My name is Nicholas Windley, but you can call me Nic.
Like you I come from a professional and skilled world where people work hard to earn demanding qualifications and gain the knowledge and experience to develop their career in a rapidly changing world.
Engineering and science is a lot of fun but from an early point in my career I found myself drawn to the mysterious world of business and strategy where I developed a burning desire to make the move into sales and marketing and one day run my own company.
As engineers and scientists were considered respectable and trustworthy individuals with a lot of know-how so this move seemed like a pretty simple transition that anybody with bit of brains or common sense should be able to handle – right ?
But something changes when your career develops like this and you move into more entrepreneurial roles such as sales, marketing and business development.
All of a sudden that hard earned respect and trust just seemed to melt away and counted for absolutely nothing and I slowly became the shunned outsider just because of my role. Now, your just like everybody else, a small boat bobbing around in a huge business ocean of noise, confusion and an awful lot of “bull”.
So I decided that I needed to learn how to overcome that isolation, much the same way I earned my qualifications.
Incidentally, you can find some of the books that I’ve found useful over the years on my business book recommendations page.
I went on convetional training courses and development programmes but all this stuff seemed to do very little for me and at times actually pushed away more customers and turned my products, services and personal profile into a commodity without me knowing it was actually happening. It was frustrating, so I stopped doing it and just became myself again.
Gradually I noticed a small change, although I admit I was not totally conscious of what was happening. It seemed that a more “real” or “personal” approach combined with my newly found school of hard knocks business experience was starting to make a difference but I didn’t understand exactly how or why, it was an accident.
This started me on a whole new path of sales and marketing that continues to change my life.
The more I learned and dug deeper into this new world the more I became conscious that a lot of what I had been taught or learned about selling and marketing, which was much the same that everybody else was doing, was just all DEAD WRONG as these businesses were following each other because that was the way it was supposed to be done, but nobody actually knew why!
In contrast, when compared businesses to the really successful companies in their hey day, they seemed different. Why was that ?
Because what they did actually flew in the face of conventional wisdom taught by those so called esteemed Business Schools and leading training providers. I have a great respect for those who have put in the time to earn new qualifications or develop their skills. However, what is working in the modern world is often divergent from what is being taught.
Since using these ideas I’ve gone from graduate engineer to successful international commercial manager and continually sought and fought for positive, constructive and accountable change even when the businesses I often worked for were at times blind or resistant to the need.
After graduating with a technology discipline and transitioning through sales, marketing and leadership roles mostly within complex B2B markets I decided that there were endemic problems within these markets that needed fixing.
The engineer in me quested for evidence, and so began a journey to answers questions that were mainly strategic and marketing in nature and challenged most conventional beliefs and wisdom.
I’m concerned with the neglect of strategic marketing and its impact on sales effectiveness, innovation and differentiation as well as strategic visibility and control.
Things are changing rapidly in our connected and technologically advanced world and much of the boundaries between disciplines and concepts are changing and being reevaluated at break neck speed.
As a result I established Nic Windley & Associates and eventually set up a specialist marketing strategy company based on proven yet unconventional technology and practice called eB2BLeads.
I seek evidence and perspective. Enjoy running and life.
At the end of the day though we’ve got earn some money. The image below is just so that you know that I’ve actually earned a good living as an employee selling and marketing while I learned and developed and used some of these ideas which are now part of the services I provide through various companies.
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You can find more about my story on the blog here;
More about Nic – Part 1 – The Trigger (coming soon)
More about Nic – Part 2 – The Mistakes
My LinkedIn profile provides additional career and academic experience.
Just to give you some idea of the types of products and services I’ve been involved with;
- Electronic data interchange (EDI) – involving bar-coding and databases to track and manage inventories and sales.
- Electronic design and automation (EDA) – tools that enable the design, simulation and test of micro-processors and circuits to produce the most cost effective or highest performance designs.
- Plastics processing technology (CAE & PE) – using the simulation of designs and the control of manufacturing process to produce the most efficient plastic components.
- ICT convergence technology – the merging of data, voice and video and associated applications onto a single unified network for lowering operating costs and improving business communications.
- Internet marketing - digital and on-line marketing and sales.
