Business Development and Acceleration Services

Background

You had the vision to see opportunities for your innovative technology and the drive to have taken your company this far towards achieving your goals, often with limited capital and team resources.

Now you and your team have reached a crossroads familiar to many early-stage companies, plus some more established enterprises, looking to monetise their innovations.

Overall business development needs to accelerate so that your innovation can be crystallised into a viable and productive commercial solution before the window of opportunity closes. However progress may currently be impeded, potentially by one of the 8 challenges outlined elsewhere in this website.

Deliverable - Initial review and priorities

After an initial informal contact discussion, this review would follow signature of a non-disclosure agreement, headline terms of business and related service purchase order.

Every business is different, but this is typically a short initial engagement between me and your company principal(s). At the highest level the objective of this phase is to review and understand:

• The reason for the company to exist, including intended solution focus and end goals
• Key roles and responsibilities within the company, aligned with those goals
• What has worked well in reaching the current stage
• Current company priorities, with reasons
• What is seen to be impeding progress

This is a necessarily sensitive but candid stage, setting the scene for a working relationship plus any resulting plan to address current challenges and accelerate business progress, treated as always in the strictest confidence.

Information acquired at this point will be verified between engagement principals as the cornerstone of any next steps, with initial commentary based on my overall business development and acceleration experience.

Based on this review it will be for the client to decide whether to proceed to a further engagement with me to research, document and deliver a prioritised business development and acceleration plan.  

Background

Following verification and review of the company situation, with priorities for attention, there is typically a requirement to take the next step in the form of a business development and acceleration plan.

This is an opportunity to balance issues of technology development, funding,  market and solution focus, messaging, resourcing and value creation as the pivot for business survival and acceleration, while looking to anticipate and avoid common pitfalls.

Deliverable – business acceleration plan

Depending on agreed scope and process management this can either be a fixed price engagement or based on time and materials, delivering a plan in the form of a presentation to company principals plus a document for ongoing reference, update  and action.

The engagement can be initiated by a purchase order reflecting agreed scope, responsibilities and terms.

While every company is unique, the plan is likely to cover such topics as:

• Objectives and management summary 
• The contribution of strategy
• Current state – company SWAT analysis
• Priorities and focus
• High yield market and solution options
• Related company messages and media
• Addressing barriers to market entry
• Potential funding and go-to-market partners
• Projected sales, revenues and margin
• Required funding, resources and cash flow at each stage
• Risk management and mitigation
• Next steps, with decisions required

This important step in business focus and acceleration, would normally be led by myself in conjunction with an agreed company principal, liaising with other key personnel as required.

The innovative business landscape is littered with defunct or stalled companies that did not take the time to develop an informed and integrated business development and acceleration plan, while the market and value creation opportunity evaporated.         

Background

Having built the plan together, the business needs to own its implementation, review and future tuning, as their opportunity requires.

However, there can be a need for additional support from the lead author, within the context of company ownership,  for reasons such as:

• Capacity - where the company may temporarily lack commercial business development expertise and leadership
• Review and coaching- where company principals may require assistance with facilitation of plan reviews, or coaching  less experienced commercial staff
• Driving specific activities -  such as framing early investor or end user proposals, unearthing funding opportunities and bid management

Deliverable – support for plan execution

Subject to agreed scope, terms and capacity I have the experience to provide such support services, typically  on a time and materials contract against a relevant purchase order and for a fixed period.