Next week sees the culmination of months of hard work as the first cohort of the Tees Valley Business Hub Pitch Perfect programme deliver their presentations to potential investors. Pitch Perfect – Access to Finance is a programme that has been delivered by Tees Valley Business Hub (TVBH) in association with Grow Tees Valley over the summer, to enable Tees Valley-based businesses to confidently and effectively pitch their businesses to investors. Over the next two years of

Preparing the business plan is the essential first step to your new business. It should be: concise, emotional, logical, factual, and realistic. The plan you write needs to be so relevant and useful that it becomes part of your business management. Here are ten things every business plan should contain: Vision – What makes this business opportunity so exciting to you, your potential customers, suppliers, and investors? Keep your mind focused on the end goal. Background – Wha

Defining your specific customer segment, or segments, is a crucial step towards accurately and effectively marketing your product or service. The more specific your customer segmentation, the more you will understand your customers’ needs and be able to sell to them successfully. Customer segments are the different groups of people that your product or service is designed to reach. You could group them by common demographics, common needs, or common behaviours – whatever you

When you’re growing a business, it can be really difficult to keep your costs under control as your sales grow. Your new success could even give you a false sense of security, making big investments seem more workable than they really are. Here is a checklist of things you don’t want to do: Over-promising – a customer wants large order, really quickly. To keep the order, you agree to do the impossible. Under-delivering – when you can’t fulfil the large order really quickly, t