I’m not sure what you call a collective gathering of advisers, coaches, consultants and other business support professionals, but there was a big one at the ACT conference in Warrington this week.
The ACT network brings together like-minded professionals all of whom help and support people starting and running small businesses. I was at the conference to run a couple of workshops, but I’ll come to that later.
The conference itself was a game of two halves.
In the morning Gary Skelley updated us on what his local regional development agency (the NWRDA) was doing for small business. I got the impression the organisation was rather hamstrung by the election and subsequent political developments.
Our new administration won’t make any major budget announcements until 22 June. I’m guessing managers at each of the nine RDAs around the country are holding their breath given the pre-election mutterings by Mark Prisk, the recently appointed minister for small business.
Mr Prisk is someone I have grudgingly admired over the last year. He wants to see face-to-face support from truly local enterprise support organisations as a key component of enterprise support. Vince Cable got the top business role in the new government, so I’ll have to wait and see whether we get the sensible reform Mr Prisk wants.
Leigh Sear from strategy consultancy Woods Holmes Group shared some recent research conducted with enterprise coaches. It turns out ‘enterprise coach’ is a relatively new term that has, in part, superseded the ‘personal business adviser’ role in Business Link.
Enterprise coaches are a niche community to interrogate, but the results were highly relevant to the 100 or so delegates. I was surprised to learn that:
“74% of enterprise coaches have experience of self-employment or running own business.”
This runs counter to a widely held perception that such advisers and coaches tend to be ex-bankers or corporate middle managers in the main. But what do you think?
The best (and most interesting) speaker of the day was Phil Orford, head of the Forum of Private Business (FPB). He gave a very candid account of where his organisation stood in the galaxy of business support today.
The FPB had a bit of a wobble at the beginning of the decade, losing some focus, and indeed profile, amongst the small business community. But Mr Orford is a confident, convincing leader, and he gave a strong account of where the FPB is going, its USPs (which are around research, data and advocacy) and how it can work with others in the enterprise sector.
And I felt a warm glow when I learned that the FPB is switched on to the New Rules of Marketing and PR, recognising content as a powerful marketing tool, and using social tools can spread its good news. And this, in fact, is why I was at the ACT conference in the first place…
…In the afternoon, I ran a couple of hour-long social marketing workshops for delegates, focusing mainly on how they can use LinkedIn and Twitter to find, connect and engage with people they want to meet, influence or sell to.
It’s not easy finding the right level to pitch a session like this, but thankfully both the groups were pretty lively, and got stuck in with questions, observations and criticism.
I’ve been to conferences that are so boring I’ve fallen asleep. Not great if you’re a panel member up on the platform… But ACT is hooked up with the right partners and it put on a well-run event. More importantly, its members are genuine in their belief that good enterprise can improve communities and people’s lives.
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