Work history
Aptis Business Development Manager & Europe
Led strategic direction for the regional exams business
I developed and led the regional strategy for Aptis – a new product, new markets and a new business model (B2B) for many of the 30+ country teams I managed vertically.
--Covering two regions that included stretched from western Europe to Central Asia, the strategy established performance indicators, priority markets and marketing and sales tactics to achieve targets. I also was a member of the senior regional exams strategy group and a Global Board to ensure a work I was leading fit into the overall long term plans at the regional and corporate level. As a result, in my first 2 years I took the business from a few niche countries with £90k annual income to £516k representing the highest growth percentage for an Aptis region globally.
Led staff through adoption of the strategy to achieve buy-in and monitor results
Having set the strategic direction, I led implementation across 30+ diverse and time-constrained country teams, none of whom directly reported to me. This meant building understanding of and buy-in for the product, business development strategy and marketing action plan. I therefore garnered support from colleagues across the region through a campaign of regular and open communication.
--I initiated and led face-to-face strategic reviews in nearly 20 countries in the first year, quickly developing support for the strategy and the product overall. I also I designed and led a B2B sales training programme as many local teams were unfamiliar with B2B selling having traditionally been focused on B2C products. Success was shown in hard numbers (a rapid rise in the collective value of the country opportunity pipelines from near zero to well over £1M and a 348% rise in year-on-year income) as well as regular participation in communications channels like the newly established monthly network updates and annual discussions of marketing tactical plans (with feedback data showing overall satisfaction of more than 80%).
Cross-organisational team management
I led business planning and development by designing an efficient system to streamline our financial and target planning and management, as well as by direct intervention in large opportunities. Starting from scratch with this new business, I created a streamlined system to gather data, plan budgets and set targets.
--For example, I developed a yearly series of tactical planning meetings to hone marketing action plans to achieve targets, plan budgets and establish accountability for both. I developed a standard Strategy and Market Analysis tool to create uniform system for tracking both tactical actions and budget spend across countries. This system is now a new standard in the planning cycle across exams teams, allowing clearer targets and budgets, as well as more robust and structured plans in each country.
--Once the plans were created it was necessary to monitor the health and growth of our business and report it corporately. I therefore led all country teams through the development of an opportunity pipeline tracking system. For this I volunteered my region to be at the forefront of a corporate Salesforce rollout and led selected country teams through the adoption of this system. For all other teams I subsequently developed a bespoke system to track pipeline data using Google docs. This has allowed me to more closely monitor the health of the Aptis businesses and is instrumental in setting targets for forthcoming financial years.
Developing best sales practice and telling our story
To help country teams best make our case when working with potential clients or partners I led higher level sales negotiations and delivered presentations at large promotional events, while providing materials to guide country teams when marketing and selling the Aptis test.
--For example, I led discussions with the Albanian Ministry of Education to establish our products for exclusive use by nearly all Albanian secondary school students. I developed and delivered the presentations, providing best practice examples as needed, and managed the relationship thereafter. This has led to an agreement which will mean roughly 35,000 test candidates per year from across Albania.
--I recognised that there was low recognition of the British Council and the need for English by companies. I therefore developed a plan for the EU and WE regions to curate PR-worthy stories of our work and communicate these through the best channels to our external markets. Doing so would raise our British Council brand and the importance of English amongst companies. This plan has now been adopted with both my regions and is being implemented by regional communications teams.
--Finally, I observed that our teams lacked hard data on the importance of English testing to support marketing and sales discussions with clients. I therefore envisaged, designed and led a research project with Euromonitor to identify the precise impact of English on a company’s bottom line. This research has subsequently been used in press releases, marketing presentations, sales discussions and I have subsequently used this to design a regional Digital campaign currently being rolled out across social media channels.
Marketing, Communicatoins Manager and Europe
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Led marketing and business development for the regional Arts SBU, creating a strategy to raise partner and co-funding income and improve audience reach:
-- I introduced new planning methods to focus activities on those with potential for audience and income generation and developed new ways of working to respond to 2015 targets.
--Several European Commission cofounding bids totalling nearly £250,000 are now under consideration and there is a clearer structure and market focus for planned activities.
--To underpin our work I developed a regional market segmentation research project to articulate our arts audience segments and how to best target them. This has proven so effective it has been subsequently taken forward by the corporate Marketing and Arts teams as a global research project now being delivered.
As my skills in business development and strategic communications were recognised by my line manager, I was seconded to Rome¬ to lead the Italy team’s 65th anniversary year campaign to raise the profile the British Council English, exams and programme work:
--Based on the agreed business targets I developed a strategy and project plan with an agreed £100,000 budget and monitoring and evaluation measurements (i.e. student enrolment/exams numbers).
--I communicated the objectives, benefits, requirements and standards (i.e., procedures for event promotion and evaluation) to country staff, achieving strong cross-team support despite often divided and siloed teams.
--Targets were met or exceeded for sponsorship income (i.e., Jaguar, Diageo), budget (finished within £100 of plan), reach/engagement (i.e. 2,000 face-to-face) and new student and candidate enrolment (year-on-year increase despite premises move). The culminating new Rome premises opening event was praised by senior figures both inside the British Council (i.e., the British Council Chair) and outside (i.e., the UK Ambassador): “Everyone enjoyed the event immensely and all were very complimentary about their collaboration with the British Council across all our areas of work – teaching, exams, customer services, programmes…One of the best comments I heard was ‘the British Council has made many, many new friends in Rome tonight.’” – British Council Italy Country Director
Developed and led the marketing and income generation strategy for one of our largest English projects, Language Rich Europe, a £450,000, European Commission-funded project with 30+ partners (including EUNIC) and with a team totalling 100+ diverse internal and external professionals dispersed across 24 countries:
--As English is a top priority in our region, I developed a strong knowledge of our English SBU strategy and products as well as our corporate partnership strategy to maximise effectiveness when developing and negotiating our offer with partners.
--Following market research I targeted three companies working in education and publishing – Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Rosetta Stone.
--Through building relationships with key personnel from these companies, I developed and presented of our offer, negotiated the contract and provided on-going service and communication as the project has been implemented.
As a result, the project secured cash income of £105,000 and in-kind contribution worth £40,000 from these companies – a 30% addition to existing project funding.
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Skills
- Advertising
- Marketing PR
- Account Management
- Brand Management
- Business Development
- Client Services
- Marketing Strategy
- Problem Solving
- Project Management
- Social Media Marketing
- Strategic Planning
- Communications
- Media Relations
- Relationship Management
- Copywriting