Seven blindspots your SME hasn't seen

Nikki Neale • July 1, 2025

We’ve spent the last few years analysing SMEs across ten critical areas of growth – from strategy and brand to operations, finance, people and customer experience. It’s part of a tool we built called Perspective Analysis, designed to help businesses grow and build in a more agile, intentional ways.

Now that we’ve used it with dozens of founder-led teams, agencies, charities and commercial ventures, the data’s starting to speak. And the same themes keep showing up - they cut across sector, size and leadership style.

What’s most interesting is that what holds business back isn’t always obvious, even from the inside. Here are seven of the most common blind spots we’ve uncovered – and what they mean for growth-minded organisations today.

Everyone’s working hard, but not always in the same direction

This isn’t about whether a strategy exists. Most leaders have one. The issue is that no one else really knows what it is. When we ask teams to describe the current direction or vision, the answers rarely match. There’s often a slide deck, a vague memory of a planning day, or a “north star” that lives mostly in someone’s head.

One leadership team member told us: “I think we’ve said the strategy… I just don’t know if it landed.” Perspective Analysis data backs that up. Direction & Vision scores often sit between 45–55/100, with leaders rating their clarity much higher than their teams do. That’s misalignment and misalignment means wasted energy. Until the direction is consistently understood, decisions won’t align, and every step forward pulls slightly off course.

Your brand lives in your head, but no-one else's

You’ve built a strong reputation. Clients come back. Word of mouth is healthy. But from the outside, it’s often hard to tell what your business actually stands for or why someone new should choose you.

We hear this a lot: “We know what makes us different – we’re just not great at saying it.” Brand & Positioning scores typically land between 46–58/100. What’s missing isn’t a sense of identity it’s the articulation. The brand hasn’t been written down, codified, or consistently expressed. And that limits distinctiveness, recruitment power, and marketing effectiveness.

Most businesses aren’t boring. They just look that way.

You’re the safety net and the bottleneck

You’re still too involved in the day-to-day. Not because your team can’t handle things, but because you haven’t had the time or headspace to hand things over properly. You’re still the final check, the escalation point, and the one who steps in when it all gets a bit too messy.

One founder put it plainly: “I trust the team – but I’m still the one picking everything back up when it gets messy.” Human Potential scores often sit between 38 and 52/100. The team is capable, but delegation is patchy, structure is loose, and the founder still holds the big picture, the nuance, and the final say.

That’s not leadership, it’s survival mode.

You’re customising everything and it’s quietly costing you

Saying yes feels like a strength. Especially early on. But when every proposal is bespoke, every quote is different, and every delivery plan is tailored, you’re building complexity you can’t sustain.

As one project lead said: “Every job is a one-off – which means every job is a bit of a stress.” Operational Consistency scores often land between 42 and 54/100. Teams are working hard, but there’s no defined offer, no baseline, and no margin for error.

Flexibility might win business at the start. But long-term, it slows everything down.

You know the numbers but not what’s driving them

You know your revenue. You know what’s in the bank. But what’s actually making you money? What’s quietly draining it? What happens if your biggest client leaves?

One client told us: “Our accountant says we’re fine – but I couldn’t tell you where the margin is.” Finance & Commercial Insight scores are often the lowest of all – typically between 35 and 48/100. Not because the finance isn’t being managed, but because the numbers are buried. There’s no visibility on client-level profitability, product-level margin, or time versus return.

Without that clarity, pricing is guesswork and growth feels risky.

You’re focusing on the 5% and missing the 95%

Most businesses are busy with marketing. But it’s rarely working hard enough. It’s often designed to stay visible to people who already know you, not to reach new audiences or build a strong pipeline.

One founder said: “We’re active on all the platforms – but it’s mostly to stay visible, not to reach new people.” Marketing & Comms scores usually land in the 44–56/100 range. The effort is there, but it’s not adding up. Messaging is inward-looking, brand memory is low, and there’s no real strategy or structure.

You can’t grow if no one new is seeing or remembering you.

Your customer experience depends on individuals, not design

You’ve got great people and that’s what holds your customer experience together. It’s human, responsive, and thoughtful. But it’s fragile. When someone’s off or leaves, the cracks show.

A founder told us: “It works because they’re brilliant. But if they ever left, we’d be in trouble.” Customer Experience scores often start strong – sometimes in the 60s – but drop once we look at what’s actually designed. There’s no mapped journey, no onboarding or offboarding flow, and little feedback built in. That’s not a great experience. It’s just a well-intentioned one.

Where's your blind spot?

These blind spots aren’t unique. They show up everywhere, in strong teams, good businesses and experienced leadership. Most of the time, they don’t need a full reinvention. Just clarity. Focus. A proper reset.

That’s exactly what Perspective Analysis was designed to do and if you’re in that foggy, overloaded middle space where growth feels harder than it should, we can help. For as little as £1500 you can experience a Perspective Analysis reset day and scores dashboard and get more help. Find out more on the button below.

