Starting up a new business, launching a new brand and generating traction is both an exciting and challenging time. Etane provides hands-on support to first-time entrepreneurs to guarantee success in your new venture.

Business Planning

Making the tough decisions is a key part of any credible business planning process and is essential to shaping the strategy and direction of your business. Etane’s breakthrough team works with you to create tactical action plans with clear objectives, roles and responsibilities, to help you make this reality happen quickly and effectively.
Etane is renowned for its speed of execution. We coach you and your team throughout the process so you can transfer your vital knowledge and build momentum to create a motivated and dynamic culture in your business. From a concept to a business reality, we will help you establish your brand which will enable you to make the key first sales that generate profit.

Routes to market

Applying the right sales and marketing strategy is the difference between success and failure. To improve your chances, it is essential to identify and focus on the most effective routes to market for your business.
A great product, positioned effectively in the marketplace, attracts the right customers. Early engagement of those potential customers provides understanding that can help refine your offer so that when it comes to launch, your sales and marketing strategy is focused and informed. This gives you higher levels of traction.
Etane work with businesses on the commercialisation of products and services. We help develop the strategy and plan to help you find the best markets, identify growth areas and develop strategic partnerships that can make things move quickly.

Essential Early Sales

Getting early traction can be difficult for start up businesses. Winning your first customers is a challenge, particularly with new products and services in a mature marketplace.
It’s important to have a clear strategy for sales. Many start up entrepreneurs struggle with this. At Etane, success doesn’t lie in the completed business plan. Success is achieving those early sales; rolling our sleeves up and delivering what we set out to do. We helping our client launch a great business.
Having the support of experienced sales and marketing mentors is invaluable at this stage to help you define your strategy, process and target markets but more importantly to manage activity and progress so all of this happens.
Our mentors and coaches provide you with a range tools and techniques to develop your team and improve success in the delivery of your sales and marketing strategy.

Building Your Team

Entrepreneurs in start up businesses will be more than familiar with performing more than one role. As managing director there is a good chance you are also in charge of finance, operations, sales, marketing and delivery! This cannot be maintained as the business grows so you need a team that is capable of delivering your ambitions.
It is essential to plan for growth. By identifying these roles and responsibilities at an early stage, you can pinpoint who and when your next critical hire will be. What is your team going to look like in one, two, three years time? This also helps identify what you can outsource and leverage externally.
By building a strategic network around the business, you may be able to plug vital skills without hiring. There are many organisations and networks that you can leverage by being tactical. Etane can work with you to develop your team, the roles and responsibilities and identify a plan of how to scale the team with business growth.

Start Up Funding

Money is a major concern for start up businesses. There are many different schemes and sources of funding and finance to apply for at this stage of growth in a business.
Funding is available from various government departments and agencies nationally and locally to support start up businesses, innovation and enterprise. The problem is researching and navigating the many options and identifying the right one for you.
Funding should fit with your business model and current plans, be careful not to tailor your business around a particular funding scheme and criteria as this can often lead to a loss of direction.
Most grants and funding are low risk with flexible terms, but some require an equity share in the business. The Etane team has helped its clients secure investment in the last 2 years, making the key introductions at the right time and attending investment rounds with our clients to ensure the business case is made to secure it.
Etane can help you seek out the best schemes for your business, prepare you for what is required and support you though the application process.

Making It Happen

The business plan is the first step, but making sure you deliver it is another matter. The reality of how you will meet your objectives, hit sales targets and grow your business requires motivation, focus and a lot of effort.
It’s essential that you plan, track and manage progress at this early stage of business growth. Short term tactical goals are key to measuring progress and success. It’s very easy to lose focus to other areas of the business and get into a comfort zone.
Etane’s Route To™ process is designed to produce a tactical action plan with clear direction and accountability for measured success. We mentor and support you through the process to keep you on track, focusing on the priorities to fast track your business growth. Having an experienced mentor is a great advantage to provide vital skills and knowledge for your personal development.

As a business grows, different problems and opportunities demand different solutions - what worked a year ago might not be the best approach now, consumers and therefore marketplaces can change quickly. Effective management requires foresight which in turn improves the ability of the business to predict changing market forces.

