All posts by Althea Taylor-Salmon

Blog

How to Sell Better

David-Falzani-President-SMF-MCP_3834-(landscape)
David Falzani
President of Sainsbury Management Fellows
Visiting Professor at Nottingham Business School

Sales is a subject almost never taught formally in business schools. This is undoubtedly because it’s such a broad subject, and many industries and sectors have very specific sales processes and requirements.

Nonetheless, there are a few basic concepts which can help the effectiveness of any sales process. An easy definition of sales is in ‘helping customers to buy’. In a little more detail, it’s ‘getting customers to better explain their needs so that you can make the decision to buy easy for them’. It’s this critical aspect of two-way communication that’s sometimes missed.

The starting point of any sales campaign is the USP analysis. The USP analysis will have compared the competitors, their product features and their benefits, to your own. This understanding is the starting position for a sales dialogue.

However, skilled sales processes take this starting position but then ask open questions to better understand a customer’s needs and problems to solve, and having listened and synthesised these answers, will only then make a considered value proposal.

This is opposed to the all too common ‘fire hose selling’ or ‘spray & pray’ techniques of showering a customer with information in the hope that something sticks. When I’ve helped clients develop sales staff I sometimes see inexperienced or unconfident sales staff adopt this approach. In one visit I witnessed a new sales manager talking immediately at the start of the meeting, and didn’t stop, for 45 minutes. Not one pause allowed one word from the prospect. The body language across the table went from alert, to relaxed, to resigned/sleepy. Making the prospect regret the meeting is obviously not a good strategy!

An obvious but sometimes forgotten point is to ensure you are selling benefits over features. It’s easy to talk about what the product is, but more useful to describe what advantage it brings to that specific customer and their needs. If you don’t understand their specific needs then you are not ready to make an accurate pitch.

Another key aspect is the importance of establishing trust in the relationship. If you choose a tradesperson for your home, your sense of trust in that person will be one of the key decision factors, and perhaps more important than price. Similarly, a skilled salesperson will establish a relationship, building trust and confidence. This can be sometimes expressed as having become a trusted advisor to the client; able to provide solutions to problems as they are encountered. In a sense, you need to decide what you need to give away in terms of expertise to develop this trust.

Lastly, progressing sales is often about overcoming objections. There are only a handful of common objections. Often these are used as ‘brush offs’ rather than being genuine objections, but if you can delve deeper and find the root causes, they can be valuable sources of more profound understanding. It’s worth listing to the common objections your company faces and possible approaches to overcome them. Common objections include:

  1. Lack of budget/price too high
  2. Lack of sign-off authority
  3. No established need
  4. Wrong timeframe
  5. Capability/credibility issue

One needs to dig deeper, but possible approaches include:

  1. Establish value recognition. Can you save them money?
  2. Collaborate on delivering a solution. Get a forward referral to a colleague
  3. What features do they find useful? Case studies and fact based analysis
  4. Underline the payback timeframe. Start savings now
  5. Offer proof. And, of course, build the relationship.

Found this blog helpful? You may also be interested in these:

LINKS TO THESE BLOGS TO BE ADDED
If You Build it Will They Come?
How to Find Products that Sell Themselves
How to Sell Better was first published by Entrepreneur Country and has been reproduced with the editor’s permission.

Blog

How to Find Products that Sell Themselves

David-Falzani-President-SMF-MCP_3834-(landscape)
David Falzani
President of Sainsbury Management Fellows
Visiting Professor at Nottingham Business School

I increasingly look for products that sell themselves. After all, if your product or service does much of the sales work for you, then you have a business that can grow quickly and profitably.
If you can, try to find products that adhere to the following 3 steps:

  1. Customer sees product: not as obvious as it sounds, getting a customer to actually preview your product is easier the simpler it is, or can be easily encapsulated.
  2. Customer ‘gets’ product: products that resonate with customers will always be self explanatory. The less you have to say the better.
  3. Customer wants product: the crucial part. If the product follows these steps with the minimal amount of intervention, then you may have something that lends itself to a scalable business (subject of course to the usual cost and supply issues).

By contrast, there are products which have high educational and informational requirements. These have to be met before a customer is even in a position to decide whether it’s something they wish to buy. These sorts of products tend to be either new solutions in the marketplace, or have marginal USPs over the competitive products (think of all the failed “better mousetraps” launched over the years).

If new in the market, the risk is always in being able to predict whether customers will change their current behaviour. Or, to put it another way, will they be bothered enough to listen to all the reasons they should change, and then still be bothered enough to make the actual purchase. I call these products high burden sales products. By no means a dead loss, they can nonetheless be onerous to grow. Many products and services rely on high burden sales pipelines. Much of the B2B technology market works in this way, and it is all fine if the eventual conversion rate of leads to sales is sufficiently high to warrant the investment (in a real sense, for both parties).

However, if the conversion rate is too low for the time and money expended up to that point, or the USPs marginal, then a difficult future looms. Sometimes these situations are blamed on poor salesmanship. I’ve seen several technology businesses where the board believed that all that prevented success was getting ‘proper’ salespersons in, period. In actual fact, the product just did not resonate with the market and no amount of ‘push selling’ was going to change that fact.
As a side note, the passage of a significant length of time can sometimes be the missing ingredient that fixes things. We’ve all seen products described as ‘solutions looking for a problem to solve’ and sometimes being too early in the marketplace can only be fixed by time (for example, smart cards took 20 years to become widely accepted).

Today, I much prefer products or services that have an established purchasing behaviour which can be tapped into. Or, if a new and potentially disruptive technology, I look at whether the client propensity for purchase can be quickly validated, and once this has been done, the sales model can be successfully and quickly scaled.

