How we built a business out of recession — chapter 28 — lets get personal

The story of CitNOW*

This is the 28th chapter about CitNOW, the company started from a kitchen table in Winnersh, Berkshire. If you’d like to read from the beginning, here’s a link to chpt 1. Each chapter is a 5-minute read. It’s an early draft of a book.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

When a start-up gets busy, many more bases need to be covered. As a small company with few employees, a lot of what you do is proactive, and you forget about the stuff you can’t afford. There aren’t a lot of customers, and the sales pipeline needs constant attention to prevent it from drying up to nothing.

When we weren’t on new business, we spent too much time encouraging reluctant participants with our sales app to see things differently and enjoy the benefits of a change of thinking and process. It was a blend of account manager and trainer, which we were only too happy to hand over when we started recruiting the support team we so desperately needed.

The job is more complicated than you think and was well illustrated by Jason and one of his sales team when he was in charge of Land Rover, Llandudno Junction. It’s funny and so frustrating at the same time because Jason was such a massive advocate and evangelist…