1 YEAR - 5 CUSTOMERS - £3M IMPACT - AVG 20% SAVINGS

It has been 1 year since I joined Insider Pro Ltd and I can safely say it has been the best decision of my career so far.

I remember receiving advice from colleagues, my professional network and family that it would be unwise to give up a secure senior position in a large blue chip corporation and move to a boutique consultancy. Yet here I am today with a huge smile on my face due to my current lifestyle and my achievements to date.

£3m impact to my customers within the first year is more than I could ever have imagined and I didn’t have to reach ‘burn out’ to achieve it!

It has not all been ‘swings and smiles’ though. It has been a roller coaster of emotions due to the steep learning curve in switching from a corporate environment to an entrepreneurial one. However, regardless of the high and lows I have always had the support of my ‘Insider family’ when times felt tough.

My first 3 – 6 months were the toughest and a real baptism of fire. Yet once I had discovered the characteristics needed to be successful, I made sure I focussed on those and enhanced them as quickly as possible.

I can summarise those characteristics specifically as:

Be Inquisitive

• To discover the true needs of the customer you have to ask deep questions otherwise you will never find their ‘Why’.
• To match the right supplier to the customer you need to really understand what is happening in the suppliers’ realm. Have they recently lost / won a big account? Are they on track for their growth projection? Have they significantly restructured or invested in Capex and therefore need revenue to balance the books?
• Understand the true root cause of someone’s ‘Position’ and look at how you can overcome it for the benefit of the customer.

Be Tenacious

• Customers normally tell you they do not have data. They Do!! But it might require digging deep into a data repository that has never been explored before.
• If you think that something feels wrong, then explore further and don’t give it up until you have the answer required to fulfil your gut feeling.
• Project planning is a must! There is project planning and then there is PROJECT PLANNING and of course the project plan always changes when you learn new things.

Be Courageous

• Challenging stakeholders is inevitable. However you need to be prepared to ‘break a few eggs’ in order to make an omelette. Just make sure the omelette is amazing!
• Everyone has an opinion and everyone is an expert until they are proven otherwise. You will need courage to overcome the status quo within the customers environment. We need to inform with confidence if there is a different way of doing something.
• You need to be strong in tough negotiations and have the courage to push the boundaries in order to get extraordinary results. Being comfortable is nice but rarely achieves big number impact.

Be Accountable

• We don’t get paid for effort, we get paid on results! Make sure that what you are putting into place for the customer is effective and sustainable.
• Nothing is delivered until the customer is realising the impact! If a stakeholder has not signed a contract or signed off on the final deliverable of the strategy then you have to help them along the way. Use your courage and your tenacity to make sure they do!
• No ego’s are allowed. If you don’t have the answer or someone else has a better answer, then that is the answer! Don’t be afraid to use other experts, peer reviews or spend the time developing your own competency on a certain subject.

To find out more about the way we work, and to see some real life examples of the savings we've made for our customers, download our eBook "5 ways to increase enterprise value"