The Directors Centre

read moreRobert Craven has written and co-written more than ten books on marketing and business strategy. Bright Marketing, Customer Is King and Kick-Start Your Business are all business best-sellers and have been acted upon by thousands of growing businesses. Sir Richard Branson wrote two of the forewords. The Check-in Journal lets you map out your strategy and plans in real time, on paper, and map out your annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals and targets. More importantly, it enables you to measure and monitor your results.

read moreSuccess here marks the difference between an excellent business and one that ‘could do better'. At the heart of all our work is a commitment to focus on getting your people working together for future business development. Programmes are designed around values, communication, service, and working together. At the heart of the people debate is agreement (alignment) about the purpose and vision of the business. The team/culture debate in your business is all about gaps. Gaps between management expectations and staff performance, staff performance and client expectations, between differing communication styles and so on.

read moreThe demands on the business and on you as the owner-director are constantly changing. As people who do, or have, run our own businesses, we get that. And we have the scars on our backs to prove it! Our business consultants are here to help your business grow in the fundamental areas that so many have issues: business strategy and business development, marketing plans, boardroom process, and teams and people. Consulting with practical, results-oriented, free of nonsense approach to helping you to run the business you want to run.

read moreAn international keynote speaker and business coach, Robert heads up the team at The Directors' Centre. He has written over ten books on business strategy and specialises in helping Digital Agency owners grow their businesses. Robert Craven says that ‘your whole business hinges on what your customer gets from you'. I wholeheartedly agree. Resli is an award-winning international speaker, trainer, and mentor, specialising in applying the art and science of psychology, winning gold at the 2014 Mind Sports Olympiad in Creative Thinking.

read moreAt different stages, your business stresses and strains as management, admin, sales and marketing plans cease to be appropriate for the current stage of business growth. We have devised a system called the Strategy Workout which will enable you to explore, develop and design a business development plan that is realistic, deliverable and based on sense-checking every aspect of the strategy. We are not in the business of creating risk. Quite the reverse. The process will reduce risk and increase the likelihood of success.

read moreMany owner-directors feel that the boardroom process just doesn't work for them. Meetings are generally long and directionless and decisions don't feel connected to the big plan or what happens in reality. Clients work with us and our business consultants to put in place our Boardroom Process Framework which generally results in running an annual strategy awayday and subsequent monthly board meetings to keep the business focused on the right goals and the best ways of achieving them. This results in you feeling a lot more in control and on top of things along with seeing significant business growth, an increase in profitability and business development.

read moreBusiness growth to date had been random and without great purpose and direction. We were learning by making mistakes and we felt convinced that there must be an easier way to grow a business. The process was a mix of one-to-one conversations, deskbound and market research (the industry, market, customers and competitors) to understand the options, possibilities and appetite for business growth. A strong business plan was developed, with a mentor to guide strategic planning, business development and facilitate business growth.

read moreDespite many early successes, Charlie Bigham of Bigham's felt that the future of the business was unclear. There was no clarity about the future strategy, just lots of questions. Exactly how was his highly innovative (and disruptive) approach to food production going to compete and win? Stepping back from the business, and armed with industry, competitor and customer research as well as some novel approaches to get-to-market, our business consultants were able to clarify and articulate a business strategy for the unique sweet spot and how it could establish them as a dominant player, in specific shelf space, in key supermarkets in the UK.