Newcastle start-up takes tech industry by storm

A Newcastle sales consultancy start-up has exceeded its first year’s ‘ambitious target’ of reaching £100,000 turnover and has been selected to be part of RTC’s Scaleup North East – a multi-million pound programme focused on helping North East businesses grow to their maximum potential.

Stormcast Sales Consulting started trading in July 2017 after developing its unique CAST Selling methodology and tool designed to help SME businesses within the tech sector transform their sales processes with incremental selling success.

Owner of Stormcast Sales Consulting, Michael Fulthorpe, believes the early hike in uptake of the sales methodology and supporting software is due to the convincing feedback from customers.

He said: “The steady growth of the business following the launch of CAST Selling has been phenomenal so we are delighted to have exceeded what we believed to be an ambitious target for our first financial year and are already looking to expand the team to a further three by early next year.

“When we first set up Stormcast we discovered the number one main challenge for growing and scaling SME business owners was driving sales and getting better results so we developed our own trademark methodology, coaching and enablement services to support SMEs in getting the results they wanted.

“Many businesses achieved average increased sales revenue of 35 per cent using CAST Selling, a result which has quickly become a successful sales channel for our business.”

Research undertaken in 2017 by the national ScaleUp Institute indicates that scaling companies are looking for support from people who know what it is like to grow a business.

With over 20 years’ experience within the technology industry, Michael Fulthorpe has established global businesses through direct and indirect industry leading sales channels and was most recently a director for global partnerships at Sage Group developing channels for selling the high growth cloud products.

Mr Fulthorpe continued: “We wanted to create a sales consulting business that delivered more value to business owners than can be achieved through more traditional sales training. Our approach engages with sales teams on real sales opportunities and with the CAST Selling tool, our clients see results and outcomes sooner and it’s longer lasting.

“Being selected to join the Scaleup North East team was a real coup for us and we believe it will help us capitalise on our strong performance.

“The fast growth of the business and recognition has now helped encourage us to develop and design a new web and mobile application of the CAST Selling tool faster than planned so it is a busy time for us and we hope to be able to provide the product to businesses to across the UK later this summer.”

The Scaleup North East Programme is part of the North East Growth Hub’s business support provision operated by RTC North with investment from the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and growth hub.