Objective Assessment

As the manager of a growing business, you have made it through the tough start up years and reached the stage of business that you have strived hard to get to. But what do you need to do to grow your business to the next stage? Is the business reaching its full potential? Is it time for a new strategy and direction? Often you can be too close and emotionally attached to the business to look at the situation objectively.
Taking stock of where you are against your current vision and plan is essential, but something people rarely make time for. The breakthrough moment, when a business scales and generates substantial revenues requires fresh objectivity to challenge the key business decisions and redefine the route forward.
Etane can help you unlock the potential in your business and identify growth opportunities. Etane’s Route To™ strategic review is a proactive way to fully realise where you are and where you want to go. Looking at sales, marketing, customers, finances, operations; our team helps revisit your vision and strategy.

Raising finance

Are you considering raising finance for your business? There are many things you need to consider but the first thing you need to think about is why you need the finance – it may be that you just need more sales! These are all decisions where it helps to have some objective advice and support. You need to do what is right for you and your business, not what the competition is doing.
Every business is different, with different needs and potential. Etane can help you address some of these fundamental questions. The next step is to find the right funding route for you.
There are various sources of financing your business with varying degrees of risk and impact. Etane can help you navigate, understand and evaluate the options including venture capital, angel investment, seed funding, debt finance, loans, grants and tax credits.

Are You Investor Ready?

If you have decided to go for investment, investor readiness is the key to success.
Just like anyone making a major purchase, investors need reassurance of a sound investment. They require an excellent product, a unique service proposition, the ability to save customers time or money, and the potential to generate significant revenue through clearly defined routes to market. On top of this investors are looking for a solid and experienced management team in charge of the business.
Etane has helped businesses raise their investment. We help you prepare for the implications, impact and liabilities on you and your business making you investor ready.
Depending on the stage you are at and the size of your team we can act either on a consultancy or interim basis. Etane can transfer vital skills to your team or join your management team on a short term basis to fast track the process and increase your chances for success.

Improve Sales and Profits

It’s essential to keep control and focus on your brand, sales strategy and process. Are you reaching the markets you want to be working in and the clients you want to be working with? Are you winning the right size and type of project?
Often you get so involved in winning and delivering, it is very easy to lose the focus and the direction you initially set out in. Reviewing essential basics by evaluating your brand, redesigning and revisiting your sales strategy brings this focus back and should make things much clearer and ultimately satisfying for everyone.
Who is your ideal client or customer, what do they need and how does your brand satisfy those needs? Are you the type of business you set out to be? Maybe your sales are great but profitability is a concern. If you have built a great reputation for your business but are not attracting new business, it could be time to review your business strategy and achieve the growth you feel your capable of delivering.
Etane’s Route To™ process provides objectivity from our sales and marketing team and is a great way to achieve this focus. A sales or marketing coach or mentor can help you and your team define your strategy and address all of these questions. They work with you to review your current situation and plan the way forward, help you exploit your strengths and address any areas that need development.

Managing Growth

Growing a business can feel like starting a new business all over again. Growth means change, and change is not always comfortable. Etane can help you manage the challenges of growth.
Strategically it might be time for a new business plan. A strategic review of your current situation can provide a lot of clarity and establish a new focus and direction to form the basis of a new plan for growth or exit.
As a business leader, what does your role look like now and what should it be? At this stage you need to make the transition from deliverer to the business person. It’s essential for you to free up your time and resource to pursue other ideas that will benefit and help grow the business. Etane work with business leaders on this self-realisation process to enable you to understand your strengths, where you need to improve and what you need to let go of.
Being a manager requires the ability to delegate and get the best out of your team. Building a balanced and structured team with the right skills is essential to take the business forward. Etane can help you develop key roles, company structure and establish systems to motivate and empower your team to create an energised culture.

Growth Strategy

Once a business has reached a critical mass with a strong market position, it’s a good time to consider a more aggressive growth strategy. Moving into new markets provides real opportunities for new revenue streams.
Identifying the right products or services and matching them with clients can help businesses scale quickly. Etane can help identify and engage with new markets from market research, brand positioning and feasibility to sale.
If this is something you are considering, it helps to have support from an experienced advisor to make sure you plan for quick and effective penetration to increase your impact and success in a new sector.
Etane help de-risk the situation to get quick wins. We have experience working in a range of markets and geographies with partners and associates to help you move strategically and operationally into new territories. We can either work internally to get you there or provide access to the key people you need to make it happen.

The skills and people needed to start the organisation are not always the ones to take it to the next level. Business leaders often need to change and remove barriers to growth and increase profitability. Re-defining the culture within the management team and the rest or the business that are essential to transform and grow the business.

