Sales and Marketing Strategy for 2027 - and Why Your Plan Keeps Failing

Your plan wasn't the problem

Most sales and marketing plans don't fail because they were badly written. They fail because there was nothing underneath them.

You set the activity for the year. LinkedIn, the new website, some email, a couple of exhibitions. By March it has quietly stopped. Not because anyone gave up, but because nobody could answer why one activity mattered more than another when the quotes stacked up and the diary filled.

That is what a strategy does. It is not a longer plan. It is the layer above it that decides what the plan is for.

67% of UK SMEs operate without a marketing plan at all, and researchers link that directly to random acts of marketing - activity with nothing joining it together (https://www.themarketingcentre.com). Our own survey at the Advanced Engineering Show found only 48% of engineering companies had a formal marketing strategy, and that was among exhibitors who already take marketing seriously (https://www.salesandmarketingengineers.co.uk/sales-and-marketing-survey-in-the-engineering-sector).

Why now, for 2027

A strategy is not a Sunday afternoon job. It needs research, argument, and a few uncomfortable conversations with your own leadership team. Start it in January and you spend the first quarter of 2027 deciding what you should already be doing.

Start it now and 2027 opens with the thinking finished.

Who this is for

Business owners, managing directors, commercial directors and operations directors of technical, engineering and industrial companies. If you sign off the marketing budget, or you are the one asking why it isn't producing enquiries, this is aimed at you.

It suits you if you have marketing activity running but can't clearly say what it is building towards. It will not suit you if you are looking for LinkedIn tips or a website critique.

What we'll cover

Over 90 minutes:

• Why a plan without a strategy rarely survives past month three, and what actually breaks
• The difference between a strategy and a plan - the redprint before the blueprint
• The elements a working strategy contains: market, audience, positioning, value proposition, go-to-market and measurement
• How to sequence the work so it fits around running the business
• Where AI genuinely helps with the research and the stress-testing, where it does not, and why the direction still has to come from the people who run the company

How it runs

This is a seminar, not a workshop. You will leave with clarity on what your strategy needs to contain and how to start it - not with a finished document. Ninety minutes is honest about what it can do.

It is interactive. Questions will be put to the room about your own business, and you will be asked to think rather than watch. Joining in is entirely voluntary. Nobody will be made to present anything.

A light lunch is provided.

Seats are limited to 30.

About the speaker

Stefan Buss BSc Eng (Ind) is the founder of Sales and Marketing Engineers, a consultancy that builds sales and marketing systems for industrial and technical SMEs. With a background in industrial engineering and over two decades in B2B marketing, he brings an engineer's approach to revenue generation - scoped, specified, and measured, rather than hoped for.

More on the approach at our sales and marketing strategy service (https://www.salesandmarketingengineers.co.uk/sales-and-marketing-strategy) and our AI services (https://www.salesandmarketingengineers.co.uk/ai-for-sales-and-marketing).

Book your seat

Free to attend, lunch included, 30 seats. Wednesday 26 August, 12:00 to 13:30, Crawley Innovation Centre.

If you would like to come and work for the day - the CIC have a "Work from here Wednesday" special for their co-working space to work there for Free for the day - see https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/work-from-here-wednesday-tickets-1985123350379 to check for availability

If you have been meaning to sort your sales and marketing properly for a while, this is a 90 minute start that costs you a lunch break.