Member Article

Yorkshire independent business broker hits £1 million savings mark

West Yorkshire’s The Business Works is celebrating saving £1 million for its customers this year alone.

Founded by Kristian Lennon and Steve Kennedy in 2008, The Business Works works with SMEs to save money on their overheads from telecoms to utilities, energy efficiency and card processing.

It saves businesses a reported 30% on average on their overheads.

Kristian attributed the company’s success to an ethical and relationship-centred ethos: “We had grown tired of seeing our friends’ businesses being pressured and ripped off by unscrupulous and pushy sales teams in a market that are designed to be confusing and we wondered if there was another way to do it. We were determined to do it the right way.

“The first thing we wanted to do was to establish a principle of transparency. All our services to customers are free and our role is to give them all the information and advice that they need to be able to make an informed decision.

That’s why we’ve worked hard to establish direct relationships with all major suppliers across all our services. This means that we give our customers a full market overview so they can see prices from all suppliers and choose the best deal for them.

“For us, we want to save our customers’ money but also to build a long-term relationship that will help their business and where we can become a trusted ally. However, we often speak to businesses that have had their fingers burnt in the past so this is easier said than done.

“They think they already know what we do, and are disillusioned by their bad experiences with sales calls and lack of accountability with other firms.

We train all our sales staff to ensure that they realise that a small profit over a long period is what we are after rather than a quick hit of one-off cash and this is now part of The Business Works culture.

“We’re a local company that represents local companies. We put their needs before ours. We’re here to potentially build a relationship that lasts 10, 15, 20 years. They don’t have to think about this sort of stuff again, they just have to get on with their main business and let us do the worrying.

“People think they have to find the services we broker for by themselves, it’s a lot of hassle, and they don’t have the industry expertise necessarily to get a good price. We’re completely independent, we’re not tied to any supplier whatsoever and we’ll put the companies’ needs first.

“It is this ethical approach that helps us to work with our customers for the long term. We’re proud to say that as we’ve grown and started to work with even bigger businesses, we’ve brought our customers with us – in fact, we’re still working with the family-run hairdressers that was under our first ever office, Scissor Sisters. Working with businesses like these we’ve managed to save our customers in Yorkshire £1million in the past 12 months alone.

We offer honest savings – on average our customers save over 30% compared to existing tariffs – free service and all delivered by a helpful team with the businesses best interest at heart. We’re there to make people’s lives easier.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .