Where Technical Excellence Meets Human Connection
At Birmingham’s Motorcycle Museum, the inaugural Manufacturing Revenue Growth Summit brought together over 120 sales professionals, technical leaders, and business developers from across the UK manufacturing sector.
Held on 12 November, the event marked a pivotal moment: an industry grappling with AI transformation, global uncertainty, and skills shortages, coming together to sharpen their axes and drive growth with purpose.
The day’s core theme was clear from the opening remarks: manufacturing doesn’t just grow by accident. It grows because of people. Technical sales teams, account managers, engineers, and customer success professionals who turn expertise into value and innovation into revenue.
Keynote Takeaways: Strategic Mindsets for Growth
Simon Hazeldine: The Three Keys to Account Growth
Sales performance consultant Simon Hazeldine opened with a research-backed challenge to conventional thinking about key account management. Drawing on data from 600 account managers and their customers, he revealed why so many organisations struggle to extract growth from their most valuable relationships.
“Only 28% of leaders report getting the revenue growth they want from their accounts,” Hazeldine explained. “And here’s the shock: there’s no statistical relationship between good product success, good customer service, and growing your accounts.”
His framework centred on mindset, skillset, and toolset, concluding that the job is to be the indispensable strategic business partner. Hazeldine urged attendees to think like doctors: “Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. In sales, it’s the same.” The real driver of expansion is “customer improvement,” helping customers achieve their business objectives through unique insights and challenging perspectives.
Steve Head: The Four-Minute Rule and the Power of 149:1
Former pharmaceutical executive turned performance coach Steve Head delivered a deeply personal session on mindset, self-talk, and the art of managing your inner “chimp.”
Drawing on his 24 years working with elite athletes, Head challenged the room with a number of mathematical sums, with the answers 1,4, and 9 being correct and 15 incorrect. “Focus on the 149,” he urged. “That’s what’s going right.” Head introduced the simple, life-changing Four-Minute Rule: “Nothing negative or critical for the first four minutes when you walk through the door. Just four minutes. It changes everything.”
His powerful closing message to the audience was one of ultimate personal responsibility: “You control two things in life: your thoughts and your actions. That’s it. Everything else is noise.”
Paul Watts: The Consultative Revolution
Paul Watts took the stage to redefine consultative selling for the AI age. “Sales isn’t about exchanging goods for money,” he said. “It’s about solving people’s problems for a profit. When you think about it that way, selling becomes a noble profession.”
Watts noted that 80% of buyer-seller communication now happens through digital channels, meaning “The digital genie is out of the bottle.” He highlighted three recurring failure points: inadequate preparation, poor discovery, and failure to ask for the order.
His solution? AI-enabled consultative selling, noting, “Today, you can prepare for a meeting in 30 seconds using generative AI.” He urged mastery of discovery across eight crucial topics, and fundamentally, advised sellers to present both ROI and COI (cost of inaction) because “Customers are programmed to avoid risk, not seek reward.”
AI Empowerment & Gold Medal Mindset
Julie Holmes: AI Empowerment in Action
Julie Holmes’ 90-minute AI workshop was the day’s centrepiece. “Everyone will be an AI user,” she declared. “But very few will be empowered by it.”
She introduced the 20-60-20 framework: 20% human strategy, 60% AI execution (the “eager intern”), and the final 20% human touch. Attendees worked through live exercises using tools like Fathom, Plaud, and NotebookLM, all while reinforcing the importance of good prompting using the PREPARED framework.
Her closing message perfectly reinforced the summit’s central theme: “AI is a people-opportunity, not a technical one. Lead by example. Show and fail with your teams.”
Aaron Phipps and Jon Cooper: Gold Medal Mindset
The day’s emotional crescendo came from Paralympic gold medallist Aaron Phipps and performance coach Jon Cooper, who shared the unfiltered story of their journey to Tokyo 2020. After narrowly missing out on a medal in 2012, they returned to first principles to become world champions.
Cooper recounted their breakthrough during lockdown: “We asked: what’s the absolute truth of this thing? Does it help us get better? Yes or no. If yes, we kept it. If no, we ditched it in five minutes.”
Their powerful message to the room was that a gold medal performance isn’t just about training harder; it’s about a mindset shift built on honesty and purpose. Said Phipps: “You don’t need a pandemic to unlock your potential. It’s a mindset shift.”
Roundtable Insights: Real Challenges, Shared Solutions
Throughout the day, dynamic roundtable discussions tackled the most pressing issues across manufacturing sales and leadership:
AI for New Business & Account Retention: Participants explored how AI can accelerate prospecting and research while emphasising the need for psychological safety and ethical data use. A key takeaway: “AI is here to enable people, not replace them… But you have to teach your AI intern.”
Pipeline Conversion & Sales Enablement: Discussions focused on solving “zombie deals” in pipelines. Solutions included improving sales-marketing alignment, using data to segment opportunities, and the need for courage: “Better a red or green. Never stuck on amber.”
Customer Experience & Retention: Several tables agreed that customer success is a mindset, not a department. The critical action: “Co-create success plans with your customers. Measure progress how they want to measure it, not how we want to.”
Talent Attraction & Multi-Generational Leadership: With five generations now in the workforce, leaders discussed how to attract young talent. Consensus: “Job security isn’t enough anymore. Young people want rewards, development, and purpose.”
The Future of UK Manufacturing: Attendees called for better use of trade associations, more investment in supply chain knowledge transfer, and a concerted push to “buy British” where possible. “We need to help our suppliers adopt automation and advanced manufacturing. It lifts everyone.”
Looking Ahead: A Call to Action
The Manufacturing Revenue Growth Summit proved that growth doesn’t come from grinding harder. It comes from working smarter, connecting deeper, and leading with humanity. Whether through AI, account strategy, or gold medal mindset, the message was unanimous: sharpen your axe, act with purpose, and show the world what’s possible.
As Julie Holmes put it: “Manufacturing is at a crossroads. We can be a Blockbuster, or we can be a Netflix. The choice is ours.”
The summit demonstrated that manufacturing’s future belongs to those who embrace change, invest in their people, and recognise that the greatest competitive advantage isn’t found in technology alone, but in the human connections and strategic thinking that bring it to life.
