The brief

C.Co worked closely with Acivico, a spin-out of Sandwell Council, which had been trading for four years, but had not previously invested in developing the managers to become more commercially astute. The company was keen to improve its level of profitability and needed to enthuse staff to think in different and innovative ways to help achieve this.

Becoming commercially successful can never be achieved simply by setting up a trading company. Establishing a high-performing, successful, commercial company takes a considerable amount of due diligence and market understanding and that does not happen overnight.

Whilst it is clear that trading in a commercial setting is entirely different from delivering services as a ‘department’ of a public sector body, it is still common to overlook quite how different public sector culture and behaviours can be, and how difficult some of the customs and practices can be to overcome.

This is as equally applicable to a new company as it is to how the public sector parent organisation supports it.

C.Co’s approach

It was important that we did not simply deliver ‘off the shelf’ commercial management support and training. While this has its place, we recognise that every spin-out has a different starting point, so for us, getting under the skin of what was and wasn’t working was the primary focus.

This enabled us to provide bespoke commercial up-skilling packages that addressed the needs of the business and supported the achievement of the objectives to develop the behaviours that were needed.

With this client, the component parts of business plans and activity were already in place, but we helped to address the two key things which were lacking.

Our support was two-fold:

  • Review and understand the tools to drive sales activity.
  • Help the team establish the confidence to close sales.

We worked one-to-one with the business managers to develop appropriate and relevant sales tracking tools, including call logs, sales funnels, and trackers. We also designed workshops, which focused on building the confidence of the team members responsible for driving sales.

The outcome

The whole process was a positive one for the team which felt enthused to have these new commercial skills. The team’s delivery of new sales has greatly improved.

What our client says

Kelly Morris, Business Change Manager at Sandwell Council said: “Massive thank you for the training you delivered. The content and delivery style were well tailored to the team’s needs. This was some of the best training we have ever had and by far the most relevant.”

Contact our team to see how we can work with you to deliver commercial management support and training.