Ross Wilson, Tenon

Chris has referred to the serious reduction in the London market and indeed backs it up with the rationale of increasing costs combined with the perception of London by her American customers ­ which is her main customer base ­ as a place associated with terrorism. These are two pretty important factors as far as her customers’ choice is concerned.

London is now generally acknowledged as being more expensive as a travel destination than most other European cities. The risk of terrorism ­ perceived or real ­ is something that will continue to be an issue, particularly for the US market. If her customers are telling her that London is not for them, Chris will have to consider whether she is prepared to move the business to a ‘safer’ and less expensive area.

At the moment, Chris’s only real source of business is the US market ­ a high risk strategy ­ yet it seems that the last time she travelled to the US was eight years ago and, while getting a good response at the time, nothing came out of it in the long term.

Herein lies one of her first real issues. Having had the initiative to visit her customers on their patch and achieved success, she has apparently failed to capitalise by revisiting regularly and keeping herself in the sights of her customers and potential customers. Get back on the plane and go and do further research into the market if, indeed, the US market is considered still to be the prime source of business.

There is a need for a clear business plan, which can be challenged and defended in every respect. The plan will deal with the need to expand the customer base and the strategy for doing so. It will address the marketing issues and lead to the production within the plan of a marketing plan, part of which will be to review the cost and benefits of creating a good website. Chris should look for quality advice, which initially will be at little or no cost ­ that way Chris will find people hopefully who will ‘invest’ in her and her ideas knowing that when she is successful, revenues will flow for everyone involved.

Glen Collins ACCA

Chris needs to make a number of decisions about the direction of her business before she takes any further action.

First, does she see the future of her company as being a committed individual who provides a 24 hour personalised service, or does she envisage the need to grow the company? It means choosing whether the focus should be purely on what she does well now ­ or whether there are opportunities to develop the suite of services available to a wider client group? It may even be possible for Chris to sell her ideas, expertise, intellectual property and reputation through franchises ­ generating more income for her.

Chris does need to spend money in a number of crucial areas. Her priority should be to commission market research which will enable her to identify not only the problems with her current target market of US students, but also in establishing where potential new clients might be.

Among the issues Chris needs to establish are: why American students have stopped wanting to travel to London; whether they would consider visiting other, cheaper, and identifiably ‘safer’ UK cities; and whether American landscape gardeners or church groups would be more likely to make the trip to London or other UK regions or cities than students.

Research will establish the kind of issues which do worry students away from home and how Chris might provide solutions as part of her business offering.
For example, having already made contact with some American universities, would it be feasible for Christine to develop formalised relationships with them, whereby she provides dedicated services for a limited number of universities, who might pay her a retaining fee to ensure she is always available to help their visiting students.

Chris should also set aside some budget to explore other potential markets and try to establish what issues would attract students from those markets to study in the UK, and the environments in which they would prefer to study.

For example, early this decade, many UK universities found that a successful way of recruiting new students from China was to reassure their parents not only of the academic rigour of their courses, but to also demonstrate the high quality of student accommodation available on campus.

Rather than attempting to design her own website, Christine should use the results of her market research to give an in depth briefing to a web developer. That research should also enable her to deliver a consistent message to her potential customers rather than resulting in a vague site which does not answer any real questions they might have.