By looking at this established purchasing behaviour carefully or by soft launching a minimum viable product it is possible to maximise the chances of having an easy sale product.

This blog was first published by Entrepreneur Country and has been reproduced with the editor’s permission.

MBA Tips

USA or Europe – Where to Study for your MBA?

292070 from Stock Exchange for MBA USA v Europe Article
You will do your MBA once, so it’s important to choose an environment that enriches your journey.  Ambitious young professionals come to their MBA programme with personalised goals and objectives, so there is no ‘best’ country in which to study. There are pros and cons to both the American and European system, so it’s a case of deciding what’s best for you.  Here, we highlight some features of both systems which may help with your decision-making.

The MBA qualification was invented in the USA – it had the institutions in place, the knowledge, passion and the need.  It probably suited the existing university platform to have business schools, which did not pre-exist in Europe.  With such an august heritage, the USA has developed big brand schools such as Harvard and Stanford, which are known worldwide.  While studying at any top business school gives you kudos and enhances your own brand, gaining an MBA from an Ivy League business school adds weight.


When Size Matters
One of the biggest contrasts between European and USA schools is that American schools are usually much bigger. They tend to sit on top of well-established large universities which broaden the learning opportunities. For instance, at Wharton School in Pennsylvania there are some 1,500 courses from which students can choose their elective.  This is possible because students have access to the entire law school, medical school, engineering school as well as the business school. Imagine you wanted to specialise in micro-electronic bio-medicine because you saw an business opportunity in that area; you could specialise in something that you find intensely interesting and design your own finale!   European schools do not typically sit on top of a larger educational system except in name and therefore have much fewer courses from which to choose an elective.

The Faculty
The top business schools all have first-class faculty, but America tends to lead the field, attracting world class authors of business books and published works, because they leverage such an impressive academic base.  For example, Philip Kotler, arguably the number one marketing guru in the world, is a lecturer at Kellogg School of Management; Dr Dipak Jain, who is now dean at INSEAD, was previously Dean at Kellogg and Michael E. Porter is affiliated with Harvard.

European faculties are becoming increasingly competitive and have big hitters and famous publications too – Blue Ocean Strategy, probably the most famous business book published in recent years, was written by two INSEAD professors, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne at The Blue Ocean Strategy institute.

Course Length
USA schools run longer programmes; two years is the norm, though they can be completed in 16 months by working through the summer and some of the modern courses can be shortened further. The advantage of longer courses is breathing space – you have more time to reflect on learning and absorb yourself in projects of special interest. This, of course, is only feasible if your circumstances and resources allow two years study, as programmes in the USA are much more expensive.

European MBA programmes are shorter – INSEAD’s course lasts 10 months, which makes for an extremely intensive period of learning. Undertaking an exercise as costly as an MBA in a shorter time frame is obviously advantageous, but you need to consider if this suits your personal learning style. A longer course is more accommodating to personal growth; based on what you learn you may want to change direction and specialise in a different area. Will a shorter course provide sufficient time for reflection and to evolve?  For some people the shorter course will be ideal and studying for two years would not be fast-paced enough or suit their personal circumstances.

International Experience
Gaining international experience is a key component of MBA programmes. The top USA business schools are extremely international, exposing you to a very different environment to normal surroundings and forces you to organise your life accordingly.  Studying in Europe (outside the UK), you have the added challenge and benefit of learning a new language. If you choose to study in your home country, you will still be exposed to an international group, as the schools attract students from all over the world (European schools probably have about 60% overseas contingent) but studying overseas gives a more international perspective in business experience and knowledge, you will interact with a larger number of international students and develop a truly international network.

European business schools are becoming more international in their structure – Nottingham  University Business School is a good case in point; now it also has campuses in Malaysia and Singapore.  Students can start their studies in one location and finish in a different, more exotic environment!

Business School Culture
Choosing the right business school is not only about the academic programme and unrivalled facilities, it’s also about your personality and where you will feel most comfortable and can shine.  Here too, there is an important difference between the USA and European schools – it is said that top American business schools produce a highly competitive ‘Type A’ personality environment, filled with similar supercharged people, many of whom aspire to become entrepreneurs in specific fields.  By contrast, European schools attract a broader mix of personality types and it is speculated that they produce a larger number of graduates who move into consultancy careers.

Gaining a place in either a USA or European business school is equally challenging and competitive, so make sure you choose one that fits your personality as well as your academic and career ambitions.

Teaching Styles
Look into the different approaches to teaching. European schools devote much more time to classroom teaching, which is a plus if your personal learning style lends itself to more frequent tutoring.  American schools give students more ‘free time’ to pursue areas that interest them. Also, check how assignments must be presented and be clear about the schools’ grading policy (who grades, can grades be challenged, are grades confidential or shared with others, such as recruiters?) – these will differ by country and school. European schools have more international standards such as GAAP (general accepted accounting principles), whereas American schools have their own GAAP.  Though, in reality, the content of both are similar.

Alumni and Milkrounds
Finally, compare the differences between the USA and European models beyond the MBA programme itself.  Both models have strong alumni organisations and recruitment support but many argue that the American model is unrivalled.  American schools have large, very well-funded alumni organisations, and their milk rounds and recruitment assistance are broader and deeper than in European schools. Because American schools are bigger and operate in a much larger economy, every blue-chip company goes to their favourite schools to seek out talent and provide big financial incentives to recruit the candidates they want.

You may also be interested in reading interviews with the winners of the SMF MBA Scholarship.

[photo: Subin]

 

Blog

Searching for the Right Post-MBA Job

Fang Fang
SMF Fang Fang

In August 2011, when I walked in London Business School for the first time, I had no idea what to expect.