A LITTLE MORE READING

Show me the bunny!

By Nikki Neale • February 20, 2026

How Jellycat made their fortune There is a version of strategy that lives entirely inside the category you operate in (in fact most strategy is here). It studies competitors, benchmarks pricing, refines positioning statements and tweaks messaging frameworks. It is diligent, sensible and often very well executed. And then there is the version that asks a more expansive question: what is happening in the wider market that could fundamentally change the trajectory of this business? Jellycat is a compelling example of what happens when you write strategy with that second lens. Founded in 1999, Jellycat spent years building a strong reputation as a premium plush brand. Its products were soft, distinctive and giftable, and it achieved wide distribution. It was a good business and a steady one. What it had not yet become was a cultural phenomenon. The inflection point did not begin in the toy aisle. It began in culture. During the pandemic, comfort became a form of social permission. Softness stopped being something that belonged purely to childhood and became something adults embraced publicly. Nostalgia evolved from memory into aesthetic. The rise of the so-called “kidult” reflected a genuine generational shift, with Millennials and Gen Z openly purchasing objects that felt playful, ironic and emotionally expressive.

Lessons from Celebrity Traitors - Workplace politics in fingerless gloves and a cape.

By Nikki Neale • October 22, 2025

Warning, if you’re not one of the 7 million people who watched Celeb Traitor’s live last week (look at you go terrestrial telly!) you might want to scroll on. For everyone else, here are my top five comparisons between the castle and the average workplace. Alan and Paloma: when friendship and politics mix Alan Carr murdering Paloma Faith early on is the perfect example of how proximity and power collide. They were friends. They laughed together. Worked together. Seemed inseparable. He killed her anyway. Not maliciously or even strategically, she was just an easy target, and he needed to save his own skin. Because in Traitors, like work, beware the relationships that only last as long as they’re useful. Charisma isn’t integrity, and “getting on well” doesn’t mean “aligned.” We’ve all had a ‘mate’ at work like Alan: funny, charming, likeable and the next minute torching your project to get ahead. Sh*t! Jonathan Ross vs Ruth Codd: the calm, the storm, and the power dynamic Jonathan Ross is now facing heat, definitely helped along by Ruth Codd going in on him! She had a point, she just didn’t land it. Ruth got angry, frustrated, emotional. Jonathan stayed calm, almost detached. And that was it: in the group’s eyes, the rational one won. But watch it again. That wasn’t calm; it was control. Ruth’s younger, newer, female. Jonathan’s older, famous, a man of the establishment. It was a masterclass in unspoken hierarchy and how people can manipulate the unconscious bias of everyone around them. So many meetings have that moment: one person fighting to be heard while another takes over, with zero merit, because they have privilege and a power dynamic you can’t beat. Bums!

It's time to give a sh*t about toilets

September 16, 2025

As my nan used to say - you can tell a lot about a place from its toilets. And it's fair to say, when it comes to experiences, I'm obsessed with them. You might arrive at a beautiful office, a busy café, or a slick visitor attraction. The welcome is polished, the branding sharp, the service rehearsed. And then you slip away to the loo and suddenly you see the truth. A broken lock. A soap dispenser that hasn’t been filled in days. A faded Covid sign still taped to the mirror like a ghost of 2020. All the polish of the front-of-house vanishes. Because if they’ve stopped noticing here, what else have they stopped noticing? Why toilets punch above their weight Toilets don’t get design awards (often), they don’t appear on campaign mood boards, and they rarely make the budget spreadsheet. Yet they shape experience and demonstrate culture more than almost any other space. The numbers prove it: over 80% of facility complaints relate to toilets, and more than four in five people say a bad loo puts them off returning. In restaurants and hospitality, dirty toilets cut repeat visits by around 20%. Psychologists call it the Peak-End Rule: people judge experiences by their extremes and by how they end. Which makes the loo dangerous territory. For many customers, it’s the last stop before they leave. If the final impression is disappointment - no soap, a cracked seat, the faint smell of neglect (or worse), that’s what tips the memory from positive to no thanks. The workplace test In offices, toilets are culture in miniature. An employer can talk endlessly about wellbeing, inclusion, and values, but the loos tell the truth. Free sanitary products? Clean mirrors? Lighting that flatters rather than exposes? These are the signals staff notice every day. They’re not perks; they’re respect. And don’t start me on the signs telling people to clean up after themselves. Really? Are we dealing with adults or running a nursery? More often than not it’s a response to one incident with one person, and the rest of the workforce gets a lifetime of infantilising posters. That says more about the culture than the mess ever did. Employees don’t measure culture by the slogans on the wall. They measure it by whether the hand dryer works.

