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Melanie Farmer - Sussex Innovation Centre profile »
Melanie is an experienced and successful sales and marketing professional, drawing on her direct commercial experience for inspiration. Completing her Education Degree in 1992, she moved from teaching into the blue chip sales arena. After running her own business she, in recent years, combined this knowledge and her commercial experience to coach teams from individuals to large groups. She is currently head of the Innovation Support team at the award winning Sussex Innovation Centre. One of her main roles there involves helping the young companies to acquire that elusive first customer in a new high-tech market.
Client accounts she has won and worked with include Thames Water, TeleWest (ntl), Toyota, QANTAS, Saks Hair & Beauty, Specialist Holidays Group, the postal services and more. Areas on which she has consulted for these clients include leadership, customer service, sales and operational efficiency. Geographically, this work has taken her from Australia to New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and EU.
Melanie has a series of sales and marketing certificates, a Bachelor of Teaching and is completing a Masters in Management of Marketing for Innovation.
In her spare time, she loves kung fu, street dance, and playing guitar at friends parties with or without their consent but usually with.
Posted at 10:30am Wednesday 8th February 2012
Sussex Innovation Centre's unexpected rap song
How saying something unexpected, simple and concrete can make your message memorable.
Posted at 12:24pm Friday 6th January 2012
Knowing your unwritten business plan
The power of chaos and intuition in making ideas happen.
Posted at 1:54pm Friday 1st April 2011
Addiction to our own magnificence.
When starting a business, we are usually good at the technical side of what we do. But, in order to service, we have to suddenly get good at many other things like finance and marketing. Why not outsource? Or, if not, why not listen to experienced professionals with an open mind? We don't have to know everything in order to achieve mastery over our own domain.
Posted at 2:43pm Thursday 13th January 2011
Make Brighton Rock - a competition to make Brighton even better
Brighton is a vibrant, multi-talented, multi-cultural city. With this backdrop, it makes the perfect place to source ideas from its citizens across a variety of categories which is exactly what the Sussex Innovation Centre is doing with www.makebrightonrock.com supported by multiple category judges. Competition closes 14 February.
Posted at 10:22am Tuesday 27th July 2010
Innovation: Lessons from Australia
The Australian wine industry is a great example of how Government cleverly support growth in that country. They created several associations aimed at educating the local palettes, unifying vineyards that are dispersed across a vast country and encouraging the 'cluster' sharing of innovation in the sector.
Posted at 3:41pm Friday 28th May 2010
The five step guide to becoming a millionaire.
The power of heavyweight teams in making innovation happen.
Posted at 12:33pm Tuesday 20th April 2010
Obsession with competence is killing us
The British Heart Foundation state that it is costing the UK £9 billion a year to address the issues arising from coronary heart disease. It is alarming that the average age has dramatically reduced from 75 to under 65 in recent years. Much has been said about diet, smoking and levels of regular exercise as the main culprits.
Posted at 2:51pm Monday 8th February 2010
Closing sales – how NOT to make it look like an act of desperation
10 reasons to call a prospect that do not include asking for the sale…
Posted at 10:20am Thursday 7th January 2010
How to run a snowed-in business
As if we didn’t have enough dramas in the UK at present with a recession, global warming and skyrocketing unemployment. Now, we are under a blanket of snow that is instantly immobilising thousands of businesses across the UK. A good time to source technical home working solutions like Skype, remote desktop and so on to keep everyone talking to each other and maintain the crucial community spirit companies need. And it might just be time to buy a snow plough.
Posted at 12:45pm Monday 19th October 2009
Innovations in Health
How the UK can better bring innovations in health to market this November.
Posted at 5:25pm Tuesday 15th September 2009
A day in the life at SINC
I started the day with my comfortable marketing hat on as I read through an academic proposal that is going to a large corporate for a new venture we are assisting them with. Then, I spent time with our IT team plugging in cables and testing to make sure our plasma screen and wi-fi are all set for audio/video on Friday’s Shell STEP regional final presentations. I uploaded and tested 15 presentations and the Shell STEP projects this year are looking fantastic as always.
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