A Winning Combination

Friday 11th August, 2006

The growing relationship between University of Manchester Incubator Company Ltd and Winning Pitch Ltd (the sales and business development organisation) resulted in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in July.

According to the Memorandum, UMIC and Winning Pitch will work together on a number of projects related to the implementation of best practice in the area of business growth.

This will include the establishment of a Winning Business Academy at One Central Park in East Manchester and the introduction to the incubator world, through UMIC, of a series of new and dynamic short courses. For UMIC it means a new strategic service enhancement within its incubator activity and the chance to increase its activities in assisting in economic growth in the region.

The signing, which took place at UMIC’s headquarters in Manchester on the 30th July, was performed by UMIC’s General Manager, Dr Martino Picardo and Winning Pitch’s John Leach.

Speaking after the signing, John Leach said, “I am delighted with this agreement. It paves the way not only for some immediate joint activities, but also for wider developments in the future. This is significant for establishing our Wining Business Academy and we look forward to a long and successful alliance with UMIC’

Dr Picardo said ‘we’ve become increasingly aware that our incubating businesses need to focus on enhancing personal, organisational and strategic selling skills. By embracing this in the Winning Business Academy we will be able to support companies at all stages of development throughout the Manchester and regional networks from One Central Park’

John Leach and Tony Walker, UMIC Incubation Manager, One Central Park

UMIC is dedicated to sharing resources, information, and best practices among its members and partners to promote business incubation excellence within all UMIC incubators.

Winning Pitch Ltd has designed, developed and delivered a business growth philosophy that when implemented creates an almost immediate impact on sales growth. Approximately 3000 SME’s have been exposed to this innovative business support model (master classes, conferences seminars).

There is overwhelming evidence to demonstrate that strategic sales and marketing is a major weakness of UK companies. The objective of the MoU is to provide a long-term solution to meet the varying demands and needs of business developers at whatever lifecycle stage they may be at. The approach will consist of the following stages:

• Preliminary Needs Assessment: bi-lateral information exchange between UMIC and other partners and potential client firms, communication via collaborative marketing, development and search for financing of joint programmes, including those of training and internships.
• Develop a sales and marketing accelerator programme for companies in the Manchester incubator network. We believe that this pilot could act as a precursor to a “Winning Business Academy” located in One Central Park.
• The infrastructure for innovation and incubation within One Central Park would be utilised to provide accommodation and support at all levels to participating companies of the academy.
• Address issues of performance of businesses resulting from sales and marketing related issues such as poor information, leading to lack of focus, inappropriate use of marketing, poor sales skills, insufficient customer contact/intelligence.

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