Practical notes for people running the business.
Practical thinking on business growth, sales, business development, people, systems and execution from the people behind Straxor.
You're not busy. You're disorganised.
The word "busy" hides more business problems than any other word in the language. Here's what's usually underneath it, and why more hours won't fix any of it.
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Why doesn't more marketing always create more sales?
Generating more enquiries does not improve sales if the process after the enquiry is weak. Increasing ad spend can amplify an existing sales-process problem.
What is the difference between sales and business development?
Business development creates future commercial opportunity through relationships and partnerships. Sales converts the active opportunities that result. They overlap, but they are not the same.
How do you grow a trade business without doing everything yourself?
You cannot stay the quoting department, salesperson, operations manager and final decision-maker forever. Growing the business means building people, systems and visibility you can trust.
Fractional CGO vs Fractional CMO: what's the difference?
A Fractional CMO leads marketing. A Fractional Chief Growth Officer looks across the whole commercial growth function. The right choice depends on the problem you are solving.
What does a Fractional Chief Growth Officer actually do day to day?
A Fractional CGO's week looks different depending on what the business needs. Here is what the role actually involves in practice, beyond the job title.
Why isn't your CRM delivering the value you expected?
A CRM can make a good process visible and repeatable, but it cannot fix an unclear sales process by itself. The problem is usually the process, not the software.
You're not busy. You're disorganised.
The word "busy" hides more business problems than any other word in the language. Here's what's usually underneath it, and why more hours won't fix any of it.
Why your pipeline stops the moment the owner gets busy
The single biggest risk to a service business is a pipeline that only gets attention when delivery goes quiet. Here is how to decouple growth from the owner's calendar.
Most growth strategies fail from breadth, not depth
Four initiatives run at 30% capacity will never beat one initiative run to completion. Why doing less is the only way to grow faster.
The referral partner you never followed up is worth more than the ad spend
Service businesses run on trust. Yet most spend more time optimising their Google Ads than building the relationships that actually convert.
Hiring a BDM won't fix a process problem. It'll just cost more.
If you don't have a defined sales process, hiring a Business Development Manager just means paying someone else to guess what works.
Why your growth work stops every time delivery gets loud
Delivery is urgent; growth never is. Unless you build structures that protect business development time, Tuesday will always win.
The difference between a constraint and a complaint
A complaint is something that annoys the team. A constraint is what actually stops the business from growing. Confusing the two is expensive.