March 2004 - Great Guns Marketing

Liz Jackson, Managing Director of Great Guns Marketing, is probably the most inspirational speaker Andover Women in Business Club has ever had the privilege to entertain.

Addressing nearly 50 members and guests at the Club’s March Networking meeting, Liz Jackson captivated her audience with the story of her success and the lead up to here winning the T-Mobile ‘Women Mean Business’ Award 2003. Great Guns Marketing is a telesales company, based in Basingstoke, specialising in business-to-business appointment making. Despite having completely lost her sight, 30-year-old Liz has successfully built her business and has branches opening around the country.

Liz Jackson (l), Mick Spain with Kate King

Accompanied by her father, Mick Spain, who mused that Great Guns is a ‘family-business’, but one that his daughter had started and he had joined, the after dinner talk at the Quality Hotel was one of the best in the Club’s history. Members listened with interest to Liz’s relaxed and level-headed approach to life, her work and her disability. Her ambition and ability to overcome difficulties was an inspiration to all and the talk will be one that will be remembered for a long time.

Mick’s introduction explained that he joined the Company to design and implement its strategy for growth, a task which he is clearly carrying out with great success. The Company, which started in the lounge of a rented flat, moved to a house with garage and finally to premises in the Beresford Centre, Basingstoke, now has branches in Darlington, Derby, Windsor and Sheffield, to name but a few.

By her own admission, Liz was not a star pupil at school, preferring to flick elastic bands in the classroom to getting her essays written! Her first job, as office junior, soon made her realise that she was not cut out for an administrative role. Thanks to the determination of her boss to find her a useful role by trying her in all departments, Liz experimented with Sales and realised she had found her niche! Attributing her success to the fact that she is a natural born show-off and could get away with anything during a Sales call, Liz was a huge success!

Having suffered a degenerative sight disorder since childhood, Liz was, at this time, still sighted. Her proven success led her to undertake trips at home and abroad, setting up sales offices in the UK and the United States. Life was exciting, but not demanding enough for Liz, who at the age of 25, having worked for the same company for 8 years, needed a change, despite her ever-decreasing ability to see.

Impressed by her proven ability, her then employer, though sorry to lose her, was happy to become Liz’s first client when she went it alone with Great Guns Marketing. However, working alone in her flat, making telephone calls all day, with no company, did not suit Liz. Moving to a house, with a garage that afforded more space, Liz recruited her first member of staff and the business was ‘on the up’. Realising the Company’s potential, Liz, still young enough to qualify, was awarded a grant from the Prince’s Trust and took out her first ever loan with them.

The rest, as they say, is history. By 2002 Great Guns had expanded into Birmingham and Milton Keynes and has continued to expand ever since. Working with big names, including Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft and BT, her 30 staff now make outbound calls for an expanding range of businesses. Liz’s goals include having 14 branches by the end of 2004, making her business a household name and becoming the UK’s leading telemarketing company over the next 10 years.

Speaking about her initial reluctance to take part in business awards, Liz confessed that she was originally sceptical and felt rather arrogant putting her own business forward. However, having been a finalist in the National Business Awards, Customer Focus Awards and finally winner of the T-Mobile ‘Women Mean Business’ Awards, she is now more positive about them! She openly encouraged the business women present to enter such awards, citing the credibility and huge extent of free media exposure that follows for winners, as some of its most advantageous outcomes.

Video footage of the T-Mobile Awards Ceremony drew a spontaneous round of applause from AWIBC members, who by now felt they knew Liz personally from her warm and unpretentious talk. The Ceremony was rounded off for Great Guns by a message from HRH The Prince of Wales, “Elizabeth is an inspiration to young business people everywhere, and I do send her my warmest congratulations.”

Continuing in her enthusiastic and inspiring way, Liz stressed that the reason for her success was the fantastic team she has working with her, all of whom she considers to be skilled consultants. With an annual turnover of over a £1m, Liz insists that recruiting the right people is the key and is open about her beliefs that women have certain skills, some particularly appropriate for sales work. Liz believes that women should have a greater involvement throughout industry and that commerce cannot afford to miss out on what women have to offer. “Think outside the box – think laterally.”

“If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re absolutely right”, Liz concluded.