Member Spotlight

Leslie Smith

Bizzxsell Ltd

Market Sector – Business Services
Lives – Eye, Suffolk
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Background

Since the age of 16 I have been active in Sales and Marketing in one shape or another. Starting part time pumping petrol (when attendants used to do that) and looking after the shop while studying full time, then moving on to managing a 6 pump garage in sunny Dagenham by the age of 19 during the fun times of the fuel crisis of the late 70s

I decided to get a "proper" job in my early 20s and was taken on as a trainee sales rep by a national building products company and have never really looked back since.

Over the last 25 years I have gained experience in International Sales and Marketing with a variety of businesses from a multi-national oil company, right down to a small family run business.

Along the way I went back to school and took a Post Graduate qualification in Marketing and qualified as a Prince 2 Practitioner in Project Management.

I am currently a Chartered Marketer, with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), and sit on the regional board for the CIM Eastern Region. During this time I managed to get married and raise a couple of children, pay the mortgage and do all the normal things that people do but deep inside I always had a longing to run my own business, ideally working with SMEs in one way or another.

The Idea behind Bizzxsell

In the latter part of 2007 I was becoming increasingly restless in my employment. I really felt the need for a new challenge and so I started casting around for some ideas of what to base my own business on, apart from the obvious option of becoming a "Consultant".

One of the things I had done in the past was to work on both Public and Private sector tenders and on researching the level of help in the market for SMEs I found that it was overall pretty poor. I decided to set up a business offering general business advice but with a specialisation in Government Contracts and Tenders, helping SMEs to understand the process and to bid for contracts.

In October 2007 I handed in my notice and took a great leap of faith by going out on my own, starting the business full time in February 2008.

The last 18 months

Since February last year I have been fortunate enough to manage the business without taking on any debt, so I don't have to worry about the banks but to say life has all been plain sailing would be a long way from the truth.

I was very fortunate that my last employer wanted to retain my services for 1 day a week on a consultancy basis which meant that I had an income of sorts from day one, so I could pay the mortgage and the bills.

Getting started was hard work as I had moved to Suffolk in October 2007 and knew virtually no-one in the area. The majority of my working life had been spent on international trade so I was lacking the contact network in the UK that the majority of people starting out on their own take for granted.

I tried the usual avenues of setting up a website, advertising in local magazines and a number of other publications in the area. I also wrote press releases (some of which even got published!) but getting new customers proved to be an elusive business.

The other thing I tried was networking, so I joined a number of groups and attended lots of breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings. I met lots of people and let them know what I could do to help them with Government contracts. This has proven to be the most effective way of finding clients so far and has lead on to a number of recommendations which is the best form of advertising there is.

What we offer

As that well known advert says, "we do exactly what it says on the tin".

Bizzxsell specialises in helping SMEs with Government tenders and offers a complimentary review of your business to discuss the requirements of Government tender bidding.

Our service ranges from simply helping you through the process of getting prepared to tender and making sure you have all the standard documentation in the right format to enter the tender process, right through to acting as your tender representative, preparing and submitting the finished tender documentation on your behalf.

Our full service tender consultancy also includes searching all the relevant government tender sites, actively looking for contracts suitable for your business to bid for.

Let us help you climb out from under the pile of paperwork that most SMEs get bogged down with when they start to look at Public Sector Contracts.

Looking to the future

Over the last couple of months I have become involved with a networking group in Huntingdon called O4RB, and Mi. Both provide me with the opportunity to spread the word about the Public Sector opportunities that are available for companies prepared to work at getting it.

I have started making presentations about the tender process. I am working on some online support programs to help SMEs, for a very modest cost, learn how the Public Sector Procurement system works and how to go about winning a share of it.

It is one of my ambitions to remove the mystery behind Public Sector Procurement and make this market sector understandable to SMEs. The Government is working hard to encourage more SMEs to become suppliers to the public sector and have set a target of 30% of Public Sector spend to go to the SME community. Let's help them achieve the target!

I have set up a couple of blogs dealing with this subject and a couple of websites designed to provide information and support, some free of charge, some at a small cost

Please See

www.thetendertrail.co.uk
www.howtowritetenders.co.uk

and of course...

Contact Bizzxsell

2 Spring Close, Eye, Suffolk. IP23 8GZ
Tel: 0845 6384953
W: www.bizzxsell.com
E: leslie.smith@bizzxsell.com