From years of experience of being a business coach in Sussex, we know a good place to start would be to work with the partners on their brand and values, ensuring the brand messaging and value proposition was strong and relevant for their target audiences.

The main focus to date of the business coaching for this Sussex-based client has been on their systems, processes, procedures, and organisational structure. 

For the partners to be able to spend more time on the business rather than in it, they need the team, operation, and systems in place for their team to develop, grow and deliver for the business – independently of them. Systemisations and consistent processes also increases the ability of their business to scale and grow, and therefore increase its value and profitability.

It may not sound like the most exciting area of business coaching, but it is one of the most valuable to clients! 

Getting the systems set up and operational, has required a three-step process:

1. Organisational chart: defining the roles within the business, who is responsible for what. Importantly this is about roles, and an individual may have multiple roles – which is a big difference between SMEs and large corporations!
2. System mapping: this wasn’t something that existed before for Leonards Ingredients and can often take a little time to put together, but it maps out all of the systems, their sequence, and how they work together e.g. initial inquiry into a sale, delivery, payment through to ongoing client management. Therefore system mapping is about actions and behaviours.
3. Procedures: this is the exact methodology and performance standards of how each of those systems are to be used.

If you reflect on your own business, you can see this isn’t a small task but the insight this throws up as to what does and doesn’t exist in your business, how things are done currently and where there are opportunities for standardisation, consistency and efficiencies are considerable.

The output from all of this for Leonards Ingredients has been what we refer to as ‘swim lanes’: the mapping of those systems, along with who has responsibility for them. This not only helps the partners with growing the business, freeing up their time but it also improves their ability to manage and develop the team.

Finally, with all that in place, our Sussex-based business coaching is moving into their sales and marketing. Leonards Ingredients have the challenge that they can often only reach their target market through intermediaries e.g. wholesalers rather than the butchers directly. So they need communication strategies that have the end customer in mind and are able to partner with the intermediaries.

There is currently a survey with the wholesalers to confirm Leonards Ingredients value proposition is one they care about and value – with the ambition of using the wholesalers as a marketing partner rather than being a barrier to growth.