Viewpoint // Sarah McCrossan Viewpoint
viewpoint // Sarah McCrossan It’s all a numbers game
Looking back across her career, Herbert William MD Sarah McCrossan has learnt that there’s far, far more to running a successful KBB business than just being able to create beautiful projects...
A
t 24, I was lucky enough to land a job as a trainee kitchen designer at our local
independent builders’ merchant. I’d escaped a big corporate role where I was on a “promising career path” but deeply unhappy. The switch was risky. However,
kitchen design was a revelation: real customers, real rooms, real impact. I loved the people, the creativity and the fact that, in KBB, you never have the same week twice. I spent 10 years with a local
builders merchant, moving from store to store. Trades followed me because people tend to buy from people – and I had a few useful traits: slightly OCD about symmetry and detail, naturally positive and outgoing, and a hopeless people pleaser. Naturally, I sold well, I designed well, and I genuinely loved my job.
In 2007, after a difficult period
in my personal life and a year out back-packing like a teenager (at 30!),
I came back with one clear
idea: I wanted to start my own kitchen business. It made sense. I could design,
I could sell, and I had loyal clients. What I didn’t realise was that running a business is a completely different language. I had no real business plan, no model and no real
It was only when I had an actual baby that I
realised running the business was even more demanding than caring for a newborn
"
marketing strategy. I
had suppliers, an ordering
system, product – and that happy- go-lucky, eye for detail, passion and luck. Clients came because they knew me. They turned up when they felt like it. I didn’t really “acquire” them; I just welcomed them when they appeared. In my head, being great at design and people was enough. However, my overheads grew, a van initially, then a small office, then staff (as I could not keep up) then a showroom to put the icing on the cake.
Demanding I had no processes, no plan, from
the outside it looked like a dream. I used to describe it as ‘my baby’ but it was only when I had an actual baby that I realised the business was more demanding than caring for a newborn. But everything changed when I met Kevin, a business coach. He
started asking questions that, to me, sounded like a foreign language: KPIs, margins, conversion rates. I smiled and nodded while quietly thinking, “I just design kitchens…” and “I am doing fine, thank you” (forever being polite). Then came the question and analogy that changed me and my course of actions: “Where is the business going?”. He used a simple analogy. Imagine your business as a bus, full of staff and clients. If no one is actually steering, the wheel does what it likes. You hit potholes, trees, ditches. You go round in circles. No destination, just motion. It did make me question myself,
as by that time I was now 10 years in and had no real sense of a destination. I had thought that for sometime that I was on a hamster wheel so part of that resonated with me.
Then he asked me for a £20 note (in those days, before Covid,
52 kbbreview
when we had cash in our wallets or purses!) he handed me back £100, making the point that, if you could consistently turn £20 into £100, you’d do it all day long. That’s what investing in business skills could do. So, I signed up for coaching!
Kevin, in sales, had done his bit. And that’s when I met Colin.
KBB S.O.S. He was direct, and entirely focused
on numbers, processes, and abbreviations. I was mildly horrified and put under a lot of pressure to learn another language – AOV, KPI, HPA etc. I actually had little respect at the time as he had no interest in seeing my showroom! How could you help a KBB business without admiring the kitchens? Very easily, as it turns out. Colin didn’t want to see my
showroom. He wanted to see my data. Every fortnight I had to report on how many leads we had, how many converted, where they came from, how we could get more of the right ones, and then profit and loss for each job – margin at the start and at the end. If the end margin was lower,
I had to explain why and what process I’d introduce to stop it happening again. At first, I turned up with stacks of paper, job sheets and a calculator, stressed and very
August 2026
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