HSS Hire’s Fiona Perrin

The leap from copywriter and journalist to key accounts and marketing director at a tool and equipment hire company is quite a large one. But Fiona Perrin, marketing director at HSS Hire, is one to take it all in her stride.

She left the world of journalism, she says, because she realised it was “hard to make a living.” Instead, she set up a business writing newsletters and acting as an outsourced PR and marketing function for companies specialising in facilities management. Along with her then business partner, David Emanuel, they set up the portal i-fm.net, an online marketing intelligence service for the facilities management industry, which remains a success today.

After six years, the company employed 20 people and was going strong, but Perrin was eager for a new challenge. She was offered a role as european marketing director at Digiplex, which she describes as a large American data centre company. Just over a year in, however, she had to leave after the bank pulled the plug on the company following the loss of its key client during the dotcom boom and bust.

What followed Perrin describes as her “blue chip stint”. Over five years, she was a consultant, then sales and marketing director, then online marketing director at multinational Rentokil Initial.

Despite describing Rentokil Initial as “fantastic, social and warm”, Perrin herself admits that she wasn’t 100 per cent suited to the corporate environment. “I’m not a natural corporate player,” she says. “I like fast moving environments. When I left, I felt there was nothing left to invent. I’m quite structured but I’m not a big committee person. I like to see an opportunity and run with it. There can be too much structure in corporates and not enough room for innovation. I’m a natural entrepreneur.”

Perrin’s next move was to HSS Hire, where she remains today as key accounts and marketing director. “Most people know HSS Hire from the high street,” she says. “But we are 93 per cent B2B.”

Being a recognised high street name, she says, is an advantage in that it’s more likely people will answer calls from HSS Hire. Her role, over the three years she has now been at the company, has been to drive key accounts – with large organisations such as Network Rail and Sainsburys. Reading between the lines, she’s also needed to modernise marketing operations and bring the brand – with its 50 year heritage – into the 21st century. HSS has also looked to diversify and broaden its client base, both to differentiate itself from competitors such as Speedy Hire, which focus mainly on the construction industry, and to enable it to better fare in particular industries.

“When I joined, about eight per cent of our client base was key accounts. Now that figure is about 25 per cent,” says Perrin. “This has been a big strategic push. It gives us security of income, security of tenure, and we’re well set up to service these types of contracts.”

Marrying marketing and sales

Part of the reason for Perrin’s apparent success with bringing new clients onto HSS’ books, it would appear, is her enthusiasm for sales. “Marketing to me is about sales,” she says. “It’s about talking to customers in their own language. I find it frustrating if marketers don’t get out of the office, get out with the sales force. My team all go out with customers and spend time in our network.”

But what Perrin has had to do goes beyond effective sales. She has had a three-year plan since joining the company – designed in collaboration with other key members of the senior management team – and this has involved some tough decisions. The recession, and its impact on the construction sector, amongst others, hit HSS hard.

“We were not immune to the effects of the recession,” she admits. “We were down 13 per cent year-on-year, but the rest of our market was down 25 to 30 per cent. So we significantly outperformed our market. We made some difficult decisions – there were redundancies last year, we significantly reduced our marketing budget and put a freeze on recruitment.”

The business, says Perrin, has for the past three years focused on four pillars – customer service, building a network of ‘supercentres’, developing key accounts, and creating a sales-focused organisation. Given that the office relocated from Mitcham to Manchester, Perrin was also able to hire new blood into her nine-strong marketing team. “I was able to reinvent the marketing function,” she says. “I’m a massive believer in teams.”

Perrin says that her team “didn’t grumble” during the recession, despite the challenges of scaling back on account managers and bringing the SEO strategy in-house. HSS Hire plans some above the line activity later this year – activity which was stalled during the recession. Its lead agency, GyroHSR, has also been tasked with consolidating what has been achieved.

Modernising the brand

“We had a three-year plan and we’ve achieved it,” says Perrin. “For the next three years, we’ll be focusing on the same four pillars. We want to be known as a modern business services organisation, not just a hire company. Our plan is to carry on and to consolidate what we’ve been doing for the past three years. Historically, we’ve enjoyed great market share and recognition, but I’d say there was an element of complacency prior to 2006–/07.”

Admitting also that HSS Hire was something of a ‘status quo’ organisation, Perrin stresses the importance of continual challenge and activity- in order to keep her interested. “My career has always been about transformation, change management, strategy,” she says. “I didn’t have a grand career plan. You end up in places suited to your temperament.”

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