Until then, my career path had been very simple: five years as a civil engineer in the same UK engineering consultancy. Unlike many of my classmates, I was not sure I would like a career switch. When I was surrounded by bankers, strategy consultants, marketers and entrepreneurs, my mind went completely blank. I had no idea what M&A, customer acquisition or global business leaders mean; not to mention what kind of job I could do after the MBA.  What should I do?

Shock and fear drove me to take immediate actions. I decided to use the two years at LBS to explore. An MBA provided the best platform for me to step out of the engineering design world, to try out different industries and roles, to experience different cultures and to exchange ideas with similar minded people. I did not want to waste a single minute of it.

I worked seven days a week and used every possible opportunity to learn, to research and to network. Besides classes and exams, I completed one project and two internships in three industries in three countries. I spent one exchange term in the US and travelled to many more countries. I participated in every major school event and many business competitions. Some say an MBA is a journey to find yourself. It was exactly through these experiences I started to realise my strengths and weaknesses, my interests and my career options.

My first project came through the discussion board on the LBS intranet, three months into my MBA. It was to help a LBS alumnus, a managing director of the UK arm of a large international construction group, to analyse M&A pipeline targets in the UK construction industry. I secured the job by partnering with a classmate with an M&A background. The successful completion of this project boosted my confidence that I was able pursue a non-engineering career.

When the summer recruiting season began, I was determined to try something totally outside my comfort zone. After numerous mock and real interviews, I won my first internship with the Boston Consulting Group in its Melbourne office. This internship exposed me to the fascinating world of strategy consulting as well as to the magical land and waters of Australia. The challenges to transform from a frontline civil engineer in the UK to the advisor of the top management of a major Australian retailer were beyond my imagination. However, I was equipped with the excellent BCG database and toolkit and supported by extremely intelligent and warm colleagues.

During and after the internship, I also travelled along the south and east coasts of Australia. Interacting with local people furthered my understanding of the country and culture. Snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, riding the waves around Tasmania, night climbing of the Sydney Harbor Bridge and watching whales, koalas and kangaroos along the Great Ocean Road have become unforgettable memories of my life.
Fang Fang at Sydney Harbour Bridge 2Fang Fang at Sydney Harbour Bridge

Shortly after my return from Australia, I headed to the Netherlands for my second internship at Shell headquarters in the Hague. Life in the country of windmills, bicycles and tulips was not always rosy. I had to deal with the language barrier while taking up a challenging project at work.My project was to develop a market strategy for the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) business.

My background as a civil engineer helped me to understand many aspects of LNG projects and the value chain. Shell was a very international company with a strong networking culture.  People in my team were mostly Masters and PhDs in mathematics or economics with international field sales and strategy experience. I benefited enormously by learning from them and became friends with many. In addition, I spent a considerable amount of time meeting people in different divisions who offered me valuable insights on Shell and their career experience. Working at Shell headquarters was a great opportunity for me to see the workings of the largest company in the world and to learn how incredibly bright and successful corporate leaders think and operate.

The classroom knowledge at LBS laid a very good foundation for me to pursue a management career. My projects and internships taught me the real world, real people and real challenges. Together they transformed me, from a technical design engineer into a commercial and people- minded manager. They also helped me to confirm my passion for the engineering industry and to realise my interest in strategy and operations management.

Soon a perfect opportunity came up. In autumn 2012, the CEO* Program (Chief Executive Opportunity Program) at Siemens came to recruit at LBS. The Siemens CEO* Program is a recently founded and unique leadership program for MBA graduates. Each year, the program recruits six associates globally. The associates have both engineering and business backgrounds and aspire to become general managers in a global company. Top global leaders at Siemens are heavily involved in selecting and mentoring the CEO* Associates. Over the two year program, each CEO* Associate is usually tasked with three international assignments, completely personalised to suit his/her development needs.

To get the job, I went through four rounds of interviews, with the CEO* Program team, with the head of Strategic Projects at Siemens, with a division CEO and finally, with then global CEO of Siemens Peter Löscher. My learning from these interviews is very simple: be yourself, know what you want and be clear about what you can bring to the company. To me, interview skills help you to tell your stories more effectively, but who you are and what skills you have acquired through the years determine how far you can go in the recruiting process.

Siemens is a great company that cares about the development and welfare of its employees. My on-boarding included management training, intercultural training and German language training. The CEO* Program team took great care of all my relocation issues and assignment search. In October 2013, I started my first assignment in the Strategy and Business Development team of Siemens’ train business in Berlin, mentored by the division CEO of this multi-billion euro business. Currently I am leading a project that aims to optimise the sales organisation and approaches in some 20 countries. It is a great opportunity for me to gain an overview of the train business, to gain an appreciation of the business planning, development and sales at Siemens and to understand the highest level strategic topics of a global business.

I am very grateful for every opportunity I was given. Without financial support from the Sainsbury Management Fellowship and the LBS Annual Fund Award, pursuing an MBA would only have been a dream. I sincerely appreciate the job opportunities from the great people and companies mentioned above. My post-MBA journey has just started. I am excited about the new challenges ahead.

Blog

Reflections on the Start of my MBA Journey

Julia Nammuni
Julia Nammuni,  SMF Candidate, LBS

It is more than 15 months since I began my full time MBA at London Business School. Time seems to fly by and the end of my degree is approaching fast.

