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This article contains sponsored content from Harrison & Hunter and Brand Satellite, as well as editorial content by Edinburgh Business and Lifestyle
Times are challenging for small businesses. According to the Q1 Federation of Small Business (FSB) Index for Scotland, the number of Scottish small businesses who anticipated a worsening of their performance in the next quarter, exceeded the number of those expecting improvement.
However, the FSB study also reports that between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025, Scotland had the largest improvement in the index of any region. It says this was likely to have been driven by the relatively stronger performance of the Scottish economy, in comparison with that of the UK, as a whole. There has also been an upswing in the number of small businesses looking to expand, the report reveals.
To support small businesses as they navigate the current environment, we sought views on two important skills – selling and brand management – from Steve Reilly, of business consultancy, Harrison & Hunter and brand-management specialist, Giles Etherington, of Brand Satellite.
Sales: Harrison & Hunter
After 20 years working with some of the world’s biggest brands, Steve started his own company, in 2023, with the mission to help businesses overcome one of their biggest challenges – selling.
He says: “Scour the internet and you will find thousands of articles, listing all the ‘bad’ things that you can do when selling. However, ultimately, the underlying issue, when businesses get things wrong, is a lack of understanding of the sales process and of where selling sits in comparison to marketing.
“The customer-acquisition journey begins with marketing and ends with selling; it is vital to maintain an alignment between them while also focusing on a strong, specific sales strategy. This way you will ensure that you remain laser-focused on meeting your client’s or customer’s needs.”
Considering what successful businesses do well when selling, that others can learn from, Steve says: “This can be summed up in one word: strategy. Creating a strategy will help you direct your company's efforts towards the right areas for your business.
“It will bring clarity on who you are targeting, how and where you will find them – and what to say to them. Your strategy will make you as efficient as possible in finding new clients, and crucially, will ensure that your customer acquisition is not only successful but repeatable.”
It’s also important to note that selling is different nowadays, as Steve explains: “Technology has changed the power dynamic in the sales process. Today’s buyers have much greater awareness of you, your business, products and customer-satisfaction levels than ever before.
“In fact, buyers have almost certainly started to make a decision about buying from you or a competitor before they even engage with you. For that reason, you need to make their buying journey as simple and as helpful as possible. You are there to expertly and personally guide them to their decision, and not to push them.”
We also asked Steve to tell us more about Harrison & Hunter, and how it can help small-medium-sized businesses (smes).
He says: “Harrison & Hunter was set up to make it that bit simpler for smes to grow their business. Running a small business is hard enough and while there is a lot of support out there, one area that is often misunderstood is the task of selling. For most of us, selling is the least favourite aspect of running a business: it’s the point where rejection hurts the most.
“We will embed ourselves in your business and get to know you and your team. We’ll focus on understanding your objectives and challenges, and will offer advice, support and guidance.
“We will also work with you to craft a commercial strategy that meets the demands of your business and allows you to bring order to your sales activity, building a repeatable process that makes selling as pain-free as possible.
“Ultimately, you will see us as part of your business, acting as your commercial or sales director on either a daily or project basis, taking the pain out of selling and freeing you to focus on what makes your business great. Working with Harrison & Hunter will enable you to truly professionalise your sales and commercial functions all without the risk of hiring a full-time sales director.
Image: Mark Jackson of MKJ Photography, of Steve Reilly
Brand management: Brand Satellite
Following many years in the advertising industry, including working for one of its biggest agencies, in London and San Francisco, Giles set up Brand Satellite, which helps smes with brand creation and brand communication. Reflecting on what businesses need to know, to improve these skills, he explains:
“The thing that many small businesses get wrong about brand management is thinking that their logo is their brand.
“Your logo is not your brand. Your logo is your branding.
“Branding is the visual side of creating a brand – it’s everything from your logo to the colours, typefaces and imagery you use to tell your story and help people recognise your messages within the thousands that they see every day.
“Your brand is what they then think and feel about your business once they've recognised it. It’s the emotional and psychological connection your customers have with your product or service.
“What successful businesses do well is that they identify, understand, empathise and resonate with their ideal clients. From my experience, too many businesses try to attract everybody. By doing that, you tend not to attract anybody.
“If you have identified your ideal clients and understood their hopes and ambitions; their pain points and challenges; and the emotions they are going through during the decision-making process and you talk to them directly, they are more likely to listen.
“They're more likely to say: “Yes, that's me. These guys get me. They understand me.” And they are more likely to buy into what you're offering.
Reflecting on the impact of new technology, Giles says: “One of the things that's changed recently about brand management is the introduction of AI and Chat GPT. I asked Chat GPT if it would replace me as a brand consultant, and it said: “No, because I lack human insight. I don’t feel emotions. Trust is emotional.”
“Trying to create trust and communicate your brand using AI posts and web content will not lead to an authentic human connection. What we humans do, that AI doesn’t, is make decisions dictated by the emotional part of our brain. AI will help you create content (noise), but not a connection.”
Image: Kerstin Gruenling, of Giles Etherington
