Gavin White from Purpol Marketing Limited, explains why Denise O’Leary should win the Leader of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
Denise O’Leary leads Purpol Marketing, a home-based business set up in March 2014 that offers brand, marketing and bid strategy expertise to the construction industry. She is a dynamic professional and founded the company to work with SMEs to guide them through major tender and bid management processes – her approach is so effective that clients have pitched for contracts that they would previously never have dreamed of tackling.
Denise’s clients are winning 95% of bids for which they tender in comparison with the industry standard of 60-65%, a figure that is even more impressive when the clients are predominantly SMEs rather than large organisations.
In 2016, the government announced it wants 30% of its £250bn spend to go to SMEs. This year, she met with the Prime Minister’s policy advisor at Downing Street and the head of innovation and growth to talk through how the policy can be changed so that the bid process is not so onerous for smaller companies. In this way, she is helping SMEs take their place at the table for major projects.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
