Working with businesses like yours,
trusted by brands like these
GARY FOX
Facilitator, speaker, consultant on creative leadership, design thinking and business model innovation.
Three ways I help clients...
Growth Marketing
You need to rapidly scale your customer base to compete. But you also can, and need to, harness growth from existing customers. I help companies develop the insights that deliver growth - market penetration. I help businesses implement and scale strategies and tactics for growth.
If you need growth then contact me.
Business Model
Business model innovation is widely recognised as the most effective way to develop a sustainable competitive advantage. Rapid technological changes present new ways to design business models, leverage customer insights and translate these into new profitable product and services.
If you need to innovate your business model contact me
Business Design
We live in a rapidly changing world and that requires you to innovate to stay relevant to customers. How do you analyse your market and turn insights into ideas? How do you know which ideas to back? I help businesses transform how they turn ideas into innovation. Design your business for the future now.
If you need to design your future business then contact me
My Research
My doctoral research is on how organisations improve their innovation capabilities at the front-end of innovation. The research examines how organisations can be more effective at creating and selecting innovative ideas that meet market needs. If you're interested in this and want to be involved please contact me.
From Sales to Growth Marketing
SALES + MARKETING
Hacking the sales and marketing process to accelerate growth.
My early career was started at Kraft where I gained my experience in sales and marketing. Sales came naturally to me, but like any skill, it took time to master. After years of honing this skill, I soon found myself as Kraft’s national sales trainer.
When it was time to pass on the experience and skills I’d learned to others, I went back to basics and evaluated the first principles of selling. I cut out the flack and years of errors, to create a precision and fast track method. I then designed and developed a flexible course to test it. It was a sensation with new sales recruits getting results faster than before. I then refined it further taking out the flack and using feedback to strengthen the whole delivery.
As I continued to train teams, I continued to learn what worked and what didn’t. I then developed my own training framework. I then taught sales directors and managers on my method, how to ‘hack’ sales skills. Their teams soon got big improvements in their results. In addition, they found team motivation rose as they hit their targets far earlier than expected.
Before long, this rapidly evolved and I was soon holding workshops. I then turned marketing. I wanted to see how and if the same approach could be used to help marketing managers. Having spent time understanding the frustrations and problems of marketing managers I unpicked the process and applied the same principles. My marketing training was soon adopted by marketing teams who wanted to create more effective marketing campaigns. Later on I took this same approach and ran international teams. With CPM UK, I worked across 30 countries handling senior level European clients. I managed complex European marketing campaigns often with clients who had matrix management processes. I worked with a team of over 150 people across sales and marketing helping big brands grow their customer base.
Having honed my sales and marketing skills I wanted to take things to another level to push myself further. I knew I had good analytical skills and I wanted to dig deep into data and get better and spotting the gaps the real market opportunities. Harnessing my analytical skills I was able to hone in on problems, uncover valuable insights and help others do the same. I diversified and quickly developed a set of skills to quickly spot opportunities for new revenue streams. I equipped myself with a toolkit of methods to apply to any problems that clients presented. What became more interesting was discovering insights in existing data that many clients held, but hadn’t been able to extract value from. I soon found senior executives taking an interest in my skills. Flooded with data but lacking insights, they wanted to learn how to develop strategies and use data to improve customer acquisition as well as develop new and innovative products and services based on customer needs.
Using workshops I was able to shape how marketing teams used data across different channels to understand customers – to get to a better understanding of how each touchpoint in the company affected the customer.
The result was amazing as teams began to find unique ways to improve areas of the business and faster than ever before. More importantly, I developed a framework that once trained, gave marketing managers the ability to innovate without me.
One of the biggest challenges though was scaling this to fit to one of the largest retailers in Europe! With a significant client investment in and a culture in need of change I was asked to help transform their approach to data and innovation. Using bespoke tools I was able to extract key trends and insights to guide their strategy and significantly improve profits.
I decided to then help startups as well as larger corporates. From branding to designing customer experiences to product launches to managing integrated marketing campaigns for industry behemoths like Hp, Microsoft, BNP Paribas, Disney and Nike.
And while this work involved a lot of long days/nights and plenty of coffee, I was stabilised by that fundamental belief: Insights + Strategy + People = Focused Action and Results.
STRATEGY + INSIGHTS
Unleashing the potential of brands through strategic insights.
CREATIVITY + INNOVATION
Unlocking creativity to create new products, services and business models.
My passion is in helping people to creatively solve problems. The more businesses I meet, the more I realise that problems need novel approaches in todays complex world. Clients need to tap into new ways of thinking to overcome the barriers that are holding them back from tackling their big challenges they face. Complexity and rapid change is the normal. Businesses now need to create adaptive flexible organisations and a culture of data-driven decisions, develop insights, turn ideas into innovation and effectively execute them.
I’m lucky to have a blend of skills that combine data analytics, creative problem solving and can turn these into growth. I’ve worked with exceptional entrepreneurs like Kim Brown, who took a business from nothing to over half a billion in turnover in just 7 years. More recently I’ve helped build the biggest global online voiceover training service, designing its courses and providing its business mentoring. Spurred on by working with entrepreneurs I took an Executive MBA at Warwick Business School with a focus on entrepreneurship and innovation. Making use of my experience, I also decided to lecture at Oxford Brookes University on Customer Experience Design.
I’ve developed and mastered approaches and methods to identifying opportunities and turning these into profitable products and services.New digital technologies now present a golden opportunity to understand customers and provide unique customer experiences, products and services.. It is at this intersection of data, problem solving and digital where insights are born.
I’ve setup my own consulting business with enterprise clients and co-founded companies like the Design Thinking Toolkit at Cranfield University, a resource of over 100 modular tools backed by academic and practice research.
My passion is helping people and teams unleash their potential and subsequently using their skills to unleash growth. I’m now working with several multi-national clients on this as an area of research for my doctorate focused on the ‘growth marketing’ – if you’re interested in this get in touch.
The most valued skills now are creative thinking, data analysis and entrepreneurial thinking. You can learn and apply these skills to create a thriving new start-up or innovate within your organisation.
Once you see get the ‘aha’ moment it’s addictive. You can develop your unique commercial ideas, hone them and create something that is yours, a business, a new product or service. It is an incredible journey, experience and can change your life.
From initial idea to prototype to branding to product launches to large integrated growth marketing campaigns – I help others innovate and grow their businesses. With the right approach and mindset anything is possible.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
These are just a few of the many people I have worked with and helped. I work with leaders and entrepreneurs across many different markets and types of organisations. From start-ups to Government to International brands.
KIM BROWN
Smart Currency
"Gary is one of those remarkable people that has a rare combination of analytical and creative skills. His energy is infectious and he will push you to reach goals you didn't think possible.”
KAREN PILE
UK GOV
"Gary's deep understanding of organisations was instrumental in developing workshops as part of our digital transformation programme. He is a master facilitator and skilled at creating high performing teams.”
HUGH EDWARDS
Gravy For The Brain
"Gary transformed our business and helped us grow from a young startup into a thriving international company. If you want to learn how to innovate and grow he is your go to person. ”