New skills help win new business for Private Equity Administrators

by | Sep 28, 2017

New skills help win new business for Private Equity Administrators


The Client

Private Equity Administrators Ltd (PEA), founded in 2003, offers boutique fund administration for onshore and offshore pan-European funds. The business provides bespoke administrative solutions, with flexible and accessible reporting to help with the transparency demands of investors, regulators and fiduciaries.

To achieve the desired growth, the senior management team recognised the need to pitch PEA’s unrivalled services to more of Europe’s most highly regarded Private Equity, Real Estate and Infrastructure Fund Managers and their stakeholders.

This need to ‘sell’ was complicated by the complex nature of the services offered, so the decision was made for one of the talented individuals within the firm to learn how better to sell the complex services on offer.

Bringing the sales process in-house ensures those individuals who do the work and best understanding of the services, sell what they have to offer to deliver a truly end-to-end service.

Understanding that reading a few books on selling, or the occasional half-day workshop were unlikely to deliver the necessary skills needed for long-term sales performance, PEA in Guernsey approached Jersey-based Leadership Management International-UK Director Tim Neill.


The Individual

Today’s business landscape, dictates fund administration professionals are organised, efficient, technically astute, technologically savvy, prepared for complex challenges. And for PEA Managing Director (Guernsey) James Orrick, able to sell the firm’s services.

There was no doubting James’ talents. He qualified as a Chartered Certified Accountant before moving into fund administration, specialising in fund and structure establishment, back office operating models, systems, efficiency drivers, GAAP & IFRS accounting and corporate governance.

However, James was the first to admit that ‘selling’ in all its forms was not a skill he had learned or believed he possessed. But given his personal desire to grow and add to his abilities, he invited Tim to explain the details and benefits of undertaking the Effective Selling Strategies programme from Leadership Management International-UK.


The Programme

Selected not just for the content, but the way the concepts and information are delivered, the Effective Selling Strategies programme would give James the skills he would need to sell, along with the confidence to use the techniques learned.

Admitting he was a novice when it came to ‘selling’, James decided the programme offered a structured introduction to lots of good processes and practical sales techniques shaped over more than 50 years of success; more likely to give him the long-term outcomes he was seeking than the half day courses often touted as the answer.

Spaced repetition is an essential facet of all Leadership Management International-UK programmes and one particular aspect that helped James discover his inner salesman was listening at least six times to the audio files covering each lesson. This gave him the opportunity to makes notes and really get to grips with the concepts within the programme.

Over the course of the six-lesson Effective Selling Strategies programme, meeting regularly and discussing the material in detail, allowed Tim to support James and advise him about how best to apply what he was learning to his particular role at PEA, something that helps set the programmes apart from other approaches, according to James.

With a relatively small potential market for the specialist services offered by James and his team at PEA, the programme was tailored more towards creating time to sell, the sales interview, buying motives and closing sales than identifying targets – the first lesson of the Effective Selling Strategies programme.

The Effective Selling Strategies programme is as much about giving individuals confidence that with the right approach, to the right people, at the right time, they can ‘sell’ their products or services effectively to hit the targets they have been set.

Thanks in part to Leadership Management International-UK’s Effective Selling Strategies programme and in part to my in-depth discussions with Tim, I have become a lot more confident in the sales situation, recognising the importance of my own professional network and how to get more from the contacts I have.James Orrick, Private Equity Administrators


The Benefits

The programme has helped James with four distinct areas of improvement: he has developed more self-belief in his abilities; he takes more responsibility and makes more decisions, more quickly; he is more confident ‘selling’ the firm’s services to prospects and existing clients; he is more confident dealing with other board members and asking for what he needs.

James didn’t wait until the end of the programme to put into practice what he was learning and immediately began his Business Development work, seeing almost instant results.

PEA is benefitting from the new business brought in by James and his team, which has required a growth in the Guernsey team from 8 to 11 individuals to handle the complex onboarding process for new clients.


The Future

James is not just an advocate of the Effective Selling Strategies programme, but the Leadership Management International-UK approach in general. It makes the education process enjoyable and accessible, with the audio files in MP3 format ensuring learning takes place at a time and location of the individual’s choosing, including commutes, at home or in James’ case whilst exercising at the gym in the morning.

James recognises that Leadership Management International-UK deliver the necessary permanent change in attitudes and behaviours through successful programmes utilising multi-sensory learning and spaced-repetition, delivered by experienced mentors who work with their charges on a one-to-one basis, over a long period of time.

Given the success James has already enjoyed, he is now considering another of Leadership Management International-UK’s most successful programmes, Effective Personal Leadership. The programme helps the individual understand the very personal nature of leadership and the importance of self-knowledge and emotional intelligence in becoming a better leader.