Winning makes the work all worthwhile
I love gaining new business, but there is one thing that beats it: retaining existing clients.
Over the past few months we have seen two of our existing contracts go out to re-tender.
One is moving premises later this year and, due to internal auditing procedures, was required to reassess our financial performance. The other was looking for a pan-European contract and approached 10 caterers.
Winning team
Both clients looked at a broad range of contracts and required a new purchasing policy. Charlton House retained both contracts as a result of our promise to provide a personal service, value for money and competitive purchasing power for our clients.
As far as the pan-European project was concerned, it was comforting that the accountants could find insufficient savings to warrant a Europe-wide contract being awarded. It would seem that all involved recognised that the savings would need to be significant to justify the sacrifice in personal service and choice.
It is a worrying trend that the large multinationals feel it appropriate to look for large service-providers in this way. I can only hope that good sense will ensure the smaller contractor can be allowed to put forward its case.
To combat some of these moves we are looking to form alliances with other small, high-quality contractors around the country in order to put forward a national solution should the need arise.
Should any contractors, particularly those in the North, be interested in entering into such a scheme I would be pleased to hear from you (tel: 01491 579497).
Reverting to my first love of gaining new business - we have done this as well. We won another contract, which will start in eight weeks' time.
Revamped image
Last week, we launched a new company logo and image. This is a project I have been working on over the past few months as I felt it was the right time to review the message our logo was putting across.
Unlike our competitors, the cost of introducing this into our contracts is minimal as we do not advertise Charlton House because each contract has its own unique image.
Caroline Fry, operations manager, has certainly been busy this month. Not only has she been overseeing the opening of our new contracts, she has been promoting the advantages of a career in the catering industry to the next generation of workers.
A careers fair was held recently at a local school and Caroline was asked to take a stand. The reaction from pupils certainly proved the power of television - "Oh, I want to go into catering - just like Lenny Henry". Well, catering can be a joke sometimes!
NEXT diary from Robyn Jones is on 16 May
