 Profile
Key Account Management is all about increased loyalty and profits from your most important customers. From a review of how you deal with your key accounts, through to actually managing them for you, I can help you.
For more information, look me up on www.ecademy.com
Who am I & Why am I here?
We're all on this earth for a purpose. Mine is: "Encouraging Potential"
I love to push people, businesses, and people in businesses, to achieve the very best that they can - to fulfil their potential to the full. How do I do that? Well it might be as simple as acknowledging that their idea etc has value and should be pursued, or that they have a special ability that they should make full use of. Or it might be reminding them of what they were passionate about last time they spoke to me. Or it might be putting them in touch with something or someone who can help them take advantage of what they've got.
My networking style is varied - I like to form strong relationships with a relatively small group who share my take on things, but I also like, and need, to expose myself to people with other viewpoints and experience. I firmly believe that "in variety lies opportunity", so I am as likely to connect with someone totally different to me, and with whom there's no obvious business synergy, just to see what might fall out. For me, the strength of Ecademy is the variety of types of people on it, and the variety of reasons for being here - from pure business to pure altruism and everything in between.
I subscribe fully to Leon Benjamin's "Winning by Sharing" approach - the days of seeing other individuals as competitors are over. We are all different, so even if several of us appear to be addressing the same needs of the same customers, each of us will do it in slightly different ways - ways that could be added together to give a better solution to the customer's needs.
I also subscribe to the "Pay It Forward" principle - I don't wait until somebody does something for me before I do what I can for them. Overall in my life I hope I've given as much as I've been given (which is a lot) - but I don't keep a tally.
So if I owe you a favour, don't hold your breath for it to be repaid - I've probably already repaid it to someone else! But if you need a favour, don't be shy to ask - if I can help, I will.
The Business Bit
Business Strategy Solutions Ltd
Building Profitable Relationships
through
Flexible Key Account Management
and
Business Relationship Optimisation
History:
My recent experience has been in the DIY industry, but I've been selling things since my first Saturday job, selling ladies crimplene dresses on Windsor market at age 14. After a spell at Durham University (where I had to sell the prof's on my concept of 'residential distance learning' - or staying in bed and not going to lectures, as they saw it), I did a stint in furniture retail, working my way up to management. Then I "hopped the fence" onto the supplier side, and did a number of retail-facing National Accounts jobs - yet more selling, but this time with a strong relationship-building element.
After 20-odd years in corporate and small businesses, I took my MBA and decided to move into consulting, specialising in helping businesses to review their processes and systems to make the most of their relationships - with distributors, customers, suppliers, service providers, investors and funders - and with their own internal departments
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FLEXIBLE KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT
A major part of my experience has been in handling the relationships with the multiple retailers, particularly DIY, (which inevitably means managing how we work with suppliers, service providers and internal departments as well) to allow my companies to satisfy the multiples at a profit.
I also have had exposure to category management, and set up the category analysis function at a UK division of a major international company in the mid-90's.
I am now making that experience available to companies needing extra experienced Key Account resource. Reasons I might be needed include:
Part-time for companies that can't afford a full-time Key Account Manager
For short periods during times of exception demand - eg range reviews
To provide continuity while recruiting to replace a KAM who has left
Or,as I say on my DIYflex website (www.diy-flex.co.uk): "When you need it, and only when you need it"
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OPPORTUNITY MATRIX™ gives you an easy way to analyse
and prioritise all your opportunities and projects.
You just focus on the best...
Best for cash
Best for enjoyment
Best for your future
To see in detail what it does, and how it can help businesses get more focus, go to the website
www.opportunity-matrix.com
Opportunity Matrix™ was conceived when a colleague was asking for help to analyse and then prioritise all the opportunities he had, and I realised that the analysis engine I had developed as part of my Key Accounts work - the guts of the KAMpro tool - could be adapted to help do just that.
Many meetings and trials later, Opportunity Matrix was born.
It's a real-life example of Blackstar cooperation - with the help of many fellow-Blackstars it went from concept to launch in just two months.
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Education
Having only managed a 'gentlemen's degree' (Third) from Durham University, it was with great trepidation I went back to studying some fifteen years after my last serious course, to do the MBA with the Open University Business School - one of the few distance learning courses at the time accredited by AMBA - the Association of MBA's.
The areas I covered on the MBA were:
- Strategy
- Financial Strategy (merit - well, my Dad was an accountant)
- Marketing
- Managing Knowledge.
Personal Life
I live in Horley (Surrey), with my wife, Daniela. She's a qualified Results coach - well, she's been coaching me for years! Her "day job" is in Human Resources, and worked in international banks in the City for many years, now in engineering. She's also a trained Reiki healer - comes in very useful when I'm doing DIY (why is it you only whack your thumb with the hammer when you've taken your gloves off?). We both learned Transendental Meditation a few years ago, and we try to meditate at least once a day, often twice, and I do find it helps to keep me grounded.
We love to have friends round for dinner parties, when I can indulge my love of red wine. I am not a great fan of white, for reasons involving an extended New Year celebration, a very cold flat, and an extremely poor bottle of Australian Chardonnay, when I was single. We have a plan to move to France where I'll have a proper cellar ('proper' in both location - under the house, not under the stairs - and quantity).
I'm also learning to play my saxophones - I've got an alto and a tenor - and my great ambition is to get a paid gig at Smollensky's on the Strand in London under my playing name of Brew Horber (long story, don't ask - unless it's over a beer!).
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