I recently attended some MBA fairs and met new prospective MBA students to share my experience and to help answer their questions. They reminded me of myself not so long ago, making me reflect on my experience to date:

I started my engineering career in an international engineering consultancy in the ports and maritime division after completing my undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering at Imperial College. My employer kindly sponsored me to complete a post-graduate degree in ports at the TU Delft and subsequently I worked on large scale infrastructure projects in the Middle East, Asia and Europe. The work experience I gained was very rewarding and allowed me to achieve chartership.

Nevertheless, I was becoming more and more interested in strategy and commercial aspects which led, after some soul-searching, to an MBA at London Business School. I was fortunate to receive assistance from Sainsbury Management Fellowship that helped me realise my idea. I am very grateful for the support, without it my MBA journey would have been difficult.

After my first year of courses, I had the opportunity to work during my summer break as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group in London. The project work was challenging, interesting and created a positive impact for the business. Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience and I am pleased to be returning to the company fulltime upon graduation.

I love travelling and in the second year of my MBA, I did an exchange term at CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) in Shanghai to improve my Mandarin and to explore the region.

Two questions seem to come up repeatedly by prospective MBA students. I hope that by sharing my response to these I may be able to help other engineers thinking about an MBA:

How difficult is the transition to study an MBA, especially for an engineer?
I remember that I was myself very worried about this issue. In my experience to date, engineers do well at business school. What is important to realise is that in a MBA programme there will be professionals from many backgrounds who will have different strength and weaknesses that compensate each other. Thus you learn as much from each other as with each other on the course.

In my study group we had a doctor, an accountant, two consultants and another engineer. The professions in my year group included many different backgrounds such as a professional athlete, lawyers, diplomats, bankers and many more. In addition, almost 90% of the MBA student population is international with experience gained in many different countries. However, all students had at least one thing in common: a unique perspective and insight that enhanced my understanding.

Learning business language was an important part of my MBA journey as an engineer. There were acronyms like “PE”, “VC” and words like “portfolio theory” that were used in discussions that did not mean very much to me at the outset. However, like any language once I learnt what these terms meant, it was no longer difficult to understand.

During the MBA I was never far from an expert in any given topic who was happy to explain terms and concepts or to share their point of view!  And then, there are advantages that engineers have such as strong mathematical and problem solving skills that are useful in most courses.  Thus it seemed to me that I needed to master the language and then to apply my problem solving skills in a different context.

An important difference in the problem-solving approach to me was that as an engineer, I used to try to come up in my mind with hypothetical scenarios to destroy my designs and solutions to problems.  Only if I could no longer destroy them or render them “useless” in my mind, I would consider them further.  In the MBA, it seems to me there is much more emphasis on possibilities and adapting solutions as needed.  Ultimately, in civil engineering, a design life of 50 years is not unusual and failure can lead to loss of life, necessitating a very careful evaluation of possible design scenarios.  Yet many business problems do not have such a long time horizon, do not include the risk of loss of life but require solutions quickly that can be adapted as needed.  Therefore, my approach needed to change to be focused more on potential solutions and likely key issues rather than all the potential problems that could exist.

Thus in conclusion, for me the transition to studying for an MBA required me to adapt to a new language and to change my approach in problem-solving.

And what are your greatest challenges in the MBA?
My greatest challenge in the MBA was and still is time management and prioritisation. There are many different events going on all the time and real choices have to be made. FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, is the term that describes this phenomenon at London Business School and many other business schools.

Initially, FOMO was almost overwhelming as there were so many opportunities.  Every evening there seemed to be at least seven equally interesting but conflicting events requiring a choice to be made: do I go to one of the career events, one the corporate events, one of the club events, a party or the pub to meet friends? With time passing, my priorities started to emerge.

Nevertheless, every now and again about of FOMO does kick in. Thus, I constantly re-evaluate what is important to me. Further, I am learning to accept that I will miss interesting events as it is impossible to attend them all!

You may also be interested in reading interviews with the latest winners of the SMF MBA Scholarship.

Blog

Use your Personal Brand to Build your Business and Boost your Career

Kathy Ennis Personal Branding Specialist SMALLER

Extract from a presentation delivered at the Sainsbury Management Fellows’ Networking by, Katy Ennis, mentor, trainer and public speaker

An effective, authentic personal brand will help you build a profitable business and boost your career success, but before looking at personal brand I want set the context by looking at the underlying principles of ‘brand’.
What is a brand?
The response that I often get from asking this question is a list of criteria such as logo, strapline, trademark, colour etc. It’s a bit more complicated than that.

At its heart a brand is a collection of thoughts and feelings that customers have about a particular product or service. For example, if you consider your response to two different types of car you may get something like:

Bentley – expensive, stylish, sleek, leather
Hyundai – nippy, cheap, functional

Creating a brand is a step-by-step process that starts with the organisational values and emotional response you want to create; well before images, colours and fonts appear. You can break it down broadly into three sections:

The Brand – at heart this is an emotional response; it is the thoughts and feelings that a customer (or potential customer) has about your products or services.

The Visual Identity – the visual aspects that form the identity of the brand, such as, colours, fonts, shapes, words, symbols. 

The Logo – the simplest form of the brand in that it identifies it via a mark or an icon using the colours, fonts, shapes etc that form the visual identity.

Why is branding important?
There are five main reasons why branding is important:

  1. Recognition: a brand helps customers recognise your product or service
  2. Differentiation: a brand differentiates your product or service from your competitors
  3. Loyalty: a brand helps to build loyalty
  4. Relevance: a brand makes what you have to offer relevant to particular target markets
  5. Focus: a brand enables you to focus your marketing message

Sensation Transference
Back in the 1930s Louis Cheskin, a scientific researcher, clinical psychologist, and marketing innovator embarked on a life-long obsession to understand how customers’ perceptions motivate their purchasing behaviour. Through his research he observed that people’s perceptions of products and services were directly related to the aesthetic details of their design. He named this relationship sensation transference.  He spent most of his life investigating how design elements could significantly impact perceptions of value, appeal and relevance.

