you were lucky marketing-generated leads for them to work on and there were sort of events to go to, etc. And don't get me wrong, that still plays a very important role, but it was pretty much the only route. Then we started to see the emergence really of channels, value-added resellers, and value-added distributors. So, that brought a whole new game, and a whole new set of responsibilities, and requires for a company to actually work with the channel, and so, we saw that evolve. Then we've seen how direct-to-consumer marketplaces have evolved.
So, the channels open to businesses today are so vastly different that it's important that the commercial side of the organisation understands what is the right one for them at the right time, and understanding what the various trade-offs are because they're all trade-offs. And depending on the size of business, you know, those trade-offs can be critical. If you get the trade-off wrong, then it's going to stumble your growth, and you lose market share. So, it's a much more complex environment today. That said and done, successful businesses today that I think have got that clarity and that real core focus can be extraordinarily successful very quickly.
Fiona: Really interesting to hear Colin Tenwick there discussing his own varied route to tech CEO, especially the importance of diversity and talent and skillsets in order to be successful. In the next episode, we discuss turning around a .com failure and the importance of scratching the itch of a CEO role.
Listen to the next episode here:
Podcast
27/04/2023
Fiona Moore
Read Time: Min
ECI podcast ‘Building Successful Businesses’ EP1 with Colin Tenwick, ex-CEO of StepStone and serial PE Chair
We're delighted that ECI has won the UK Mid-cap House of the Year at last night's Real Deals Private Equity Awards. The award recognised ECI's year of exceptional results, with 7 exits, generating an average return of 4.2x gross MOIC and c.60% gross IRR. The judges also assessed the continued evolution of the nominees, with ECI investing in its own team and capabilities to further improve the support we can offer to the management teams we partner with.
ECI Managing Partner, Tom Wrenn, also won the award for Private Equity Investment Leader of the Year. This award is designed to recognise private equity investors who have made an outstanding contribution to their firm, their LPs, and their portfolio companies. Huge congratulations to Tom on this well-deserved recognition.