How we are different
At Growth Ignition, we don’t just support growth—we engineer it
We’re not your typical consultancy or training firm. We’re a team of pragmatic, hands-on work winning specialists who embed best practice into your business DNA. From strategy to execution, we join the dots across the entire deal funnel—business planning, client development, capture, bidding, and beyond—to deliver measurable impact and sustainable success.
1.We are Learning and Development experts
We recognise that a training session can only be the beginning of the journey to improved win rates and Growth.
One of the key ways that we win most training pitches we are invited for is that we are the only bid, capture and KAM training business that has bothered to learn how humans learn. I have a HR based business degree and have taken a special interest throughout my career in learning and development.
The 70-20-10 model for learning and development (L&D) is a commonly used formula within the training profession. The model outlined the optimum split of learning consumption, suggesting that individuals obtain knowledge, skills and abilities in their roles through the following mixture of sources:
- 70 percent from on-the-job experience
- 20 percent from social sources such as interactions with others
- 10 percent from formal structured training
In early 2018, Training Industry Inc released an insights report to update the focus and efforts in driving training impact. The overall blend is now closer to what could be called the 55-25-20 model. With higher quality and more impactful methods in live training, huge consumption and availability of online structured content and improved understanding of coaching and social learning there has been a dramatic shift in the dynamic.
In the last seven years we have found that leveraging the 55-25-20 model with a mixed economy of interventions and learning methods, organised to build and drive momentum, helps deliver sustained increased win rates at scale. We’ve found that mobilising with live training (or webinars) for bidding ‘champions’ across the business creates the initial hockey stick in bidding understanding, the 20. We supercharge the impact with design calls and attendee surveys pre-training to bespoke the context for the audience and markets and measure impact with an agreed Kirkpatrick measurement model.
We can then support that initial wave with ongoing mentoring and coaching of key individuals and deliver ongoing modules as part of their apprentice, graduate and leadership development programmes – enabling social learning and embedding good practices in their DNA. The 25.
Lastly we can land a digital work winning site as their constant online KAM, capture and bid process and digital learning resource, providing them with a consistent roadmap and governance to follow, with embedded microlearning to refresh or up-skill bid teams right when they need it, on live bids. The 55.
Our clients are averaging more than a 20% increase in win rates, winning at better margins and finding the experience of their new measured robust bidding approach far less of a drag on the business.
Whether we deliver futher interaction and content or you self deliver, we are focused on real ROI, adoption and impact.
Our approach in detail: https://lnkd.in/dcKB8YBM
Book a call to discuss: https://lnkd.in/eC9WbnzY
2. Deep sector experience, insight and influence
We can help you win work in any sector
We’ve won deals in anything from insurance to legal to logistics to healthcare equipment. We’ve even trebbled the valuation and helped sell a Bailiff firm.
We can advise you on selling to private sector clients and attracting private equity. But our favourite space is in making a difference with firms that sell to the public sector more.
I grew up at Mouchel winning pubsec outsourcing deals, learning from an elite bunch led by Graham Kean. We had to understand both high performing businesses and construction, as it was largely architects, engineers and surveyors we were bringing into the business. We won everything we bid for seven years. A fantastic education.
I can’t really get away from being typecast as a construction specialist. I’ve led KAM, capture, bid and proposals functions at EC Harris / Arcadis globally and Mace Construct, the coolest builder in the world, through their respective high growth phases. My teams have supported winning deals for £20bn+ of capex globally - from frameworks with Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, GPA, DfE, Environment Agency and CCS to mega projects with Facebook, UCL and this one - the £1.5bn rejuvenation of Battersea Power Station.
Construction and infrastructure is our home turf. Whether it’s market research and growth strategy to KAM, capture or bidding - across education, devolved gov, healthcare, roads, rail, nuclear and defence - clients tell us that we tend to win advisory and training programmes as there isn’t anyone that understands these markets and clients better.
We don't just sit back either. I engage National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), Construction Leadership Council and Crown Commercial Services to influence their thinking on construction procurement and teach winning work subjects for Department for Business and Trade.