Q: What colour is margarine?
A: The answer is often ‘yellow’. The real answer is that it is not. In its natural state margarine is a greyish-white. Cheskin convinced the manufacturers that they would sell more if it looked more like butter.

Do you think he was right?
In his 2005 book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell considered the work of Cheskin and a number of studies that followed on from his work and in summery Gladwell wrote:

“people give an assessment of something they might buy … without realising it they transfer sensations or impressions that they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself … most of us don’t make a distinction – on an unconscious level – between the package and the product. The product is the package and the product combined”

Blink: the power of thinking without thinking, Malcolm Gladwell, 2005.

Personal Branding
So, where does this leave us in terms of personal branding and its impact on our businesses or our careers?

Well, the first thing to realise is that the process of going through a personal branding exercise is exactly the same as the process for branding a business or a product; you take the three brand elements and apply them to the individual:

Brand – identifying the inner you; your values, your message

Visual Identity – creating the outer you; your ‘look’

Logo – managing the inner and the outer you to determine how you make your mark; build, manage and maintain your reputation

The five elements that make branding important – recognition, differentiation, loyalty, relevance and focus – are summarised in my definition of personal branding:

Personal branding unites your passions, strengths, skills, behaviours, attitudes and core values in a focussed message. It makes you instantly recognisable, differentiates your uniqueness, builds a loyal following and makes you relevant to your target audience.

A personal brand:

  • enables clients or employers to recognise your potential – “does what it says on the tin”
  • differentiates you from your competitors – what makes one engineer better than another?
  • helps build loyalty – client loyalty means they keep coming back (it is far easier to keep a client than it is to find a new one); employer loyalty can influence job security and promotional prospects
  • helps clients and employers understand you and buy into your core values – people buy from (and buy into) people they like
  • makes what you have to offer relevant to your target market
  • enables you to focus your personal marketing message

Summary
Developing a personal brand allows you to understand your core values and create an authentic key message. Your values and your message are then applied consistently across all aspects of your life, your business and your career to enable others to have that ‘emotional response’ and ‘know’ what they are getting when they buy from you or buy into you.

A mentor, trainer and public speaker, Kathy Ennis uses the concepts of engagement marketing and personal branding as a method of business and career development; she firmly believes that it is individual effectiveness that contributes most to the overall success of any organisation. She helps people grow their business; and enhance their networking and communication skills. www.kathyennis.co.uk

Blog

Royal Academy of Engineering & SMF – Engineering Business Leaders

Group shot with DF - 0197

Speaking at a networking reception hosted by the Royal Academy of Engineering for Sainsbury Management Fellows, President, David Falzani (second from left), said:”I‘d like to thank the Royal Academy, not least for hosting this event today, but also for its continued and essential support of the Sainsbury Management Fellows scheme, including the promotion of the bursary and the selection process for choosing new SMFs.

We in turn have also continued our activities in supporting the Royal Academy: as selectors and then mentors for the Engineering Leadership Awards, in supporting the ELA annual events, and the Executive Engineers event.

At our Annual Dinner last May I asked why is it so important to have engineers and scientists gaining top MBAs and business qualifications?

I’d like to take this opportunity to repeat my answer, that the business world has shifted. The third great revolution of modern man, the information revolution, has transformed every aspect of life and business.

What counts for business success today is not who you know, nor even what you know, but today the maxim for success would perhaps be, how quickly can you learn. Today, all companies are technology companies in some respect, and all information is instantly out of date.

What’s crucially important is the ability to harness this flux of technology and information in the business context in order to maximise chances of success.

Within this interface of technology and money no one can be more at home than the engineer with a deep business understanding. This idea lies at the heart of the SMF Scheme.

The SMF scheme was created almost 30 years ago to get more senior executives with engineering qualifications at the top of organisations. Today, the scheme has 300 Fellows, each with a first class engineering background, and an MBA from a top international business school.

Many fellows are helping further develop some of the UK’s largest corporations, whilst many others have gone on to create high growth technology companies worth over £500m.

As an organisation, and a group of like-minded individuals, we remain keen to continue to support the Royal Academy, and perhaps become involved with emerging initiatives such as its Enterprise Hub and other areas of mutual value.

Finally, I would like to ask our Fellows here this evening to consider how they can become involved in current and future activities of the scheme, and also with our fund raising activities. We remain keen to add a few more volunteers to our fundraising campaign team.

In closing, I hope this evening proves to be a success, and an example of working in a closer partnership with the Royal Academy.

“I‘d like to thank the Royal Academy, not least for hosting this event today, but also for its continued and essential support of the Sainsbury Management Fellows scheme, including the promotion of the bursary and the selection process for choosing new SMFs.

“We in turn have also continued our activities in supporting the Royal Academy: as selectors and then mentors for the Engineering Leadership Awards, in supporting the ELA annual events, and the Executive Engineers event.

“At our Annual Dinner last May I asked why is it so important to have engineers and scientists gaining top MBAs and business qualifications?

“I’d like to take this opportunity to repeat my answer, that the business world has shifted. The third great revolution of modern man, the information revolution, has transformed every aspect of life and business.

“What counts for business success today is not who you know, nor even what you know, but today the maxim for success would perhaps be, how quickly can you learn. Today, all companies are technology companies in some respect, and all information is instantly out of date.

“What’s crucially important is the ability to harness this flux of technology and information in the business context in order to maximise chances of success.

