Business Mentoring for Growing Companies

A Second Pair of Eyes for the Person at the Top
Mentoring for owners and leadership teams

Growing a business can be a lonely job. The owner is expected to have the answers, and the people they would normally test ideas on are employees, family members or the bank. None of them can be completely neutral. A mentor can.

SilverPeaks business mentoring is for owners, managing directors and senior teams of SMEs that are growing, or trying to. It is regular, structured and practical. The aim is to help you make better decisions with less second-guessing, and to build the habits and structure a larger business needs, without handing your judgement over to someone else.

Mentoring, Coaching or Consultancy?
Knowing which one you need

The three terms get used loosely, so it is worth being clear about the difference.

• Consultancy is project work. A consultant studies a specific problem, recommends a solution and sometimes implements it. Our business consultancy in Preston works this way.
• Coaching is mostly about drawing out your own thinking through questions. A good coach does not need to know your industry or have run a business.
• Mentoring sits between the two. A mentor draws on their own experience of running and growing businesses, asks hard questions and offers a view when it is useful. The relationship runs over months rather than weeks.

Most growing companies need each of these at different times. Part of the first conversation is working out which one fits where you are now.

What We Work On
The recurring themes of the growth years

Every business is different, but certain issues come up again and again once a company passes a dozen or so staff.

• Getting out of the day-to-day. Working out which decisions only the owner can make, and building the people and processes to handle the rest.
• Building a management layer. Promoting good technical people into management roles, and supporting them once they get there.
• Planning and numbers. Setting a simple annual plan with a handful of measures reviewed monthly, so that decisions rest on more than gut feel.
• Sales and marketing. Moving from founder-led selling to a repeatable process, and knowing what your marketing returns. Our guide to measuring marketing ROI without a big team covers one part of this.
• Big decisions. A new site, a key hire, an acquisition or outside investment. Having someone to pressure-test the thinking before you commit.

How a Mentoring Programme Runs
Structured, but not rigid

We start with an initial session to agree the focus and what good looks like in six to 12 months' time. From there, a typical pattern is one session of two to three hours each month, with short calls in between when something urgent comes up.

Each session ends with agreed actions, and the next one starts by reviewing them. That simple discipline is often where much of the value lies. It is easy to put off the difficult tasks when nobody is going to ask about them.

Sessions can be held at your premises, at a neutral venue in Preston, or by video. Many owners find a mix works best: in person for planning sessions, remote for check-ins. We also mentor small leadership teams together, which is useful when the owner is handing over responsibility and wants everyone working to the same plan.

Is Mentoring Right for You?
A few honest signs

Mentoring tends to work well when the business is fundamentally sound but growth has stalled or become chaotic, when the owner is open to challenge and willing to follow through on agreed actions, and when there is time set aside, even one afternoon a month, to work on the business rather than in it.

It works less well as a rescue tool. If the business has an urgent cash or operational problem, a focused consultancy project usually comes first, with mentoring afterwards to keep the changes in place. If marketing is the main gap, our marketing consultancy may be the better starting point.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a mentoring programme last?

Most run for at least six months, because the value builds over time. Many continue for a year or more, with sessions becoming less frequent as the business and its leadership team mature. There is no long lock-in, and we review the arrangement regularly.

Do you need experience of our industry?

Sector knowledge helps, but most of the challenges of growing an SME are common across industries: people, cash, priorities and sales. Where specialist knowledge matters, we will say so and can bring in trusted partners.

What does business mentoring cost?

Fees depend on the frequency and format of sessions. We agree a fixed monthly arrangement in advance, so you know exactly what you are committing to. The first conversation is free.

Is any funded mentoring available?

At the time of writing, the government-backed Help to Grow: Management course for eligible SMEs includes ten hours of one-to-one mentoring alongside its 12-week leadership programme, with most of the cost funded by government. It is delivered by business schools across the UK, including in Lancashire. It is a useful starting point; private mentoring tends to be longer term and more closely tailored to the business.

Is what we discuss confidential?

Yes. Mentoring only works if you can be frank about the business, the numbers and the people. We do not share anything discussed in sessions without your agreement.

Start With a Conversation

If you run a growing company and would value an experienced, independent view, get in touch. We will talk through where the business is, what you want from mentoring and whether we are the right fit for you.

Ask about mentoring