Helen Bradshaw

My expertise

• Identifying opportunities to grow revenue and profit and save costs 

• Helping you find the marketing KPIs that really matter to your business  

• Recruiting, coaching and developing marketing and non-marketing staff  

• Engaging, motivating and energising jaded or inexperienced teams  

• Writing actionable marketing plans to achieve sales objectives  

• Providing an objective ear for your business development thinking 

My competitive edge

Creative, empathic, pragmatic problem-solver 

I collaborate with my clients by helping them interrogate their specific business problems. I apply my sales, marketing and retailing experience to put plans and processes into place that are easy to follow and deliver results. I am comfortable with ambiguity and business change.  

About me

I’ve over 20 years’ sales and marketing experience in a range of sectors, including: automotive, retail, financial services, cybersecurity and bereavement. 

I’ve developed and implemented both B2C and B2B marketing plans and have significant experience with retail networks and franchising programmes. I’ve worked with all sizes of budgets and teams, with fast and slow moving goods and services, and in distress and discretionary markets.    

As Marketing Director for Citroёn UK, I looked after a £50m+ budget and developed a framework for measuring media-buying ROI, saving 10% of trading costs. I developed special edition products tailored for the UK market, delivering a unit margin increase of 10%. I looked after promotional campaigns for vehicles and parts to effectively manage cash flow, stockturn and sales targets. I implemented a rebrand campaign, including TV, radio, press, poster and digital creative development.  

At Dignity PLC, I managed 3 divisions (funerals, funeral plans and B2B sales to crematoria). I developed a digital strategy that increased web visitors by 30% and leads by 20%. I led the teams through FCA and CMA regulation, board changes and redundancy programmes. I launched a new brand - Simplicity Cremations - with a multimedia campaign (TV, radio, in-branch, digital) resulting in a 120% increase in year-on-year funeral plan sales. 

As Head of E-commerce at Peugeot-Citroёn, I managed end-to-end online sales of Peugeot cars, from lead generation through underwriting to vehicle delivery. I managed call centre operations, implemented Salesforce CRM and Live Chat and improved call to sale conversion by 20%.  

At my Marketing Centre client, The Fuel Store, I worked with management to build a marketing function for their growing SME - recruiting and coaching junior teams, building a measurable commercial plan with their CEO and CFO and developing digital and data strategies - so that they had a working ‘marketing engine’ to subsequently run on their own.   

Fun facts