“Within this interface of technology and money no one can be more at home than the engineer with a deep business understanding. This idea lies at the heart of the SMF Scheme.

“The SMF scheme was created almost 30 years ago to get more senior executives with engineering qualifications at the top of organisations. Today, the scheme has 300 Fellows, each with a first class engineering background, and an MBA from a top international business school.

“Many fellows are helping further develop some of the UK’s largest corporations, whilst many others have gone on to create high growth technology companies worth over £500m.

“As an organisation, and a group of like-minded individuals, we remain keen to continue to support the Royal Academy, and perhaps become involved with emerging initiatives such as its Enterprise Hub and other areas of mutual value. Finally, I would like to ask our Fellows here this evening to consider how they can become involved in current and future activities of the scheme, and also with our fund raising activities. We remain keen to add a few more volunteers to our fundraising campaign team.

“In closing, I hope this evening proves to be a success, and an example of working in a closer partnership with the Royal Academy.”

Blog

Why Look at Grant Funding? Part 2

sam-cockerill

The question you might ask yourself before you put pen to paper is whether, given the preceding questions about the associated value and risk, now is genuinely the right time to go for this particular grant application.  You may come across a one-off grant opportunity dispensing ready cash from some un-spent pot and when it’s gone it’s gone, in which case, good luck!  However, most grants are distributed from public funds (which, though tight, are recurring) to achieve policy aims that generally (but not always) survive multiple grant funding rounds and mechanisms.

A number of grant schemes either have ‘open calls’ i.e. apply when you like, or are phased with a clear timetable of when each batch of new applications should be submitted for consideration.  If your project would be more valuable if it kicked off in 12 months’ time, for example to benefit from the results of current projects, fundraising activities or partner negotiations – then wait, and your application will be much stronger for it.

Tips to help you secure funding

  1. Target your application. Scour the internet for grant opportunities, get onto the right mailing lists.  When you find a grant opportunity that looks right, read the competition scope in detail, then re-read your plan.  Are they aligned?  Does the project you are considering get you to your intended destination, faster?  Or is it a bit of a stretch, tempting only because of the prospect of non-diluting funding?
  1. Invest the necessary time to do your application well, your competitor applicants will. If you have satisfied yourself that the application is worth doing, then you need to pull out all the stops to define the best possible project with the best possible partners, and describe it in the best possible light.  It will take time.
  1. Research and review your application thoroughly.  Find a business that has succeeded with this particular grant scheme in the past, and ask them for advice.  Speak to your partners about the application.  Ask your advisory board for input, and for proof reading. Don’t submit an application with sloppy typos or one that is inadvertently out of scope.
  1. Reflect on your past failures.  It is unlikely that every grant application you submit will succeed.  If you fail, you will normally get feedback from the process, sometimes in the form of anonymous reviewer comments.  Pour over this feedback, and check whether there are any areas you could improve next time.  Did the reviewer(s) understand your proposition?  Were they sceptical about your market or product assertions?  This type of feedback is your most valuable source of information you can have for those grant competitions where you are permitted to re-apply.
  1. Take your rejections for what they are:  a source of feedback and a reflection of the competitive nature of grant funding.  Use this feedback to sharpen your judgement about whether the next grant is worth going for.  Do not give up.

GOOD LUCK!

Other funding support is available through the ecoConnect Investor Directory, Grants Directory and Greenbackers Investment Pitch.

A number of grant schemes either have ‘open calls’ i.e. apply when you like, or are phased with a clear timetable of when each batch of new applications should be submitted for consideration.  If your project would be more valuable if it kicked off in 12 months’ time, for example to benefit from the results of current projects, fundraising activities or partner negotiations – then wait, and your application will be much stronger for it.

TIPS TO HELP YOU SECURE FUNDING

  1. Target your application:Scour the internet for grant opportunities, get onto the right mailing lists.  When you find a grant opportunity that looks right, read the competition scope in detail, then re-read your plan.  Are they aligned?  Does the project you are considering get you to your intended destination, faster?  Or is it a bit of a stretch, tempting only because of the prospect of non-diluting funding?
  2. Invest the necessary time to do your application well, your competitor applicants will:If you have satisfied yourself that the application is worth doing, then you need to pull out all the stops to define the best possible project with the best possible partners, and describe it in the best possible light.  It will take time.
  3. Research and review your application thoroughly:Find a business that has succeeded with this particular grant scheme in the past, and ask them for advice. Speak to your partners about the application.  Ask your advisory board for input, and for proof reading. Don’t submit an application with sloppy typos or one that is inadvertently out of scope.
  4. Reflect on your past failures:It is unlikely that every grant application you submit will succeed.  If you fail, you will normally get feedback from the process, sometimes in the form of anonymous reviewer comments.  Pore over this feedback, and check whether there are any areas you could improve next time. Did the reviewer(s) understand your proposition?  Were they sceptical about your market or product assertions?  This type of feedback is your most valuable source of information you can have for those grant competitions where you are permitted to re-apply.
  5. Persevere:Take your rejections for what they are:  a source of feedback and a reflection of the competitive nature of grant funding.  Use this feedback to sharpen your judgement about whether the next grant is worth going for.  Do not give up.

GOOD LUCK!

Other funding support is available through the ecoConnect Investor Directory, Grants Directory, and Greenbackers Investment Pitch

Click here to read part 1

Blog

Why Look at Grant Funding? Part 1

sam-cockerill

This blog was first published on Ecoconnect, a cleantech networking and funding forum. It has been republished with the permission of Fellow, Sam Cockerill, to share his experience of applying for grant funding for business development.
On the one hand, any additional sources of funds are welcome, especially for pre-revenue tech businesses in the UK which may find it tough to get that first external funding round in place. Some technology start-ups, often in the US, can get to market with angel and/or venture capital funding alone. In the UK, there is a chronic shortage of such investors willing or able to back pre-revenue businesses with the kind of funding required to develop market-ready products. Grant funding can help to meet this funding shortfall and can also improve the odds of securing external investor funding.