I’ve delivered great ROI (between 10x and 100x) on services and training for half of the top 10 contractors and consultants - from Morgan Sindall Construction & Infrastructure, Wates Group, Willmott Dixon, Kier Group and GRAHAM Group, Overbury, Structure Tone and Wates Smartspace, to Mace Consult, AtkinsRéalis and Grimshaw. And we’re proud to have supported high growth disruptors like Reds10, Rider Levett Bucknall RLB, Frankham Group, Blue Iris, Secure Construct and Cast Interiors.
We can and do successfully help anyone grow their B2B and / or B2G firms in any market, as well as anyone. But Construction and Infrastructure is my turf.
3. We are funnel wide - driving optimised profitable growth
I train hundreds of people a year in bid writing and love doing it, but winning starts far before the bid lands
But often part-way through the course I have to explain something awkward to group - they aren’t losing deals because they aren’t great at writing bids. It’s maybe 20% of the problem.
The real challenge is at the other end of the funnel - that they don't have a properly researched business plan and pipeline that tells them where to fish for work with clients they actually make money working with. They are bidding too much, and we find with firms with less than 1000 people - too often they are writing lots of bids to complete strangers. They are far behind the curve on most bids and will never win consistently. The deals they do win aren’t as profitable (if at all), are higher risk and if they accounted for their actual cost of sale properly they would be stunned.
We’re the only organisation in the world (that we know of) that can advise you, build your processes and train your people in every aspect of how you grow a business to business (B2B) and/or business to government (B2G) organisation.
Joining the dots through your funnel is critical for well managed growth, focusing all your efforts on your pipeline of perfect clients, on contracts in your sweet spots and that fit your capabilities.
From spinning up your account based marketing approach, plans on a page for your key accounts or deep capture campaigns for your key pursuits - driving for negotiations with real influence, not just basic bid prep - we’re your people.
We can support you with improving any element of the funnel or combine interventions into a transformation - delivering an organised and focused eco-system for optimised profitable growth.
Where clients engage us across the funnel, we double their margins in two to three years. Where we train people in an aspect of it we deliver between 10x and 100x ROI, depending on the sector.
We can teach you to write bids as well as anyone. I just wish you’d let me help you do it as little as possible - negotiating more deals single source and winning competitively much more.
You can book a call any time to talk it through for your business here: https://lnkd.in/eC9WbnzY
4. We’re pragmatic work winners
Real world useable best practices that actually work
I’ve had a couple of instances recently that have taken me all the way back to why I started Growth Ignition in the first place.
When I was at Mace we really struggled for training and best practices that were actually valuable and useable in the real world. Two clients have recently fed back to me that they still largely feel the same a decade later.
1) I’ve had a defence prime bidding pro tell me in a tea break on my bid writing course with them that they had training from one of the heritage bid writing training firms in a couple of years before and that their peoples participation in bidding and ultimately their win rates went backwards as a direct result. The content was so abstract and so far from their daily bidding lives that stakeholders retrenched from it.
2) I’ve recently unseated the same heritage firm at another consulting firm where the same feelings came to the surface. That what they were hearing about was just not really useable day to day, particularly in their modern day public sector markets.
There isn’t a lot of point in being trained in high art, largely American, thinking if its not the reality on the ground. Particularly if its just one-and-done with no adoption or worse - it’s just a lead magnet for selling you more bid consultants.
That was why I developed the bid toolkit, our approach to winning bids, and our wider approach to pragmatic funnels for B2B/B2G firms. It’s step by step, basic best practices that anyone can adopt, and crucially - it is there with you forever online, right when you need it. Not stuck in a thick indigestible book gathering dust on a shelf or lost in your memory months and years later.
Bid Writing training https://lnkd.in/e3d67r7M
What our clients Say
Jeremy is an engaging and inspirational presenter who easily puts people at ease with both his extensive theoretical and practical knowledge of bidding and capture processes alongside his calm and supportive demeanour.
— Bid Excellence Lead,
Wincanton
Jeremy and the team have been immensely helpful, both in providing training for our technical staff and in building a robust bid process. We have already received some very positive client feedback on the quality of our submissions .
— Chris Wheaton, Director,
Quod
We’ve already seen a noticeable improvement in win rates, an improvement in the bidding experience with everyone knowing the part we need them to play.
— Bob Bradley, Group Sales Director,
Restore Harrow Green