Business Advisor - Enterprise Specialist

The Growth Company’s (GC) Business Growth Hub (BGH) has an exciting new opportunity for a Business Advisor – Enterprise Specialist to deliver high quality support and advice to people wanting to start a business or self-employed individuals living or trading as part of the EnterprisingYou (EY) Programme. GC’s BGH is a community of specialists with a passion to help businesses across Greater Manchester to realise their ambitions. Since 2011, the Hub has supported more than 15,000 businesses including start-ups, scale-ups and established businesses, providing finance guidance, creating international links, and paving the way for innovation and people development across the region. We work with the best of public and private partners, offering expert one-to-one and peer-to-peer business support, events, specialist programmes, funding and much more. Key Responsibilities: * Proactively identify individuals/self-employed individuals seeking support to start or grow their businesses. * Handle client enquiries via phone and email, initially assessing business needs and growth potential of a client using appropriate tools, processes and systems where required and establishing and maintaining effective relationships and key client contacts. * Ensure that potential clients comply with required eligibility criteria by ensuring that initial eligibility checks are carried out, prior to any formal assessment or action planning taking place. * Undertake detailed diagnostics for clients focusing on a particular function or business area using various tools and methods to capture baseline data from clients and identifying needs. * Deliver support directly relating to core areas, which will include business structures, business planning, marketing, finance and forecasting, and sales tactics, in addition to support tailored to individual business needs, to enable them to have the confidence/knowledge as a self-employed individual to reach their full potential. * Develop and maintain a network of key people relevant to the business area, such as other Advisors, Account Managers, job centres, libraries, local authorities, shared workspaces, professional business networks and other professional services e.g. Accountants, banks etc. * Link clients to additional services and sources of expertise best suited to deliver practical solutions and instil new knowledge that will underpin and provide confidence to those clients starting up a business or increase the business performance. About you: * Good understanding of the Manchester local authority area (Desirable). * Excellent sales and account management skills. * Excellent presentation and communication skills both written and oral. * Strong networker, with an existing partnership base or exceptional skills to build a network. * Excellent planning, organisational, administrative and project management skills. * Well-developed IT skills, including an understanding of computerised management information systems, spreadsheets, diary management, e-mail, and CRM systems. * The ideal candidate would be expected to work in Manchester LA three days per week. Skills Required: * Proven record of managing a range of business opportunities and challenges. * Previously established and/or led a successful business. * Previously delivered business support within a public sector setting (Desirable). * Strong technical knowledge in running or starting a business, or technical knowledge in the key areas of entrepreneurial Start-ups and pre-starts, including but not limited to: identifying and researching your marketplace; business planning; cash flow forecasting; sales; marketing; and pricing. * Knowledge and understanding of the key national, sub-regional and local organisations and their role in supporting economic development and specifically business growth. We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of everyone including vulnerable adults and young people, we expect all staff to share this commitment. All appointments will be subject to Safer Recruitment Procedures which include a DBS check. This will be conducted by Due Diligence Limited (DDC Ltd) on behalf of GC. Please note that the successful candidate will not be required to pay for this. If you are on the Barred List, it is against the law to apply and to be hired for a role that includes regulated activity with the concerned group. We are committed to increasing the diversity of our workforce, we provide a guaranteed interview to applicants who meet the essential requirements for a role. This commitment applies to candidates who have a disability or are from a diverse ethnic community. As part of our application process, you can ask to be considered under this scheme if you are from an ethnic community or have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Providing that you meet the essential criteria for the role, you will then be invited for an interview. Your guaranteed interview application will only be shared with the Hiring Manager and our Internal Recruitment Team. We are a member of the national campaign Ban the Box; this campaign aims to open opportunities for people with convictions to compete for jobs. We’re supporting the campaign by removing conviction questions at the applications stage. GC aims to promote a culture of flexibility and agile working. Going forward we will be transitioning to a culture where full agile working will be a feature of many of our roles. We also recognise that there may be a need for more permanent flexibility in your working arrangements and in such cases, we encourage you to have these discussions at the interview stage, to enable your flexible working request to be considered as early as possible