On the other hand, getting your business off the ground requires that you push hard on several fronts at once: Researching your market and potential customer needs, developing your product or service, establishing a credible route to market, getting your team and partner relationships in place, securing external funding, reporting on your progress to investors, winning your first sales and handling a multitude of administration tasks. Your time is precious, and taking on any new activity will create more work.

Questions to ask yourself before committing time
To date around a third of total funding for my start-up business, Libertine FPE, has come from grant sources although not all of our grant applications have succeeded. Before I consider working on a prospective grant application, I ponder three questions: What is the value to my business? What are my odds? Is this the right time?

What is the value to my business? More specifically, how will this grant funding help me achieve more revenue, sooner, and with less risk?
Competitive grant schemes are typically awarded to undertake specific project proposals. A grant competition scope document may provide tight criteria defining what types of projects are eligible and how projects will be assessed in the application process. If a viable project defined in this way is a significant departure from your core business plan it’s probably going to pull resource away from your most important priorities and may require incremental fundraising to cover any matching requirements – clearly a non-starter. If this project is directly aligned with what you are already planning to do, grant funding can make a meaningful contribution to the total funding requirements of your business and accelerate your time to market by months or (possibly) years. If this improvement is only marginal, consider whether the application effort is worthwhile. This is the first and most important test of whether a particular grant competition could be worth going for.

What are my odds?
Unless you have time on your hands, smaller grants may not provide the scale of game-changing support necessary to justify the application time and effort. However, larger grant schemes are fiercely competitive, and if the odds of success are too low you will probably be wasting your time.

The key here is in the grant competition scope details that are typically provided in guidance documents and briefings, and which set out the competition scope and selection criteria that will be applied in the assessment of applications. These may include the nature of the technology (For example the market application, technology readiness level, intellectual property status), the nature of the business and/or consortium (size, age, location, SIC code, inclusion of research or academic partners) and the potential benefits (for example CO2 impact, value creation, wider economic and social benefits).

The competition scope criteria are typically qualitative tests, in other words your project either fits or it doesn’t, but the scope document may also provide some guidance as to the types of projects that are most likely to succeed. The assessment criteria are typically more subjective and your application might consist of a set of responses to discrete questions which are assessed and scored individually. A successful application must be within the competition scope, and must score sufficiently highly relative to other in-scope applications.

If the scope is very broad and the assessment criteria generic, the field of applicants will be huge and it will be harder to differentiate your application based on its fit with the scope and assessment criteria. If you happen to find a grant competition that fits directly with your technology, market application and business model, the odds are likely to be better – however, there is a twist.

Most grant assessment criteria include evidence of ‘additionality’, i.e. evidence that if you get the grant you will take a different course of action that is in addition to your plans without grant support. This requirement may appear to conflict with the imperative that your grant funded project is directly aligned with your core business plan. If your business plan is to develop and launch widget A in market X, a project to develop widgets B and C for markets Y and Z clearly passes the ‘additionality’ test but there may be good reasons why these new products/markets did not feature highly in your original plan, grant funding or not.

If your additionality argument is ‘no-one else will fund us’, you immediately undermine the business case set out elsewhere in your application. Perhaps the most legitimate form of ‘additionality’ in my view is the acceleration of your technology development and market entry plan. Rather than progressing with small steps through several cycles of product development, market proof and fundraising as you climb towards your first revenues, a good grant funded project will let you bound up the same staircase, ideally providing you with some robust technology or market proof, cementing one or more partner relationships, and setting you up for success your next funding round. The destination may be the same, but the grant funded project should get you there much quicker.

In my next post, I will discuss the timing of your application and provide top five tips for making a grant funding application.

Grant funding can play an important role in getting a clean technology business started but the application processes are often complex and time consuming. With increasing competition for available UK grants the odds of success may be low. For a cleantech entrepreneur, the decision to commit scarce time and effort to apply for grant funding can be finely balanced.
On the one hand, any additional sources of funds are welcome, especially for pre-revenue tech businesses in the UK which may find it tough to get that first external funding round in place. Some technology start-ups, often in the US, can get to market with angel and/or venture capital funding alone. In the UK, there is a chronic shortage of such investors willing or able to back pre-revenue businesses with the kind of funding required to develop market-ready products. Grant funding can help to meet this funding shortfall and can also improve the odds of securing external investor funding.

On the other hand, getting your business off the ground requires that you push hard on several fronts at once: Researching your market and potential customer needs, developing your product or service, establishing a credible route to market, getting your team and partner relationships in place, securing external funding, reporting on your progress to investors, winning your first sales and handling a multitude of administration tasks. Your time is precious, and taking on any new activity will create more work.

Questions to ask yourself before committing time: To date around a third of total funding for my start-up business, Libertine FPE, has come from grant sources although not all of our grant applications have succeeded. Before I consider working on a prospective grant application, I ponder three questions: What is the value to my business? What are my odds? Is this the right time?

What is the value to my business? More specifically, how will this grant funding help me achieve more revenue, sooner, and with less risk? Competitive grant schemes are typically awarded to undertake specific project proposals. A grant competition scope document may provide tight criteria defining what types of projects are eligible and how projects will be assessed in the application process.

