Connecting the work
from enquiry to renewal.

The setting: Three shared commercial kitchen facilities in Los Angeles and Chicago. More than two years of hands-on commercial leadership.

A shared kitchen needs to attract suitable businesses, help them understand the space and support them through a decision. The work continues after someone becomes a tenant. Renewals, changing space requirements and departing tenants all affect the sales workload.

What Dean took responsibility for

Dean hired and managed the sales team, implemented HubSpot and worked across outbound prospecting, SEO, paid search, renewals and account expansion. When tenants left, the work included finding businesses to take their place.

That meant working across several parts of the customer relationship rather than handing over a marketing plan and stepping away.

The work involved

Building and managing the sales team. Hiring people and taking responsibility for the team's ongoing direction. A sales operation needs someone to connect the people doing the work with the opportunities and priorities in front of them.

Putting customer information into a usable system. Implementing HubSpot and supporting its use across leads and customer relationships. The point of a CRM is to help people understand the opportunity and next step, rather than simply collect contact records.

Working on how new customers find the business. Improving outbound activity and working across SEO and paid search. These are different routes to a conversation: approaching a relevant business directly, appearing when someone searches and paying to reach people expressing relevant demand.

Looking beyond the first sale. Working on renewals and account expansion, alongside the work of replacing departing tenants. Existing relationships and new sales need attention at the same time.

Why this matters to another business owner

You may recognise the underlying problem even if you do not run shared kitchens. Your enquiries, sales follow-up and customer relationships may sit with different people or in different systems. You may be the person expected to connect them all.

This experience is relevant when you need hands-on help across those responsibilities: someone who can work with the team, put a CRM in place, strengthen prospecting and give renewals attention alongside new business.

Relevant support: Sales leadership · CRM implementation · Lead generation · Renewals · Account growth

A sales process
the team could use.

The setting: An established Canadian print business adapting its sales approach as face-to-face selling became harder and customer relationships changed.

A sales team can have considerable experience without having one clear, shared way to approach the work. Training needs to meet the team where it is and connect to the situations people encounter with customers.

Where we started

We interviewed leadership and members of the sales team to understand the business, the existing sales process and the gaps between them. Those conversations informed the playbook and training.

What we delivered

A practical sales playbook. Guidance covering prospecting, discovery, sales stages and closing with profitability in mind. It also covered outreach activity and organising the working day.

A two-day remote training programme. Role play, exercises and coaching gave people opportunities to work with the material rather than only read it.

Recorded resources for later use. Training recordings could support onboarding after the original sessions, giving new team members access to the same material.

Why this matters to another business owner

If sales knowledge lives mainly in the heads of a few experienced people, hiring and onboarding can become harder. A new person has to reconstruct the approach from conversations, and managers may need to explain the same things repeatedly.

Relevant support: Sales process · Playbooks · Team training · Coaching · Onboarding resources

Making the workplace
support the work.

The setting: A Canadian eyewear ecommerce business planning a return to the workplace.

The brief included focused work, collaboration and team connection. Translating that into a workplace involved decisions about how people would use desks, meeting space and shared areas.

The practical work

Our involvement covered workplace planning and implementation, including desk booking, collaborative areas, shared meeting space and team activities.

Those decisions sit between people and operations. The physical space, the way it is booked and the way teams use it need to support the work people are expected to do.

Why this matters to another business owner

A change in how people work creates practical questions: where people meet, how shared resources are allocated and what needs organising. This experience is relevant when a people-related decision needs follow-through in systems, space and everyday operations.

Relevant support: Workplace planning · People operations · Shared resources · Implementation