Improve Communication

Growing businesses present different challenges for the management team. With changing business dynamics and client’s spreading over wider geographies, productivity, motivation and communication become key to success.
Effective teams ensure the flow of information into and out of the organisation remains constant so the decision making process do not suffer as the business grows. Enabling the right people working at every customer touch point within the business to take ownership and drive the communication process is therefore essential.
Etane can help you understand the flow of information in your business and where necessary work with teams and individuals to innovate and communicate more effectively. Innovation often comes from the people that do the job so capturing and using these ideas allows the business to flex and grow.

Organisation Structure

As businesses grow they can become dysfunctional and lose the focus and the ability to execute the business plan. Etane help the management team stay focused on creating opportunities, closing deals, building the brand and delivering first class products and services, with strong control on processes and finance to ensure business growth.
An effective and well balanced management team is the cornerstone of a successful business, but more importantly to ensure the business can scale and cope with growth. Etane takes business leaders and management team through a self discovery process to identify key strengths and create awareness of what the team needs to be successful. We look at skills gaps and profile the right candidates to build the team.
A strategy review allows you to see where the business is and build an action plan to reach your aspirations. It can also be very valuable to have a third party such as Etane present in board meetings to help challenge decisions and drive activity.

Manage Your Time

Entrepreneurs grow businesses with natural enthusiasm, desire and energy. With increasing demands on time, it can be difficult to prioritise and delegate away from something you are so close to.
There are tough questions to answer and decisions to be made to see where you add the most value and what the business needs to move up a gear. A growing business with an increasing head count brings new levels of complexity and internal challenges. Etane’s leader mentors provide objectivity that can help you take a step back from the day to day emails, administrative and staff issues to see the areas of the business that other people are better placed to solve problems and create solutions, allowing the business to blossom.
Etane works with you and your management team to define what you need to be and what you need to focus on to drive and manage the business. Mentoring and coaching brings clarity to the team and the individual to deliver results and create a culture of empowerment and ownership.
Understanding and keeping a transformational role allows the entrepreneur to add value and delegate according to what the business needs to be successful. When you start a business you have to do everything the business needs; when you are a leader you have be everything the business needs.

Financial Support

A finance director is one of the most valuable assets to a profitable company. Good financial information informs business critical decisions and well managed financial controls are imperative to a healthy cash flow.
For many entrepreneurs finance is not a key strength and can be a distraction from leading the business and bringing in sales. But having a senior financial professional who understands the business and adds value strategically as well as operationally is key to making the right decisions for the business.
How clear are you on where the business is and what happens if targets are not met? A part time finance director can be a great advantage to an SME. An objective team member can improve decision making and challenge boardroom decisions to allow you to focus on priorities – winning business, leading the team and delivering great products and services.
If you are considering raising finance for your business, a finance director can add a lot of credibility and value to support you through the business planning, financial modelling, due diligence and pitching process. This allows you to stay focused the business and the execution of the plan.

Take Control

Some people are leaders, some are managers and the lucky few are both. When starting up as an entrepreneur the focus is growing yourself and your business. Once you have built the business and your team, the focus needs to shift towards growing and leading others, to realise the business potential.
As a leader you set the vision, values, culture and direction of the business. As a manager you take a proactive approach towards the execution of the strategy and control the resources to achieve it. How do you want to be perceived by your team, clients and peers?
Leadership styles vary depending on what comes naturally or what the situation requires. Not everyone is a born leader, but you can take control and become the leader you need to be.
Maintaining the vision and strategy whilst managing a team effectively is difficult, therefore you need an effective management structure and team around you.
Etane are experienced leadership and management mentors that have worked with business leaders in a wide variety of sectors and at every stage of business growth.

Making Tough Decisions

Tough decisions are inevitable. Managing a business and leading a team present many challenges in key areas such as performance management, organisational change, operations and choices around strategic direction. It can be difficult to know what the best solution is and whether you are making the right decision.
Leading a business can be a lonely place. When your team depends on you for final decisions on business critical issues, there are few people whom you can consult. Often these are highly sensitive or confidential situations that will impact on the team or direction of the business.
Having the objectivity of a third party such as a non-exec or a mentor helps tackle the thought process and give confidence in decision making. An impartial and experienced sounding board offers valuable support to move past tough obstacles and testing times.