If a viable project defined in this way is a significant departure from your core business plan it’s probably going to pull resource away from your most important priorities and may require incremental fundraising to cover any matching requirements – clearly a non-starter. If this project is directly aligned with what you are already planning to do, grant funding can make a meaningful contribution to the total funding requirements of your business and accelerate your time to market by months or (possibly) years. If this improvement is only marginal, consider whether the application effort is worthwhile. This is the first and most important test of whether a particular grant competition could be worth going for.

What are my odds? Unless you have time on your hands, smaller grants may not provide the scale of game-changing support necessary to justify the application time and effort. However, larger grant schemes are fiercely competitive, and if the odds of success are too low you will probably be wasting your time.

The key here is in the grant competition scope details that are typically provided in guidance documents and briefings, and which set out the competition scope and selection criteria that will be applied in the assessment of applications. These may include the nature of the technology (For example the market application, technology readiness level, intellectual property status), the nature of the business and/or consortium (size, age, location, SIC code, inclusion of research or academic partners) and the potential benefits (for example CO2 impact, value creation, wider economic and social benefits).

The competition scope criteria are typically qualitative tests, in other words your project either fits or it doesn’t, but the scope document may also provide some guidance as to the types of projects that are most likely to succeed. The assessment criteria are typically more subjective and your application might consist of a set of responses to discrete questions which are assessed and scored individually. A successful application must be within the competition scope, and must score sufficiently highly relative to other in-scope applications.

If the scope is very broad and the assessment criteria generic, the field of applicants will be huge and it will be harder to differentiate your application based on its fit with the scope and assessment criteria. If you happen to find a grant competition that fits directly with your technology, market application and business model, the odds are likely to be better – however, there is a twist.

Most grant assessment criteria include evidence of ‘additionality’, i.e. evidence that if you get the grant you will take a different course of action that is in addition to your plans without grant support. This requirement may appear to conflict with the imperative that your grant funded project is directly aligned with your core business plan. If your business plan is to develop and launch widget A in market X, a project to develop widgets B and C for markets Y and Z clearly passes the ‘additionality’ test but there may be good reasons why these new products/markets did not feature highly in your original plan, grant funding or not.

If your additionality argument is ‘no-one else will fund us’, you immediately undermine the business case set out elsewhere in your application. Perhaps the most legitimate form of ‘additionality’ in my view is the acceleration of your technology development and market entry plan. Rather than progressing with small steps through several cycles of product development, market proof and fundraising as you climb towards your first revenues, a good grant funded project will let you bound up the same staircase, ideally providing you with some robust technology or market proof, cementing one or more partner relationships, and setting you up for success your next funding round. The destination may be the same, but the grant funded project should get you there much quicker.

Click here to read part 2.

Press Releases

Medimmune Acquisition of Spirogen Boosts Antibody-Drug Conjugate Capability

AstraZeneca today announced that MedImmune, its global biologics research and development arm, has acquired Spirogen, a privately-held biotech company focused on antibody-drug conjugate technology for use in oncology.

MedImmune has also entered into a collaboration agreement with ADC Therapeutics to jointly develop two of ADC Therapeutics’ antibody-drug conjugate programmes in preclinical development. MedImmune will also make an equity investment in ADC Therapeutics, which has an existing licensing agreement with Spirogen.

MedImmune will acquire 100 per cent of Spirogen’s shares for an initial consideration of $200 million and deferred consideration of up to $240 million based on reaching predetermined development milestones. Existing out-licensing agreements and associated revenue streams are excluded from this acquisition.

MedImmune will also pay $20 million for an equity investment in ADC Therapeutics, which will be matched by Auven Therapeutics, the majority shareholder in both ADC Therapeutics and Spirogen. The collaboration agreement will include an upfront payment with predetermined development milestones for two programmes from a defined list and a cost- and profit-sharing arrangement with MedImmune representing the majority share. ADC Therapeutics will also have the option to co-promote one of the products in the US.

Antibody-drug conjugates are a clinically-validated cancer drug technology that offers both high potency and selective targeting of cancer cells. Spirogen’s proprietary pyrrolobenzodiazepine (PBD) technology attaches highly potent cytotoxic agents, or ‘warheads’ to specific cancer-targeting antibodies using biodegradable ‘linkers’. This targeting optimises the delivery of the cancer drug to the tumour cells only and provides the greatest degree of tumour killing while minimising the toxicity to the patient.

“Antibody-drug conjugates are ground-breaking technologies with the potential for directly targeting many types of cancer tumours while safeguarding healthy cells. The cutting-edge technologies developed by Spirogen and ADC Therapeutics complement MedImmune’s innovative antibody engineering capabilities, enabling us to accelerate antibody-drug conjugates into the clinic,” said Dr. Bahija Jallal, Executive Vice President, MedImmune.

Oncology is a core therapy area for AstraZeneca spanning both small molecule and biologics research and development. MedImmune is developing a comprehensive portfolio with an emphasis on two key areas in oncology development: antibody-drug conjugates and immune-mediated cancer therapy, which aims to harness the power of the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer. Together, immune-mediated cancer therapies and antibody-drug conjugates have the potential to treat cancer in a way that current therapies are unable to do.

“This deal reflects the very significant progress made by our scientists, most notably over the last two years, as we have applied our warhead and linker technologies to the development of highly potent and specific antibody-drug conjugates,” said Dr Chris Martin, Chief Executive Officer, Spirogen. “We believe that pyrrolobenzodiazepine-armed antibody-drug conjugates will emerge as a critical component in the next generation of cancer biologics with the potential to make a difference for oncologists and their patients. We look forward to combining our world-class capabilities in this area with MedImmune’s ability to develop this exciting class of oncology drugs.”