What Your Marketing Budget Says About Your Ambition

By Nikki Neale • September 2, 2025

Every business faces the same question when planning for the year ahead: what should we spend on marketing? There isn’t a clean-cut answer. Nobody has the formula that guarantees growth. What matters is whether your budget matches the growth you’re actually chasing. From a sales and marketing perspective, most small to mid-sized businesses sit in one of three lanes: Zero, Incremental, or Exceptional. Smaller businesses tend to hover in zero, the more established ones work in incremental, and only a bold few step into exceptional. The trick is not which lane you choose, but whether you’re honest about being in it. Zero: hoping for the best Zero is the lane of survival. Most micro-SMEs end up here by default. Marketing isn’t in the budget, it’s something the founder (or another willing team member) crams into evenings and weekends. Social posts, the odd flyer, and a heavy reliance on word of mouth or personal networks. The problem is that “no budget” never really means no cost. It means you’re paying in hidden ways: slower sales cycles because there’s no air cover for the pipeline, lost opportunities because potential customers don’t know you exist, and founder time that disappears into DIY marketing instead of running the business. Zero can sustain you. It can keep the lights on. But very few businesses scale out of this lane without committing something more deliberate. Survival simply isn’t the same as growth. Incremental: the steady road Incremental growth is where SMEs start to get serious. If you’re getting serious your budget should be within 4–7% of your revenue, which is enough to create rhythm: SEO that doesn’t get forgotten, email that lands every month, campaigns that repeat, and the odd test of a new channel. Sales still lean on retention and referrals, but with more discipline in the pipeline you’ll create more cause and effect. Gail’s Bakery is a brilliant lesson in what incremental looks like at its best. The first site opened in Hampstead in 2005, but for years it was just a few shops in North London. The real shift came in 2011 when external investment gave Gail’s the capital to expand carefully, bakery by bakery. Each new shop was chosen with precision: affluent commuter towns, established London neighbourhoods, places where the brand could bed in rather than overreach - all critical (and often overlooked) essentials of marketing. That’s why today, when you walk through Marlow, Clapham, or St Albans, you can’t miss a Gail’s. It feels like they’re everywhere, but it’s been twenty years of patient, disciplined growth. Incremental doesn’t make headlines in year one, but it compounds until suddenly the brand feels unavoidable. Exceptional: the bold bet Exceptional growth is when we choose to accelerate. Marketing budgets rise to 10–15% of revenue or more, and that spend is matched with operational readiness and, crucially, risk appetite. This lane buys visibility, reach, and cultural momentum if you’re willing to back it. Take Gymshark. The myth will have you believe it was entirely organic; a teenager in a Birmingham garage who struck gold through social media alone. It wasn’t. The truth is more complex. Yes, Ben Francis built a community, but Gymshark also spent aggressively on influencer partnerships, international events, and flagship stores to cement its place. That growth wasn’t accidental or free; it was funded, risky, and carefully engineered. Lucky Saint shows the same dynamic in another category. Founded in 2018, it positioned itself as a credible, grown-up alcohol-free beer in a space dominated by mass brands. From early on, Lucky Saint invested heavily in brand and experience: PR, creative partnerships, and eventually a bricks-and-mortar pub in London. For a small brewer, that’s a bold move, but it paid off. The spend signalled ambition, and the market responded. Exceptional growth isn’t a casual decision. It means bigger budgets, more risk, and a level of operational readiness that many SMEs underestimate. But when ambition and investment line up, it creates step-change growth that incremental spend rarely delivers. The mismatch trap If you’re reading this with huge ambition and a budget line of zero, it’s time for a check-in. The biggest problems happen not when you choose a lane, but when you kid yourself about which lane you’re in. Champagne ambition, beer budget. Some businesses set accelerated growth targets but fund them with incremental budgets. The marketing team (if there even is one) is told to double awareness or leads on the same spend as last year, or to land national coverage with nothing more than local-level funds. It creates frustration, wasted energy, and the creeping belief that “marketing doesn’t work,” when in truth it was never resourced to match the ambition. Champagne budget, no hangover cure. Others do the opposite. They throw big money at marketing while the rest of the business is still built for incremental growth. Leads flow in, awareness rises, but operations can’t deliver the experience. Customer service cracks, delivery timelines slip, and the reputation you just paid to build is quickly eroded. Exceptional marketing without exceptional operations doesn’t accelerate growth; it accelerates churn. Hope springs eternal. Then there’s the subtler trap of sitting in zero while planning for growth. A founder convinces themselves that word of mouth will carry them through another year, while quietly expecting sales to grow 20%. When it doesn’t happen, the blame gets pointed everywhere except the missing budget line. You can’t compound visibility you never paid for in the first place. Planning for the year ahead Budgets are signals of intent. They tell your team, and yourself, whether you’re serious about survival, steady growth, or acceleration. They set expectations for sales, operations, and delivery before a single social post goes live. If you’re one of the 1000s of SMEs working on next year’s plans right now and you’re unsure whether your budget matches your ambition, that’s exactly where Perspective Analysis comes in. We stress-test your business for growth, help bring clarity to which lane you’re really in, and align sales, marketing and ops so your plan has a fighting chance of working. If you want a defensible budget and a growth plan that holds up past January, start with Perspective Analysis.