The slow burn can generate long-term comfort

Successful entrepreneurs are often portrayed as quick decision-makers who move fast – but many find there is also a place for playing the long game.

Toby Baxendale has been launching businesses since he bought a nightclub while still a student at the London School of Economics 20 years ago. His second venture, a European restaurant in Chelsea, almost bankrupted him, but it led to his third, and most successful, business idea: becoming a meat and vegetable supplier to London dining venues.

One constant in all of this was Baxendale’s team of legal advisers, which he followed from City-based law firm Hammonds to the London offices of Scotland’s Dundas & Wilson.

This relationship is now 15 years old, but the knowledge acquired over that time proved vital when Baxendale went to sell his business, Seafood Holdings, this year. Business sale negotiations can often break down because sellers are unable to provide all the necessary paperwork. Baxendale, however, was able to get his deal done in just two weeks.

“The beauty of working for a long time with people is that they know what you are looking for in a sale and they know how to go about achieving it,” he says.

But focusing on the long term is not just important when taking professional advice. It also helps when looking for customers, according to Marco Schiavo, founder of Salt, the digital recruitment agency.

Shiavo is ambitious for his company, which has increased its revenue from £2m to £12m in four years.

He claims that his sales strategy has always been to look for long-term opportunities with each company using Salt’s services. “Many of our best clients are the ones that take the longest to acquire,” Schiavo says – adding that, in some cases, it can take a couple of years to convert a contact in a company into a client.

At the weekly sales meeting with his team, Schiavo will discuss their top 100 client prospects – ideally those that are going through a lot of change. “If that business is stagnant, then it won’t want our business,” he says.

But while Schiavo reminds his team of the importance of managing time carefully and focusing on the best opportunities, he also says a key part of the company’s success is not to let short-term gain undermine a long-term relationship. “The foundation of our business is repeat sales,” he explains.

“You might have a candidate that the client likes but there is something worrying about his reference. We could let the client appoint the person and take the fee, but if we do that, the client will not stick with us.”

Schiavo’s advice is to understand your company’s value and walk away from bad business prospects. “Clients are more interested in value than cost, so be able to demonstrate your return on investment,” he says.

He also believes it is important to have a strong brand, something he claims he has achieved by adopting an offbeat name for his business. “If you are high profile and create a reputation for great results, then clients will seek you out,” he says.

Another business to have benefited from the slow burn of nurturing long-term relationships is Dee Edwards, founder of Tell Tale Travel, the luxury holiday organiser.

Edwards, whose previous business was Habbo, a social networking site for teenagers, claims that the length of time that it
takes to nurture relationships depends in part on the industry. “In the tech world, I would meet people and do very high-value deals really quickly, sometimes in days,” she says. “In the specialist travel arena, relationships can be a slow burn over years.”

One relationship with a travel agent that Edwards began cultivating four years ago is only now bearing fruit. However, Edwards claims that business from this contact will add 10 per cent to Tell Tale’s revenue this year.

“One tour operator from Brazil exhibited at World Travel Mart at great expense and had nothing from it,” Edwards says. “A year later, it hosted someone it had met there. Another two years later, that first piece of business had become very lucrative.”

Serial entrepreneurs often benefit from keeping in touch with founders they have set up businesses with in the past.

This was the case for Mark Kingsley-Williams, who has been involved in online start-ups since the dotcom boom of the 1990s.

His latest venture is Trade Mark Direct, which has grown into one of the three largest patent firms, in terms of the number of trademarks it files, by offering a cut-price service to small businesses.

However, Kingsley-Williams is keen to break into the medium-sized company market, where the opportunity for portfolio management services is better.

“A lot of our business comes through online advertising and marketing but that is not a particularly good way of attracting larger firms,” he says.

He had previously worked with an old schoolfriend, Noel Hayden, both as a co-founder and a co-investor. In 2001, Hayden founded Gamesys, which develops online pay-to-play games such as bingo and slot machines. It grew rapidly, and turned over £92m last year.

The connection enabled Kingsley-Williams to pitch for business with Gamesys, which he won, providing Trade Mark Direct with a crucial reference client.

“I am not an avid business networker... but what I do is keep in touch with people I like and who I respect, and that does reciprocate,” Kingsley-Williams says.

His subsequent success suggests that – in the long-term – it really does pay to keep in touch.