Selected reviews from the past two years.
We brought Growth Advisory Experts in because our gross margin had slipped from 38% to 29% over two years and we could not work out why. David Carr spent four days in our sales office and found that our quoting tool was using material costs from 2021. A simple fix, but it had been bleeding us dry. Within three months of correcting it, margin was back to 35%.
Priya worked with our practice for ten weeks. She restructured our fee-earner time-tracking system and introduced a Monday-morning pipeline review that took 20 minutes. Our utilisation rate went from 61% to 74%. The partners noticed the difference on the first month-end report after she left.
I was sceptical about hiring consultants. The last firm we used produced a 90-page report full of jargon and left. Rachel and her team were different. They sat in our warehouse, timed every pick-and-pack step, and redesigned the layout. Our dispatch errors dropped by 40% in six weeks.
Marcus helped us prepare for sale over eight months. He rewrote our board pack, standardised our management accounts and coached me on how to present to potential buyers. We sold at 6.2x EBITDA, which was 18% above the initial broker estimate. The only reason I give four stars instead of five is that the process took two months longer than planned, though that was partly our fault for being slow with the data.
We run a SaaS platform for estate agents. David helped us rethink our pricing tiers and onboarding flow. Churn dropped from 4.1% monthly to 2.3% within a quarter. He also identified that we were spending £8k a month on a marketing channel that produced zero conversions, which paid for his fee on its own.
Our law firm had grown to 45 people but still ran on the same processes we used at 12. Priya mapped every workflow, removed three redundant approval steps, and trained our office manager to run the new system. Billable hours per fee earner went up by 11% in the first full quarter.
Detailed examples of what we did, how long it took and what changed.
Pennine Fabrications is a £9m steel-fabrication business in Huddersfield with 62 employees. Their gross margin had fallen from 38% to 29% over two years. The MD suspected rising material costs, but the numbers did not support that theory because steel prices had actually fallen during part of that period.
During the on-site discovery, David Carr found that the quoting spreadsheet used by the sales team was pulling material prices from a static tab last updated in January 2021. Every quote was under-priced by an average of 9%. The fix took two days: linking the spreadsheet to the live supplier price feed and adding a margin floor rule.
Result: gross margin recovered to 35.2% within three months. Annualised margin gain: approximately £540k.
Viewpoint Technologies sells a property-viewing platform to estate agents across England. Monthly churn was 4.1%, which meant they had to acquire roughly 50 new accounts every month just to stand still. The co-founders had tried discounting annual plans, but take-up was low.
David Carr analysed the cancellation data and found that 68% of churned accounts never completed the onboarding checklist. He redesigned the first-14-days experience: automated email sequence, in-app progress bar, and a live onboarding call at day three. He also identified a paid search campaign spending £8,200 per month on keywords that had generated zero trial sign-ups in six months.
Result: monthly churn dropped to 2.3%. Marketing spend reduced by £8.2k/month with no loss of new sign-ups.
James Thornton-Wells wanted to sell his £18m haulage and warehousing business within 18 months. His broker estimated a sale price of around 5.2x EBITDA based on comparable transactions. Marcus Hale identified three areas that were depressing the multiple: key-person dependency on James himself, inconsistent monthly reporting, and a lack of documented contracts with three of the five largest customers.
Over eight months, Marcus helped James appoint a commercial director, formalise the board pack into a consistent monthly format, and convert handshake agreements into signed three-year contracts. When the business went to market, two bidders competed and the winning offer came in at 6.2x EBITDA.
Result: sale completed at 6.2x EBITDA, 18% above the original broker estimate. Total enterprise value uplift attributable to preparation work: approximately £1.4m.
If any of these situations sound like yours, book a free diagnostic call. We will spend 45 minutes understanding your business and tell you honestly whether we can help. No slide decks, no pressure.
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