Your next stage of growth won’t come from yesterday’s answers.
You may be doing well and want to go faster, or growth may have levelled off despite everyone’s best efforts. Either way, the useful question is what would make the biggest difference now.
You have fixed the obvious things. The growth you expected is still not quite there.
Your business has good people, real experience and the instinct to act. Something is still getting in the way, and what presents itself as the problem rarely tells you where the real constraint sits.
Margins tighten. Decisions that used to feel clear now seem to generate friction. Good people see the priorities differently. The instinct is to reach for what worked last time, and often the business has moved on while the diagnosis has not.
Why now
The 2027 plan is being written now.
The last quarter of the year is when budgets are set and priorities agreed. What you commit to in the next ninety days will shape the whole of next year.
The familiar options are a new sales leader, a new CRM or a large training programme. Each has its place, and each is expensive, slow to pay back and comes with no guarantee. A few weeks spent finding out what is really in the way costs far less, and makes sure the money goes on the right thing.
How it works for you
Three stages. You can stop at any of them.
01
Growth Assessment
Ten honest questions, about five minutes, free. Your score and the areas to look at first appear straight away.
02
Growth Insight
I work with your leadership team, using your own data and your people's words, to find what is really helping and holding back growth.
03
Growth Pathway
A clear action plan and roadmap, presented to your leadership team. Run with it yourselves, or with my support.
A clear route forward, agreed by the people who will act on it.
A shared, evidence-based view of what is really holding growth back
The few value levers that will make the biggest difference, in order
An action plan and roadmap your leadership team has agreed
Faster, less contested decisions about where to invest next
The choice to deliver it yourselves, or with support where it helps
A story from the field
The sales problem that was not about sales.
Some years ago I delivered a £60,000 sales training programme for a company in the Midlands. The owners were engineers, perfectionists in some parts of the product and struggling in others.
What we heard from the salespeople was that they spent their time out with customers apologising for product problems, and losing business because of it. The owners had not come to a single session.
At one point we had to get them into the room and say so. The sales team was never the whole story. That is why I start with growth across the whole business, and why the first step is always to understand what is really going on.
LinkedIn recommendations
What clients and colleagues say.
Stephen was a great mentor of mine for several years. He helped me see past the problems I was facing to the key issues underneath.
Oliver Cwikowski
Senior Lead System Design Specialist, Ørsted
August 2025 · Worked on the same team
Stephen is a consummate sales and marketing coach, helping companies to achieve step-change growth.
Martin Coombes
Co-Owner, Odyssey Pensions
February 2014 · Stephen was Martin's client
I first met Stephen shortly after I opened my business some years ago. Today we have grown considerably.
Dave Slemen
Founding Partner, EPP
November 2019 · Stephen's client
Start with ten honest questions.
The Growth Assessment takes about five minutes and your results appear straight away. If it raises something worth talking about, you can book a conversation with me, without obligation.
