Expo..se Yourself to Curry Favour
Last Thursday was a busy day of networking and presenting as I made an exhibition of myself at the GRID* Enterprise Expo in Bradford.
The day started off in the dark at 7 am with a busy business networking breakfast courtesy of proNet which was immediately followed in the same building by a small business Expo [...]
It’s Not About “Selling” to People!
Judging by the number of books there are about “how to sell”, the business world must be full of salespeople and their managers who all believe that they could and should be selling more… if they only knew how.
If only they knew the right sales techniques… or had the right sales staff… or the right [...]
Do You Hand Address Your Envelopes?
Speak to many marketers about the strategies for success when compiling a mail shot campaign to small businesses and they’ll probably tell you to address each envelope in your own fair hand and use a stamp instead of franking machine in order to increase response rates.
Well I’m here to argue that this idea is [...]
Customer Testimonials – Are They Worth the Keyboard Strokes?
The technique of using customer testimonials within a sales process as a means of demonstrating credibility for a particular product or service, has been around for a long time. But quite frankly is the technique worth the effort?
Clearly for many companies it’s a great way connecting with their customers and finding common ground between [...]
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: Google Shows Us the Way
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Benjamin Disraeli once famously quoted.
This is one of my favourite quotations that I often drop into conversation when I’m presented with a load of stats which may look great at first glance: particularly if presented in a pie-chart or line graph format, but [...]
Go Away! We Don’t Want Your Business!
Have you noticed, certainly in Britain anyway; how difficult it is sometimes to buy things from some businesses, particularly retail shops?
Specifically I’m talking about the signage that seems to have sprung up at the entrance to many shops, pubs and restaurants these days stopping you entering even before you’ve reached for your wallet or [...]
The commercial laws of supply and demand essentially dictate that the more common a product or service, the cheaper it costs to buy. Conversely, the scarcer a commodity becomes, the more expensive it becomes to acquire.
This demand is often inflated or deflated by changes in fashion, ease and cost of production and dare I say [...]
People Become Tweeple at Bradford Seminar
To a packed room of local business people including representatives from Business Link, I delivered the first of my seminars on the subject of “Using Twitter for Business” at Action for Business‘ offices in Bradford yesterday afternoon.
Run by Bradford Grid the event was aimed at small business owners who were inquisitive about the micro-blogging phenomenon [...]
Put Your Message to the ‘So What?’ Test
If you’re like most small businesses today, you will have tried several ways of telling people about your business at least to some degree either at a networking event, on an advert, mailshot, email blast etc …
You may have even experienced some successes now and again.
But are you able to make it work consistently [...]
Back in November 2006 Sage™, the well known accountancy and CRM software company; bought out the UK merchant services provider Protx for twenty million quid.
Protx was established in 2001 and provides online payment services for small and medium businesses (SMEs) in the UK, with a customer base of over 10,000 businesses. Protx online payment gateways [...]
