Finding new ways to win new customers

13th December 2017 |   Claire Edmunds

In the current uncertain climate it’s time for UK businesses to sell big, sell global and stay relevant.

The pace of technological progression and the impact of globalisation are increasingly disorienting. Society One is one of the world’s fastest-growing lenders, but does not own the money it loans; Google is the world’s largest software vendor but it doesn’t own any apps. From consumer to business, industry is mutating and business roles are being reassessed, reconstructed and repurposed.

Steam-powered locomotives revolutionised global transport in the first industrial revolution; today we are seeing the dawning of what many are calling 4IR or the fourth industrial revolution – with the rise of The Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, machine learning (amongst others), the rate of change continues to accelerate.

Failure to embrace this digital disruption can have dramatic consequences: Kodak and Blackberry are frequently held up as red warning flags for complacency. Kodak, having invented a digital camera back in 1975, failed to act quickly enough to capitalise on this new technology due to a 1981 board report arguing that it had ten years to act. More recently, Blackberry failed to grasp the reality of consumerisation in mobile phones, which resulted in its spectacular fall.

Claire Edmunds

Founder and CEO of Clarify | + posts

Claire Edmunds is CEO and founder of Clarify, a specialist in strategic business development. The company works with global B2B enterprises that take high-value consultative propositions to market.

She chairs the Diversity Steering Group on behalf of the Association of Professional Sales, which aims to increase diversity in the sales profession and build high-performing and inclusive sales cultures.