In this article, leading Sales Expert Andy Preston explains the last two of the top 5 things you need to consider right now, to give yourself and your team the best chance of taking advantage of the upturn….
Category: Columns
Columns, blogs and opinion from some of the UKs leading business opinion makers and entrepreneurs and small business owners
A guide to buying PR services
The economy is starting to see signs of recovery, but are you best placed to capitalise on this in your business or will your competitors beat you to it by gaining valuable media coverage for their goods and services? Taking a quick look at your marketing plans, if you have any, might reveal a gaping hole in publicity, and more important, how you intend to get some.
Do entrepreneurs & enterprise get a rough deal in the media?
In the late 1980’s, Clive Woodcock was about the only journalist reporting on small business issues through his column in Friday’s Guardian. His solitary status reflected the lack of media interest in the subject; the term entrepreneur hadn’t been widely adopted, nor had our work culture embraced the positive options of self-employment.
So, how do i choose a trainer?
Training is a great investment to make in your staff and the efficiency of your business, but choosing a training provider you can work well with can be a bit of a minefield. What is it you are looking for in a training company, and what do you hope to gain from the training? A few questions can set you on the right track to a successful long term relationship with your provider.
Time to get tough with the social media doubters
I need to make something absolutely clear: I believe effective use of social media will benefit any business. No exceptions. None whatsoever. I don’t believe you can show me one business that can’t benefit from it. Not one. If you disagree, well sorry, either prove it or admit you’re wrong.
Big brother is watching you…
Employees. Always good to have them where you can see them right? To make sure they are in the door at 9am, working solidly and then out the door no earlier than 5pm? Ban Facebook from the office to make sure opportunities to skive are minimal and if we can give them clocking in/out cards, so much the better. After all, if the boss is sitting there watching their staff, productivity is almost guaranteed, isn’t it?
Remedies for Late Payment
Getting paid is not always as easy as it should be and threatening to terminate the contract is usually a last resort. There are intermediate steps you can take as well as including some protective measures in your contract terms.
Probably the best marketing tool in the world…
Conversations which took place in many businesses last year were all about survival, talking about how you got through it, how awful it was, and how you hoped for better fortunes next year.
The conversations happening this year could quite easily be no different…unless, that is, you do something differently.
5 Tips For Selling On The Upturn – Part 1
In this article, leading Sales Expert Andy Preston explains 5 things you need to consider right now, to give yourself and your team the best chance of taking advantage of the upturn….
Contract Terms – Price & Payment explained
This article is the first of a series in which I will look at different contract terms and the sort of issues that you need to cover in your contract – or to think about in a contract you have been given to sign.
Visibility is good. Credibility is better
This winter there has been a lot of talk about ‘visibility’. For the purposes of this blog post, though, I’m not talking about whether you can see out of your windscreen when it has frosted over. The kind of visibility that has become a trendy subject is about being seen in the marketplace. We all know about information overload and how much competition there is for your customers’ attention, both online and offline. So being seen – in person, online, in the media – is essential. However it is dangerous to stop there.
There’s more to booking training than a day out of the office
When booking training for your organisation, what is it you are looking for? Competitive pricing, fulfilling a real need to boost staff skills, post course follow up, filling in the training requirements for your company? There are various reasons I’ve heard over the years from clients booking courses but it’s time to establish the real deal.
Aint no Sunshine when your job’s gone
I nearly choked on my tea when I read a twitter link to a Daily Mail article about 64% of workers booking holidays online do so from their desks. How dare they even think it let alone actually do it. Apparently it is down to Monday Blues and in particular the Monday when everyone returns after the Christmas break.
Surely I am not the only person who finds it truly astonishing to think that employees, whilst supposedly working to earn the money to pay for their holidays, think it’s their right to do this without any recourse what so ever.
Your New Year’s resolutions for 2010
New year, new decade and so double the incentive to start 2010 with a clear vision and set of objectives for the next 12 months.
Airline competition good news for consumers
It seems that the competition between major airline operators is intensifying, perhaps as a result of losses sustained in the recession, and standards of comfort and convenience for customers are improving as a result.
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